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.

The Sydney Writers' Festival 2012

Fantastic venue - near Sydney Harbour Bridge

The SWF is over for another year.  The highlight of the festival for aspiring writers was the So You Think You Can Write forum, which was held on Thursday (the same as last year), a working day, in the hopes of keeping the numbers down on this most popular of talks.  

What happens is, ten aspiring writers are randomly plucked from the audience to deliver their three minute pitch to a panel of three judges from the publishing industry.  The judges, well, judge.  A very important event for learning what’s happening in the publishing industry and what they are looking to publish.  Indeed, what could be more important for an unpublished author to learn?

The Green Room: where invited writers chill out

The good news is:  fantasy fiction is in!  It was the flavour of last year, too.  Strange then that I haven’t had mainstream publishers ringing on my phone.  The bad news is:  short stories are out.  Apparently, Australians simply don’t buy collections of short stories; they don’t sell.  Too bad, because my next project will be a novella or a short story. 

For established publishers, a collection of short stories may be uneconomical to print, but I reckon they’re the best introduction for unpublished writers via epubs - short in length, easy to read, quick to produce, and sell online at a low retail price.  Nobody is going to pay a lot to read an unknown author, but if the blurb seriously catches the reader’s interest and the price is negligible, then people may take a chance on a purchase.

Long queues (sigh)

The winner of the So You Think You Can Write forum was an erotic novel along the lines of Fifty Shades of Grey - an ebook penned by unknown author EL James that is currently selling like hotcakes, if you didn't already know.  Sadly, the judges confessed they didn’t understand why vegetables were found scattered about the bedroom. 

Allow me to enlighten you.  In the days of old Arabia, when women were confined to harems, it was common practice to cut up all vegetables before serving them to the women.  If that isn’t enough of a clue, there was a trial in the NSW Supreme Court several years ago where a man murdered his wife for having sexual relations with a cucumber.  Yes, this happened in modern day Sydney.  Which just goes to show you that even a humble vegetable can lead to murder. 

View of the whole SWF shebang

As more than one author at the festival said - Michael Robotham, Isobelle Carmody, Scott Westerfeld - it’s the true bits in fiction that readers find unbelievable.

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 02/04/2012 Dynamic Dawn

Dawn from an East-Facing Balcony in Sydney

This is the closest I’ll ever willingly get to a lightning storm.  It didn’t seem dangerous because there were no terrifying crashes of thunder and the storm seemed to be confined to the clouds quite some distance away.  Otherwise, I assure you, I would be huddling under the bedcovers.  Leave the standing in a thunderstorm for dramatic pictures to the professional photographers who presumably either know what they are doing and/or are covered by comprehensive life insurance.

Dynamic Dawn:  Monday 2 April 2012

A grey dawn of no interest whatsoever; a thick cloudbank with no break up to the treetops. I decide that, since I'm up, to drink my morning cuppa in the fresh morning air - with loaded camera just in case, of course.  And the just in case happened.  I couldn't help but notice these flashes of light exploding on an otherwise dull and grey morning.  What was causing it?  What was happening?  Where was it coming from?

Turns out there was a lightning storm over the horizon behind the oak tree, pretty much where the sun would be rising.  I took quite a few photographs before facing the fact that if you want to shoot lightning storms, you have to use video.  Very nervous doing so for fear it would fill up my camera's memory card quickly, and half way through I ducked inside to empty said card onto my computer and rush back outside for more video capture.  I have posted the results on YouTube with the following links.

The first video shows a lightning flash.  Mystery solved as to the where and the what of the lightning flashes.  From this perspective, it looks like the lightning is hitting the shedding oak tree.  The second video gives you a light display, flashes of light from the lightning.  The third video starts with one almighty kaboom of a flash; if you blink, you’ll miss it.  I cut the video short to edit out the roar of the garbage truck.  In fact, if you listen, you can't hear any thunder - I didn't at the time, either - and instead you'll hear the chirrupping of early morning birdsong.

That was the other interesting thing about this dawn - the birds.  They were out in force, along with the bugs, namely, mayflies and dragonflies.  I think dragonflies eat mayflies.  There was no reason for the dragonfly to fly into and play with the ball of mayflies.  Of particular interest was the Indian myna that appeared very, very proprietorial about the telegraph pole.  I have seen that myna a couple of days ago perching on the telegraph pole, but this time...well, see for yourself in the videos below. 

In the first video you’ll see the Indian myna beginning his investigation of the telegraph pole.  The second video is actually a continuation of the first; I accidentally switched the video off.  By the time I had switched the recording on again - just a few seconds - the myna had jumped up to the top wire and continued its most thorough investigation.  

Video number three is a series of pictures where I really, truly wish I had had the video function of the camera going, but I’m still wrestling with how to use it.  Sort of like the myna trying to make sense of the telegraph pole, because this video shows some truly bizarre gymnastic investigative work.

After yet more investigation of the telegraph pole’s wires, the fourth video suggests the myna is surveying the nearby trees for a possible nesting site.  I think.  Whether the lightning storm had any connection with the bizarre antics of the myna bird will forever remain a mystery.

No posters or mug souvenirs today.  The charm of today's dawn rests entirely in the dynamics, which give rise to the title.  Stay tuned for another myna update in two days' time, for the dawn of Wednesday, 4 April 2012.

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.