Several years ago during my last visit Tasmania I captured "Freycenet Dawn" which I love for the momentary nature of the shot.

During my 2023 Tasmania trip I wanted to go back to the Cape Tourville lighthouse to see if there was another opportunity to capture an image of Wineglass Bay under different conditions. I did revisit the lighthouse and "Akasha (Aether)" is the resultant shot taken a few minutes before the dawn.

After I had taken Akasha(Aether) I turned to the east and was greeted by a most amazing sunrise. Now, I wouldn't normally indulge a sunrise as I find that sunrise shots come across as a little trite and overdone but I couldn't help myself with this one.

With the sun passing behind that interesting cloud bank, the high cirrus clouds catching the light and the intense refraction through the thick air at the horizon I was sold! As an added bonus the sun's disc is presenting 2 nicely defined sunspots and the tops of the ocean swell are catching the angled light.

This shot is a cameo shot which came about as part of the broader attempt to capture another (see Freycenet Dawn) shot of Wineglass Bay in the early morning. That attempt became Akasha (Aether) but this sunrise was worthy of its own shot and became “Agni (Fire)”.

I had spent the previous 2 days intermittently checking Cloud Free Night to determine the amounts and direction of travel of all the high, mid level and low cloud around Cape Tourville from about 4 hours before dawn to about 2 hours after it. For a shot like this, which is so dependent on lighting, having a large cloud bank on the horizon blocking the sun would have made the effort of setting up in the dark to wait for the shot moot. 

Of course, after all that planning, I had to rethink the shot on the day anyway. The clouds all did what was expected and delivered me this lovely sunrise but the Wineglass bay shot (as I had envisaged it at least) was never going to work because of the sea mists which insisted on obscuring the detail on the cape.