Esko Pihl, a retired air force officer from Tampere cashed in on a childhood hobby to win a 300-euro gift certificate in Yle’s first ever weather picture of the year competition.
Pihl took to photography during his school years, initially using film sponsored by his parents. However use of the expensive medium meant he got used to carefully considering each image before committing it to eternity on film.
Nowadays the retired air force officer is exploiting the joys of digital photography. His winning image was taken in a tiny village in Laukaa in central Finland.
“We have a family residence there where we spend recreational time. I have seen all kinds of natural and weather phenomena there. One morning I noticed that it was really spectacularly foggy outside. I took my camera and stand and headed to the beach. With the sun occasionally peeking out from behind the clouds the landscape looked almost black and white. It was easy to photograph, I didn’t need to retouch the image,” Pihl explained.
A favourite among web visitors
A dramatic image of an approaching storm front by Aleksi Pellinen claimed second prize in the competition. Pellinen’s piece was the favourite of professional photographer Hannes Heikura, who selected the finalists for the competition.
The Yle competition proved to be highly popular among web visitors, gathering more than 17,000 votes altogether. Yle launched the competition as part of a visual re-branding campaign for its news and current affairs programmes. About 1,500 of them have been used in news broadcasts to date.
