12 Days in Taiwan – Day 05 – Sunrise @ Cingjing

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We decided that an early morning ascent up Mt. Hehuan would be too much for the kids to handle. The drive from Cingjing to Mt. Hehuan would have taken an hour, and in order to make the sunrise timing in winter, we would have needed to set out at 4AM or so. The next best thing for me was to shoot the sunrise at Cingjing instead, so we deliberately looked for places of stay that would offer a view of the surrounding mountain ranges, and in the correct facing. The Cotswold Villa is a real find as it offers exactly that, with reasonable room rates, and is also located higher up the hills at attitude 1926m compared to most of the other stays at 1550m which gravitate towards the town center and Cingjing Farm itself. We do lose a good degree of convenience though, as there are no amenities like restaurants and convenience stores in the vicinity now.

Still: unlike the sunrise shoot @ Bali in June this year, I needed only to walk out to the villa balcony to witness the morning sunrise. It was quite a spectacular sequence of dark blue, blue, fiery red, yellow. The pictures here were using the Sony FE 16-35mm f4.0.

At 5:53AM when still mostly dark with just a sliver of light in the horizon, a single brightly shining star could be seen up in the clouds.
At 6:02AM; from dark to a mid-blue sky.
A fiery red next at 6:18AM! Absolutely stunning, and looking like a scene right out from the Independence Day film. I half expected to see an alien mothership burst through the clouds!
Yellow then @ 6:30AM with the sun behind the mountain range now casting its rays on the cloud layers.
And finally, the sun showed itself at 6:55AM from behind the mountain range.
The morning setup, and the X1 Carbon to look through yesterday’s photos in-between pictures.
The new Huawei Watch GT showing weather and attitude information for this sunrise shoot.

Next post: our morning ascent up Mt. Hehuan!

2 thoughts on “12 Days in Taiwan – Day 05 – Sunrise @ Cingjing”

  1. Love the clouds’ red underside. Seems like you experienced a quick transition throughout all sorts of colors and cloud shapes that morning.

  2. Parts of it was indeed, bud. The night dark blue, early morning blue lasted quite a bit, and even the yellow cast when the sun was nearly up lasted a few minutes. The fiery red lasted for just about a minute I think. Haven’t quite seen such a color cast before!

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