Project 365 day 340: Winter Sunrise

Our garden faces south east, so for six or eight weeks in mid-winter we often get up to dramatic, brightly coloured skies just before the sun rises over the Downs across the valley from our back door. This is the first sunrise I have managed to watch this winter: as I started to get J ready to hoist out of bed, I noticed the bizarrely golden hue of the grass in the sheep field outside her north facing room, and rushed to the back door to check the sky, then to the balcony to photograph it. The view from the balcony isn't really any better, but the height allows me to hide the dark line of the power cables in front of a hedgerow, which makes them less obtrusive. I took some much closer-up views of the skyline too, as the sky became increasingly orange, but the quality from my compact camera was unusually poor, and I wasn't expecting the zoom lens with which I had problems yesterday to work reliably in the limited time I could spend on it. I got back to J just as she started to shout for me, and was glad I managed a few minutes just at the right time. I hope there will be more mornings like this.