olegjurk posted a photo:

Somewhere south of Sapporo, Japan, January 2026

It was a mostly sunny day. Harsh light is not exactly what I like, so I thought I would at least use the time to look for motifs and spent much of the day driving around.

Then this frozen lake caught my attention. From afar, I saw about 20 colorful dots gathered near the lakeside and had to find out what they were.

The dots turned out to be small fishing tents. Locals had gathered there for ice fishing, some of them with their kids. Although the tents looked interesting, I couldn’t quite figure out how to photograph them. They were too close to each other, and the light was simply too harsh.

So I decided not to waste film and walked back up the hill to the parking lot. On the way there, out of nowhere, a low cloud moved in and covered the mountains in the background, and then the lake itself, for about 15 minutes.

Just enough time to take the picture you see here.

Sometimes you are just lucky.