The Wandelgek rose very early at 4.30 hrs. from his bed to be able to claim a front spot at the sunrise viewing platform at Danxia Peak, where he wanted to enjoy a legendary sunrise. It was still dark because up in these mountains the sun rises between 5 and 7 o’clock AM, depending on which time of the year you’re in. In september the sunrise was a bit after 6. At 4.50 the Wandelgek was meeting with his guide Louisa in the hotel entrance hall and they immediately started the walk. Just outside of the hotel compound was a track going up to Danxia Peak, from then and onward it was up and up and up the stairs …

The sunrise on Huangshan Mountain is an immensely populair tourist attraction in China. Although Huangshan Mountain is much less well known outside of China, there are millions of Chinese tourists visiting the mountain to catch the sunrise. This happens luckily mostly on national holidays and in weekends and it was much less crowded now then on those days. The Wandelgek had seen vids and pics on socials where people were ascending the mountain slopes in neverending cues. This was actually why he decided in 2019 to break off his travels in China and why he chose to delay it until a new opportunity would rise. Today there was no weekend and no national holiday. Covid had reduced the amount of foreign travellers dramatically and it promised to be a sunny day, so ideal for an early sunrise. But there were travel groups camping on the hotel ground and the guides were talking about leaving at 5.30 it would be better to stay in front of those when ascending and also when standing at the platform. The Wandelgek climbed the stairs for about an hour, got passed by a few quicker walkers but reached the platform early enough to stand second or third row at the platform. The light slowly returned …

Now, The Wandelgek is a foreigner and Dutch people are quite large, which meant he could look over the little chinese people in front of him. Behind him the presence of tourists grew dramatically and later the platform was filled completely when he looked behind him. It was really crowded and he started to ask himself whether the people behind him could actually see the sunrise …

The Wandelgek however wanted to photograph it and stood his ground to be able to have an unobstructed view, which was quite a feat. He was glad he rose so early that he had conquered the spot he had obtained now. As the sunrise was nearing, the light got better …

… and better …

… and better every second…

The lonely pine tree was like a piece of set decoration put there in a picture-perfect-spot, probably by the great chinese movie director Zhang Yimou himself …

The mountains that were now like silhouettes, looked gorgeous …

The sun took its time to rise. In the surrounding plains it was already up, but mountains provide a delay …

This allowed for a bit of experimenting with light intensity, lenses and different cameras …

The Wandelgek decided to use his Samsung mobile camera the least, use the Nikon coolpix for the wide views and the Canon EOS for the zooms. That way he did not have to change lenses on his EOS, in this quite crowdy situation. Meanwhile I’m showing you some of my photos…

The sky gradually got brighter …

… but still the sun kept hiding itself in the Earth’s shadow …

… making this a photographer’s playground …

The light and mood kept changing every second and I couldn’t be happier about not living in the analog photography era anymore.

The amount of photo’s I shot here would have cost me a small fortune… no correct that and leave out: small …

The digital photography era means that shooting photo’s costs battery power and ware down of the camera, but not an amount of money for film rolls and for developing and printing every photo …

This was easily the most photogenic tree I had ever seen …

I’m not even sure if the location above would have been that rememberable without the tree, but then I remember turning my head and seeing this …

Just seeing the silhouettes of these mountains, the rock formations and the trees was already eye popping …

The light was slowly getting stronger and brighter as the sun rose …

… and The Wandelgek slowly adjusted the light sensitivity (ISO) which meant the photo’s would become darker for a brief period than before …

… but then the sun was getting stronger and the light brighter and the photo’s would get a lot brighter too…

Maybe too bright?

I mean …

… the sun still had to rise and become visible.

And thus The Wandelgek started adjusting the light sensitivity again …

… a bit more …

… and more …

… and then he looked at the time and knew it was time to stop fiddling and tweeking and just wait for the sun to rise …

Almost now. Everyone became very quiet …

… and then the sun came up and there was a soft buzz of voices uttering O’s and A’s accompanied by the sound of a hundred clicking camera shutters …

Then all other sounds than the cameras clicking dimmed …

With every click of a camera the sun seemed to get more confident and showed itself a tiny bit more …

In retrospective I was very pleased with the light intensity choice I had made for the final session of photo’s at sunrise …

This felt literally like standing somewhere in the Museum named Nature and looking at one of Nature’s paintings on a huge canvas and hearing the other visiting admirers falling still in awe …

As the sun kept rising, she showed more of herself …

 

… and the light very gradually changed from the blue and later purple and pink hues into the reds and oranges …

The sun itself showed these color shifts as well…

…and these shifts were speeding up as the oranges turned into yellows …

… and began to dominate …

… all other colors in the spectre and then the upper tip of the sun turned into white …

Slowly the sky around the sun was starting to blush and absorb more color …

… and the deep black mountain silhouettes started to show grayscales as well …

Standing there, The Wandelgek could only think about how beautiful the world was …

Just watch how the sun in the photo’s beneath turns slowly into a completely white disc …

 

When the sun turned completely white it actually received a red blush at its rim and this red blush was rather contageous as shown by the red blush on the upper rim of nearby clouds …

The photo’s turned out how The Wandelgek had imagined them to be …

With previous cameras the results had always been a bit disappointing, but this relatively new EOS camera did the job …

Then the sun started to throw its blush away and covered the surrounding sky in it …

And as the sun climbed further up, the sky got brighter and the first sun rays were now thrown over the highest mountain rims and thus throwing their bright light upon the landscape …

… first showing more grayscales …

… and color returned to the world …

… or was it Pandarve? It could have been 😀.

After a while most people started going down again to return to the hotel and enjoy breakfast, but The Wandelgek decided to go further up the mountain to a higher platform now that most people were leaving …

The view was changing quickly, now that the sun was blasting its white light unashamed over the landscape…

After enjoying these views, The Wandelgek ascended toward the hotel…

… where it was time to collect his luggage before going to the almost empty restaurant …

… because most other visitors had already had their breakfast. There was still plenty of food to enjoy though and then The Wandelgek checked out and again paid for the services of a porter to carry part of his luggage to the cable car station so he could have a last morning walk before descending from Huangshan Mountain.