A fight against time. The clock is ticking. It seems to just go faster and faster.

The North still seems far away… and the sun sets soon…

We park our car next to a lake with gorgeous reflections of a majestic fell.

I hop out of the car, pickup my heavy backpack and start running to the lake – I take my camera out… and then…

I notice the light had just gone. Disappointment washed over me.

“Only if we had arrived 5 minutes before”, I thought.

The trip didn’t promise to get much better from that. All I could see from a forecast was that it was cloudy.

I only had a handful of days in Lapland with my dad. And… I badly wanted to photograph Northern Lights again.

Especially in Lapland – I never had seen them in The North before. My dream was to witness them here.

Especially as they’re much more epic and powerful here compard to my hometown Kuopio, Finland.

I noticed that on this first night we might have a chance – but a very small one.

It wasn’t clear skies. The forecast said it’d be mostly cloudy and the Northern Lights forecast wasn’t looking the best either.

I was trying to hide my frustration.

We went to check-in at the hotel without any good shots. And we went to sleep a couple of hours.

After that I woke up – like planned – and let my dad sleep. I opened my forecast and it had stayed the same. Mostly cloudy.

I was wondering whether we should go out or not. We had been driving the whole day. We were dead tired. And the forecast wasn’t good.

We had all the reasons to not go.

“If you slept, think about how cosy it’d be. You’d get to wake up early for a nice hotel breakfast. Nobody would blame you…”

The worst thing – and the hardest thing – about excuses is, that they’re valid. But you can’t let them stop you.

You need to quiet them. And so I did.

We were in Lapland afterall…

We had this 1 night we could see some Lights.

Why would we not go for it? Now looking back it seems rather stupid we even thought this way. But that’s how the human mind works…

And then… in the middle of the night, I made a decision.

After immediately stepping outside of the hotel – The Green Lady greeted at us.

I was so happy to see the Lights – but I couldn't take a photo of it there yet. We had to travel to another spot. I prayed the Lights wouldn’t disappear by then.

We were struggling to find the photo spot. I hadn’t found great instructions online where it exactly is. And when there already is a Show going on – I was very stressed.

Once we figured out were it was, we just ran for it.

And thankfully, the show was still going on.

There was some clouds – sure. But the Northern Lights were still very visible.

I had been dreaming about photographing at this spot for ages – ever since I saw it on Instagram the 1st time.

I wanted to photograph it no matter the conditions. But I had dreamt of getting the shot with The Northern Lights.

And now I was this close to making that happen.

Dad helped set up the tripod to get us shooting faster. I set up the composition – and ran to the shot.

I was sitting still on the swing – as I couldn’t actually swing due to the long-exposure we were taking.

I stayed still for 15 seconds at the time.

I held my breath. Didn’t let myself move even an inch… apart from my eyes.

The Northern Lights were erupting in front of my eyes. I was thinking how fortunate am I to be able to see these with my own eyes. And experience them with my dad.

I wanted to scream every time I saw the Lights speed up and spread more across the dark night sky.

I ran back and forth many times to see did we get what we were after. I couldn’t stay inspecting the photos for long – as the Lights could’ve disappeared any minute. And the clouds were starting to fill up the sky even more.

After the best show was over – I checked the photos I had got. I was blown away. I couldn’t believe we had just pulled this off.

And then it was the time to… go back and actually swing. And take some swinging photos just for the fun of it.

Swinging under the Northern Lights in Finnish Lapland. I couldn’t stop smiling. I couldn’t stop swinging. I couldn’t believe I got to witness this kind of a moment with my dad.

I was emotional. I focused my eyes on the dancing green sky, and let them wander there – until the Lights faded away to recover for another dance, another night.

Season: 1
Art: 2