Dramatic Dawn at the Shore

Seagulls at Dawn

Every sunrise is different at the ocean but what they all have in common is that the colorful light gets reflected and multiplied by the water and wet shore.    We looked forward to the sunrises when we first moved to this location, and still we look forward to them.   December days may be short on minutes of daylight, but the sun rising between six and seven a.m. made it less difficult to be up and ready to paint the
color at dawn.

On this day, there was a layer of clouds on the horizon, but the rest of the sky was clear.   Known as the "high dawn,"  Eldridge's Marine Guild defines it as that a sunrise in which the first breaks of sunlight are above a cloud bank as opposed to breaking at the true horizon line.   Lots of dramatic bouncing light results from the high dawn.

Seagulls foraged for food in the early light and although a seagull's local color is white, the backlighting of dawn made them look dark blue with orange colored rim lighting.  The blue/orange harmony was dramatic.