Sunrise/Sunset

A hundred and fifty odd pictures of the sun coming up, which I accept is a lot, and I'd defend every one of them. Sydney's ocean coast faces east, so the sun comes up out of the water rather than over a hill behind you, and there's nothing at all between the horizon and the sand. That's an accident of geography, and it's the best thing this city has going for it.

The sun travels further through the year than most people realise, and that's most of my planning. In late June it clears the water well north of east, coming up behind the headland at some of the southern pools instead of over open sea, and by December it's swung right round to the south. Which means there are frames in here I can only take inside a three week window, once a year, if I'm lucky. If the cloud's wrong that year, I wait twelve months and go back.

The mornings I want aren't the clear ones, and that surprises people. A cloudless sunrise gives you a clean gradient, and not much else. What I'm after is broken cloud with a gap sitting right on the horizon, so the sun comes through underneath and lights the base of everything from below, and that turns up maybe one morning in ten. So the rest of the time I'm getting up at four, driving somewhere, sitting on a cold rock watching nothing happen, and driving home again (this is most of the job).

Sunset here is a different job again, because the sun drops behind the city, and on the ocean side you're never shooting into it. You're shooting what it leaves behind, and for fifteen minutes or so after it goes, the eastern sky turns pink and the sea picks that colour straight off it. So for a proper sunset I'll head over to the harbour, where you can look west down the water from the eastern bays, with the sun still in the frame.