Dawnwatch 28/02/2012 Lobster Dawn

Dawn from an East-Facing Balcony in Sydney

Welcome to the first dawnwatch report.  I've started with the last photographic dawn of summer - 29 February was, alas, a washout.  And I'll be working backwards datewise because after some checking I've found the first week of photographs are pretty terrible, actually.  The idea of making videos out of the pictures only struck me at the end of February, hence I know my recent dawn photos are more suitable for same.  The earlier dawns, well, I'll find out what I can salvage as I work my way backwards.

Lobster Dawn:  Tuesday, 28 February 2012

This day’s dawn began with dark, smothering cloud that promised rain later.  The clear strip of sky on the horizon, however, gave me hope that something interesting might develop.  That’s all it takes for a spectacular dawn - a gap on the horizon for the sunlight to escape, and clouds in the sky to reflect back the sunlight to glorious effect.  Dark, low rain clouds, however, are a bad sign, because the dark colouring does not reflect the light well, and the cloud can easily close off that lowline gap leaving you with a washout; this happened on Wednesday, 22 February.

For today, there’s the gap on the horizon, and the storm clouds have developed pink varicose veins.  All right, not the nicest of analogies, but I call them as I see them.  The sky was full of brooding menace, clouds loaded with rain and ready to dump.  After previous disappointments with similar pre-dawn skies, I had serious doubts that anything further would develop.

But then the light from the sun deepened to red, and the edges of the clouds above began to break up.  The breaking, sculpted clouds glowed red and gold to glorious effect.  Across the sky I beheld a giant lobster over a river of gold.  Incredible, awesome, spectacular.  You can see the pictures for yourself; you find the words.  To witness just one spectacle like this is worth getting up at dawn every day for a month.

It didn’t last.  The colour faded and washed away very rapidly, until if you rose from your slumbers at 7am, you would have missed it.  As the final pictures show, if your first glimpse of the day out of the window or on your way to work was at any time from 7am onwards, you would have seen a bleak dawn, a grey dawn, a cool morning with the threat of rain. 

Looking at the last pictures, where the sun rises through the oak tree, would you ever have guessed at the giant lobster and the golden river that had lit up the skies earlier?  Did this day, Tuesday 28 February 2012, begin for you as a bleak grey day, or one inspired by pink veins of promise, a fiery red lobster, and a river of pure molten gold?

Anyway, if you skipped the book, as they say, you can catch up with the movie 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.