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.

Dawnwatch 07/04/2012 Royal Easter Dawn

Dawn from an East-Facing Balcony in Sydney

This is the last autumn where I’ve posted a video because I can no longer see the sun rise; it’s disappeared behind the northerly trees.  For this video, I ran the pictures together in same time sequence because this dawn did not progress in stages.  Small changes - the shifting clouds, the light of the rising sun - added up to stunning big changes.  The photographs will explain everything I’m trying to say.

Royal Easter Dawn:  Saturday, 7 April 2012

Awakened by the sound of birds going crazy.  I don’t know why, but this was the last good dawn until I guess spring later in the year.  And it chanced to happen during the Easter holidays when I had the leisure to photograph.  The birds at least knew that Easter Saturday was their last opportunity to celebrate.

The dawn began with the clouds eerily lit with pink light.  Weirdling clouds revealed as the dawn light begins.  It was still pre-dawn dark despite the pink, and my initial photographs consequently have a slightly unfocused quality from the long exposures.  Must be something to do with the season, but there was some magnificent stuff going on in the sky, an unfortunately barely enough light to capture it with my camera.

As the sun rises, the pink glow cast by invisible cloud wisps reflecting back dawn’s pink light suggests a reason why this dawn lacks light.  The opaque veil of cloud is hampering the morning light from penetrating through.  Pink mingles with the blue background to create a stunning purple sky.  This contrasts against the thick lower clouds on the horizon between the trees that are ochre red.  I toyed with calling this dawn Ochre Dawn, Wild West Dawn, or Purple Plains Dawn, but in the end opted for Royal Easter in honour of the holiday date and the purple skies.

The low clouds begin to broil, churn and burn like a fiery furnace, and the higher clouds reflect back the reddish light.  I was afraid the reds wouldn’t turn out properly, and I was right.  The real thing looked more dramatic, but at least the photos give you an idea.

The colour in the lower cloud bank fades, and the higher cloud puffs are chased away by streaming white clouds.  The bright azure canopy properly belongs in the midday sky, but it’s put in an early appearance, as the greying cloud on the horizon proves.  Morning meets dawn and clash in the same sky.

If a single word describes this dawn, it would be stunning.  Royal Easter Dawn did not have the contrasting and very different stages of the magnificent dawns, but the progression of dawn passing into morning certainly produced a series of stunning pictures.

Anyway, if you skipped the book, as they say, you can catch up with 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 28/01/2012 Apocalypse Dawn

Dawn from an East-Facing Balcony in Sydney

What do you do when insects, birds, planes and jets intrude into your photographs?  I for one welcome birds; in dawn shots, they add an extra nature element.  Insects often appear as a blur and wreck the picture.  Aeroplanes you just have to put up with if they are moving slowly across the sky just when the most brilliant dawn spectacle is underway.  As for high altitude jets and the white streams they leave behind, well, sometimes they are just unavoidable, as happened today.

Apocalypse Dawn:  Saturday, 28 January 2012

A messy dawn.  Bits of cloud against a clear sky.  That’s how it began.  And as the dawn progressed, more bits of cloud appeared.  Itty bitty bits of cloud dotted the sky.

The pre-pink dawn and the light blue of the sky combined to produce an incredible purple sky - stunning against the glory tree.  That’s the tree planted in front of my building facing from my balcony south-east.  Often east and south clash behind that tree to spectacular effect, and this morning was one of those days.

Moving on, the sky becomes multicoloured, resembling Neapolitan Dawn.  The purple sky is breaking up into its constituent rainbow colours.  Increasing light also reveals that all those little clouds are dark with rain.

At this point the first jet appears, streaking across the sky towards the as yet to rise dawn sun.  This is so early in the morning that the white jet stream appears as yellow.  So that’s the yellow vertical line in the picture - an incredibly messy picture.  We’ve got a multitude of cloud puffs, a multi-coloured sky, and now a vertical jet line.  I’ve slowed down the video so that you can absorb the confusingly complicated busyness in the photograph.

If that wasn’t enough, jet number two appears and leaves its white streak across the sky, following jet number one over the horizon towards the as yet to rise dawn sun and a little over to the right, as usual.  These two jets regularly appear at dawn, much like I see the same birds every morning.  How many times have I posted pictures depicting three cranes?  I must tell you, it’s the same three cranes every morning!  But I digress.  If the trio of cranes appeared this morning, you’d never see them in all the mess.

In the final phase, a little wind springs up and causes the pieces of cloud to congregate.  It does so in a very unnatural odd-shaped clump that covers only half of the sky, then slowly creeps across.  The rising sun bathes the sky in golden light.  But those angry dark clouds like the exhaust from cannons, the grey of supposed smoke in the sky, the vertical streams from the jets, the electrical wires strung across like barbed wire - it’s so very easy to imagine this dawn as the picture of a war zone.  This is Apocalypse Dawn.  In the words of Pro Hart, what a mess!

You have to see this dawn to believe it.  Catch up with 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.

Perigee Moon

On the evening of Sunday 6 May, Sydney time, the moon reached its perigee position.  I didn't know that, I just noticed a giant orange full moon low on the horizon and started snapping.  Here tis. 

Later news reports said that this was the closest the moon had approached the Earth in 18 years, and showed a picture of the moon as backdrop against the Acropolis which puts my pictures to shame.  The moon must be closer to the Earth in Greece.  Anyway, the show's back on again in 10 months' time.

Very sorry haven't done a commentary post for Apocalypse Dawn yet.  The video is up, and of all the dawns that one really needs explanatory commentary, but I've been busy with other matters.  Last weekend I completed the draft of The Stone Wizard of Quoth, the second book in my The Witch, the Hero, and the Princess trilogy.  It's taken my years to write, thirty chapters plus.  But that's the way trilogies go; each succeeding volume is bigger and more complex than the preceding one.



In fact, I've been too busy to photograph the dawns.  Autumn dawns have been mostly washouts of thick cloudbank and fog.  I stopped on Anzac Day.  Sunsets are still fantastic, but sunrise...  Yet I was up early enough for today's dawn - Friday, 11 May 2012 - and it was great!  Would have hated to have missed it.  The reason for the spectacle:  must be the prediction of no rain.  Hence not too much cloud to spoil things.  Here's a pic:

That's all for now, folks!

S E Champenby

Dawnwatch 29/01/2012 Phoenix Dawn

Dawn from an East-Facing Balcony in Sydney

Know your angles.  By now I know exactly where to stand on the balcony and point my camera to capture the various views of the dawn for best framing purposes, but back in January I was just beginning.  From the debatable best of a collection of sorry photographs you can still make out the truly spectacular dawn that took place on Sunday, 29 January 2012 and that gives rise to this dawn’s name:  Phoenix Dawn.   

Phoenix Dawn:  Sunday, 29 January, 2012

According to my notes, this dawn was hot and humid with no wind, yet the clouds moved...which was just as well, because the initial pre-dawn pinks were masked by low and thick clouds.  Maybe the humidity explains why half the photographs were out of focus.  Anyway, with little morning light, the long time exposure to take the initial photographs ensured that they would be blurry.

Moving along, the stippled clouds at the back turn gold.  This dawn was almost called Gold Nugget Dawn - until I saw how badly the photos had turned out.  I’ve seen this gold nugget effect, as I’ll call it, in several dawns, but I have to say that Phoenix Dawn is the finest example of it.

At the spectacular height of this dawn, you can see those gold stippled clouds dominating the sky with gold tendrils in a phoenix-like design.  Simply fantastic.

I sob now looking at the paucity of photographs I took.  Always, always shoot off at least three photographs exactly the same, for the first one or two may not turn out.  If you know that one of those photographs didn’t turn out quite right, take another one or two.  On occasion I’ve taken four photographs in rapid succession and none of them turned out properly.  And do remember to capture the scene with as many angles as possible; you won’t know until after afterwards, when you blow up the pictures and carefully study them, which angle or photo is the best.

The greatest dawns contain stages, each of them magnificent in their own way.  Phoenix Dawn is one of them.  Beginning with the pre-pinks, then the golden nugget climax, and now we enter the third and final phase, Painted Dawn.  The incredible last photographs of this dawn look as if they have been painted.  And you can see the sun rising behind the painted clouds.  A memorable finish to Phoenix Dawn, terrible photography notwithstanding.

See the entire video of Phoenix Dawn 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 13/02/2012 Lava Dawn

 Dawn from an East-Facing Balcony in Sydney

Current affairs have influence on this dawnwatcher.  Instead of finishing off the early April dawns in the pipeline, I am digressing back to this date because ABC News 24 is still airing the picture of this dawn, initially screened in the weather segment, now moved to the sports segment.  You’ll recognize the beach scene of young men carrying surfboards in the foreground.  The background is Lava Dawn.

Lava Dawn:  Monday, 13 February 2012

Today began as a dark and grey cloudy dawn.  None of the first pictures turned out properly; I’ve selected the least blurry to start this dawn sequence.  In fact, the sky remained under a blanket of cloud all morning, with one brief exception.  Two cloudbanks, actually; a lower bank and an upper bank, which later became very significant.  However, from the way this dawn began as a near washout, I wasn’t expecting much.

Well, the golden sun began to rise, and things began to get a bit interesting.  On a plain grey dawn, there’s a hint of pink lipstick applied below, then yellow blusher above, and generally the dawn proceeds like a plain woman in the process of applying make-up to her face.  This is one of those dawns where the beauty is in the close-up details. 

As the sun treks up through the lower cloud bank, the dawn takes on an exotic tropical look at telegraph pole level.  It certainly appeared that way on the beach, as the ABC News 24 photo proves - I'm coming to that.  High above, the upper clouds turn brown.  On only one other occasion this year to date did this happen, actually just the next day, which was otherwise a washout of clouds in a darker brown colour and so may never be reported on this blog.  Two other occasions, if you count Old Gold Dawn, where the clouds were chocolate brown in colour.

Returning now to the ABC News 24 photograph previously mentioned, it was taken from sea level on the beach looking up.  I’m trying to capture the dawn sun rising over a ridge and treetops.  But this is the time of the dawn when the ABC photographer took the shot that’s screening on television.  Editors have since omitted the higher brown clouds.

 As the sun rises over the low cloudbank, the visible sky turns 24 carat gold.  The higher cloudbank of stalactites reflect back the captured golden sunlight. Gold and brown make a beautiful contrast.

However, the best of this dawn occurred at sea level early on, below the lower cloudbank, most of which was sadly out my range of vision.  There are dawns where I wish I had a better position to do their beauty justice, and this is one of them. 

See 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 03/04/2012 Lurking Menace Dawn

Dawn from an East-Facing Balcony in Sydney

A dawnwatcher must expect the unexpected.  Even though I can’t photograph the dawn proper any more, and in autumn the sun rises at such a low angle that the clouds have to be high altitude to catch the early glory pink light, you can be surprised.  I certainly was on this dawn.  The photographs and the video of this day’s dawn I have watched over and over trying to catch out the trick.  But I won’t spoil your surprise; read on.

Lurking Menace Dawn:  Tuesday, 3 April 2012

I awakened to a perfectly clear dawn.  Usually when the dawn is clear like this without a trace of cloud, I either go back to bed or resume writing my current fantasy novel on the computer (The Stone Wizard of Quoth:  Book Two of The Witch, the Hero, and the Princess).  It's not as if I can see the sunrise any more.  Well, actually I can, except it's but a glimpse through the northern trees and can't be photographed from the angle of my balcony.  However, after my encounter with the Indian myna yesterday, I was hoping for another instalment.  In that respect, I have to tell you right now, I was disappointed.  All was quiet; the birds stayed abed on this day.  By the end of this dawn, I found out why.

I was pleasantly surprised when a few shreds of cloud drifted over, enough to turn a brilliant pink for some lovely pictures.  Note though the strange grey wisps veiling the pink.  I was snapping away with my camera and wondering what to call this dawn, what made it special, and considered calling it Veiled Dawn.  As you know, by the time the sun rose, I had changed my mind.  The grey wisps should have clued me in as to what was happening.  

Well, the dawn proceeded as normal.  The clouds faded to yellow, then pearl, then washed out sand.  And then, I don't know what, why or how, a bank of fog covered the sky!  It happened not in minutes, but in less than a single minute, within seconds.  The fog descended so fast and completely, it was incredible.  No wonder the birds stayed in bed; they don't fly in fog.  

I couldn't wait to load the photographs onto my computer and check what I had just seen yet not seen.  Had there been any indication that the bank of fog was coming?  Those grey wisps of cloud!  That had been fog.  And checking the photographs, yes, there was the typical sandy dawn phase, but the sky was beginning to fog at that point.  But the exact transition point came so fast that, even looking at the photographs, I can't pinpoint it.  The fog didn't appear like a cloudbank rolling in from across the sky, it was just blink, and it was there and everywhere.

The fogbank struck before the sun was properly clear of the horizon, so here's pictures of the solid fog and the sun's red glow at the bottom.

However, the fog was descending to ground level, until it was everywhere, and everything was grey.  You'll have to take my word for it that I stopped taking photos only when the sun appeared off to the left through the trees.  An hour later, you'll be pleased to know, the fog had almost entirely dispersed for a warm and lovely autumn day.  But what a shocker of a start off morning.

See the video for yourself on YouTube here.  

Souvenir posters and cards 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 19/02/2012 Voldemort Dawn

 Dawn from an East-Facing Balcony in Sydney

What you see in the video is the director’s cut.  The photos are selected to represent a significant change during the dawn, and attempts to cull unnecessary intermediate steps.  Culling is hard; I cheat by posting photos that don’t make the grade for whatever reason - incompatible aspect, too long a sequence - here on my blog.  I use Windows Live Movie Maker to make the videos; assemble the photos, add in transition effects, and set the timings.  This free program comes with Windows, and you’ll find it by typing “movie” in the search panel on the start up menu.  With today’s dawn, I really had to be ruthless and cut, otherwise the video would have been hopelessly large to upload.

Voldemort Dawn:  Sunday, 19 February 2012

I should have known I was in for an extra special dawn when ET popped up under the moonlit sky.  Only I never noticed ET was there until I studied a larger version of the photograph on my computer later.  There he was, on the horizon.  As far as I was concerned at the time, the dawn began bright and clear, except with that strange line of cloud stretching across the sky.  But don’t be fooled; the weather on this dawn was utterly miserable.  It was cold, it was wet, it was windy, and the mosquitoes were out in force.  Mosquitoes qualify as dementors working for Voldemort.

The clouds cleared, only to march in again worse than ever.  Dark clouds determined to block out the sun.  Rain clouds - you can tell it’s raining by the slanting lines.  At the same time, as the sun rose below the horizon, a swathe of colour appeared in the sky.  Voldemort’s vortex?  A Death Mark?  At the time of writing, ABC News 24 still occasionally features a picture of this swathe in their weather reports.  If you see it, you’ll know the photograph was taken on the dawn of Sunday, 19 February 2012, because it hasn’t been repeated. 

The colours fade to a golden glow as the red sun rises into the low cloudbank.  As the sun burns through them, the low clouds glow furnace red.  The cloudbank tries but cannot hold the sun imprisoned.  Little puffs of cloud chase themselves across the sky so that the telegraph pole looks like it’s adopted that unhealthy addiction of smoking.  I am watching a rimfire dawn.

The sun rises higher, despite being hampered by clouds, and touches the oak tree on the left.  Dawn is strictly over since the sun has cleared the horizon, but the best is just about to happen right now.  Where’s that ABC photographer?  Packed up his or her camera and gone home too early?  Because now the Dark Lord launches another attack, his most brazen yet, by reaching out a long, dark hand in an attempt to snuff out the sun.  What an awesome sight!

The clouds are on the same plane as the sun.  You can tell by the way the clouds and the sun and the light interact.  These clouds are reminiscent of the landscape scenes painted by the Old Masters (see OldMasters Dawn) and they remind me of a painting I’ve seen in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, but not quite.  The type of clouds and their colouring definitely look familiar.

The attack on the sun fails.  Light prevails over the dark.  The glowing sun emerges victorious through the clouds.  But Voldemort hasn’t finished yet.  He sends his servant Wormtongue on another sun-smothering attack.  Is that or is that not a giant rat or a kangaroo in those clouds?  The scene is changing with every snap of my camera, as the clouds are moving along at a fast clip in the strong winds.  Culling the photos was so difficult!  On this dawn, I took over 500 shots, a record at the time.

As it turns out, Wormtongue was merely the spearhead for the blackest bank of smothering cloud yet.  This time, Voldemort succeeds in his aim of blotting out the sun.  This isn’t really captured properly in the last shots of the video; you need to step back to really understand what is happening.  So I’ve posted a photograph that includes the oak tree here.  Pretty dramatic, isn’t it?

It’s more cold, more windy, and raining harder than ever.  What a miserable morning!  What an epic battle I have witnessed!  Lord Voldemort is triumphant on this dawn, with apologies to JK Rowling.  And I can’t wait to get back inside and inspect my arms.  As I suspected, the dementors - sorry, mosquitoes - had actually flown down my loose long sleeves and left a couple of giant-sized welts several times larger than the dementors themselves.  Dawnwatchers note:  never, ever wear a sloppy Joe with loose sleeves.  Whatever long-sleeved jumper type top you wear, it must have tight cuffs to keep the dementors out.

This dawn is for you, JK.

See 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.