So, a couple of years ago, I served a year as a squad leader in the Finnish Defence Forces in UNIFIL peacekeeping force in Southern Lebanon. As well as long days of duty, we also enjoyed loads of free time to recover, which had to be passed inside our camp in some way. During the year I was relatively active with a camera, especially during twilight and dawn.
After my service I forgot about these photos for a long time, since these kind of luminous phenomenons was what we witnessed daily. I recently discovered the photos from my hard drive again, and afterwards it is easy to say, we were privileged to enjoy these views on a regular basis.
The famous Super-Moon of autumn 2014 truly lived up to it's name in Lebanon
During the nights we used to do a barbecue while watching the sun set to the distant mediterranean often shadowed by the mountaineous terrain and a curtain of clouds.
Southern Lebanon is a regular place mentioned in the Bible. Sometimes it truly seemed as God himself had chosen a certain spot for something to happen.
The setting sun often coloured the last blue skies with almost painting-like colours.
Sometimes I took my camera aboard while heading to a night patrol. This picture is taken on one of the patrols of a small city in a valley in Southern Lebanon.
During the spring the warm days and the cold nights often resulted in morning mist in the deep Wadis (valleys) of Lebanon, while the sun started to warm the hilltops - Purple Haze.
Opposite of people's general thoughts also a winter exists in Lebanon, especially in the higher altitudes. This was one of the first sunny spring mornings after 2 months of rain, wind and cloudy skies.
Finally I managed (badly, though) to catch a double-rainbow over our patrol vehicles. May it be an omen or not, but during the patrol that followed we found a hut that served the tastiest Manoushes, pizza-like breads during my whole stay.
During the next weeks, I try to dig deeper to my photo archives to find more content as beautiful as this. Stay tuned!