Conclusion

Dawnwatch from an East-Facing Balcony in Sydney

Hi

This is my last blog post.  I’ve posted all my videos and commentary on dawns from an east-facing balcony in Sydney that I intend to, and I hope I have inspired others to do the same, or at least to get up early and watch the dawn more than just once a year.  I look forward to watching other fantastic dawns on YouTube from all over the world.

A final comment:  ABC News 24 is still using those two photographs from Voldemort Dawn and Lava Dawn respectively on their program; the golden spiral appears in a slice of the regular weather intro, and the tropical dawn under brown clouds with surfers on the beach in the foreground features as a blown-up backdrop to the weekend news presenters. 

I reproduce a photo of each that regular ABC News 24 viewers should recognize.  It seems there will be no fresh dawn pictures on the news until spring, when these wonderful dawns will begin anew. 

Take care and keep dawn watching.

Signing off

S E Champenby

Dawnwatch 22/01/2012 Bipartisan Dawn

Dawn from an East-Facing Balcony in Sydney

This is the last dawn I shall post for January 2012.  Another surprise in that I had enough suitable photographs to cobble together for a video.

Bipartisan Dawn:  Sunday, 22 January 2012

This dawn begins with a wondrous scene of the quarter moon in the sky and the golden light of dawn rising from below.  I always find these occurrences where the moon, the dark night, and dawn’s early light are all present in the sky together fascinating.  However, it’s the clouds that make this dawn interesting.

Although there’s plenty of cloud activity low near the horizon, high altitude cloud is sadly lacking.  You can see from a wisp of high cloud coloured pink that there will be no colourful pre-dawn pinks display today.  What might have been is but a dream.

The reality is a fat cloud moving across low on the horizon just as the sky turns gold with the oncoming sun - and promptly splits in half.  The cloud, that is.  Actually, it looks like a map picture of Papua New Guinea, but that was a bit of a mouthful to name this dawn.  In any event, it’s that divided cloud, with the sun’s bright rays seeming to slice it like a knife, that gives this dawn its name, Bipartisan Dawn.

The cloud breaks up, and another fat cloud rolls along to block the dawn sun.  I pack up my camera and return indoors; the bright light of the sun has hurt my eyes.  That’s enough dawn photography for one day.  Unfortunately, not a particularly memorable or great dawn - unless you’re interested in PNG.

Catch the video on YouTube here.

Souvenir posters and mugs of this dawn are available from the Gagothicfunk store at Zazzle.com as displayed below:

Don’t forget your humble photographer also writes fantasy adventure fiction under the name of S E Champenby.  Paperbacks and epubs available from Lulu.com at S E Champenby’s store.

Dawnwatch 20/01/2012 Peachy Dawn

Dawn from an East-Facing Balcony in Sydney

This dawn was a surprise - a very pretty peachy surprise.  Upon checking, I discovered I had a sufficient number of photographs to cobble together a video.  So here’s the commentary.

Peachy Dawn:  Friday, 20 January 2012

A black and white beginning to this day’s dawn.  There was no colour in the sky, only a low cloudbank that broke up in fits.  Nothing remotely interesting, except for the bird that perches on the telegraph pole to take a look. 

Things begin to develop when a pipeline of cloud snakes across the horizon, leaves, and later comes back again.  Odd, to say the least.  There’s a hint of golden sky below and a touch of pink above in the clouds.

Colour truly comes to the sky once the sun peeks above the true horizon, not the line of trees on the ridge you can see in the photos.  Soon enough anyway the sun appeared on my horizon, too.  The golden glow of the sun and the pre-dawn pinks of the clouds are in the sky at the same time.  The result?  A peachy pink dawn. 

The pipeline of cloud returns, only thinner this time, and seems to capture that golden colour to prevent it from filling the sky.  But then the line breaks up, and a large cloud moves in.  The sun is forced to rise through the cloud and produces some mildly spectacular photographs.

Not a grand or fantastic dawn by any measure, but certainly a pretty and unique one.

Watch the video on YouTube here.

Souvenir posters and mugs of this dawn are available from the Gagothicfunk store at Zazzle.com as displayed below:

Don’t forget your humble photographer also writes fantasy adventure fiction under the name of S E Champenby.  Paperbacks and epubs available from Lulu.com at S E Champenby’s store.

Dawnwatch 24/01/2012 Neapolitan Dawn

Dawn from an East-Facing Balcony in Sydney

The photographs selected for this video were very much a scrounge job.  No selection was involved; I had to salvage whatever I could get, all the photos available with roughly the right perspective.  I think it turned out reasonably okay.

Neapolitan Dawn:  Tuesday, 24 January 2012

This dawn began with invisible cloud haze creating pink streaks across a dark blue sky.  Thicker clouds were already moving low across the sky in cotton ball puffs.  The horizon was, of all colours, yellow!  But the yellow wasn’t the sun rising - that comes later, as the photographs in the video show.  The light on the horizon was playing tricks, and there were more tricks to come on this truly remarkable dawn.

As the light increases, the dark sky turns slightly purplish, but the vivid pink streaks remain and are joined by yellow streaks!  Again, the yellow is not the sun, but the colour that the clouds are reflecting back.  I’ve never seen anything like it.

You can see why I called this Neapolitan Dawn.  Those layers of colours.  That triple-decker cloud stack.  All irresistible reminders of Neapolitan ice-cream.  Of course!  Yummy :-)

Most incredible of all, as the early pink streaks fade, the yellow horizon turns green.  This is a most rare occurrence.  You hardly ever see green in the sky, and it rarely turns out in photographs.  I lowered the midpoint colour a little, and there it was.  This was one of those dawns that looked much better witnessed first hand because the photographs didn’t do it justice.  However, I am very pleased that that marvellous green was captured in the pictures.  Usually, that doesn’t happen.

Just as the sun peeks above the horizon, the twin jets appear, one after the other, leaving white cloud streaks behind them.  It can’t be pleasant for the pilots, flying into the sun every morning.  Luckily, their jet streams are far enough to the right to avoid appearing in the video photographs - unlike Apocalypse Dawn, where their presence was unavoidable.

At the end of January, the sun rises smack bang in the centre of my horizon, behind the telegraph pole.  This morning the sun did so as the clouds began to mass and threaten rain and thunder.  A fantastic picture and a memorable finish to this morning’s video.

I rate this video a must-see, and you can catch it on YouTube here.

Souvenir posters and mugs of this dawn are available from the Gagothicfunk store at Zazzle.com as displayed below:

Don’t forget your humble photographer also writes fantasy adventure fiction under the name of S E Champenby.  Paperbacks and epubs available from Lulu.com at S E Champenby’s store.