20 minutes . . .

. . . that's all it took to change the sea from dark blue, and through an ever lightening sky to a pale blue rippling water to an almost flame red.


I was pleased that a visiting old friend (and occasional Flickr buddy, Maxsimus) was able to join me on an early morning shoot today to the back and beyond of Thailand, as we used to do on many prior pre dawn excursions, always for the same reason, to shoot sunrise.

However, today we got it way wrong. We arrived too early for sunrise and once our eyes had adjusted to the light (or lack of) we had to wait through an amazing 30 minute light show of colour. I'm sure Richard's camera later showed exactly what I had captured as well - even 10 minutes after sunrise we couldn't see the ruddy (a well chosen word) thing (sun) as the fog and mist were at low level, and the sun's light was being reflected off much higher clouds, colouring the sea, but obscuring the sun itself at horizon level (but now we could at least see the horizon).

No probs, we snapped happily away, despite the frequent interruptions of early morning elderly Thai exercisers who came across to us, venting their curiosity as to what the two farangs* were doing staring into the mist and distance from 5:30am. (* white foreigner)



Having exhausted ourselves at this, our first spot of the day at Don Hoi Lot, we moved onto one of Thailand's most famous floating markets - but that's another story. And "ruddy"? Yup, had we waited just another five minutes, we would have captured the big blazing red ball of a sun as it bit through the upper layers of our fog. Blast.