Peter Paul Fortress Sunrise Countdown Timer

The spire is one hundred and twenty two metres and it is the first thing the sun finds. That is the whole picture, really. Everything else is black. The fortress, the cathedral under it, the flagpole, the trees, the far bank. All of it just shapes holding up a sky the colour of a peach. There is a lens flare on the left that I could have removed and did not, because it is honest. I was pointing a camera at the sun and the sun won. This is where the city started, in 1703, on a swamp island, in the middle of a war. Peter wanted a fort and got a cathedral with a golden spire tall enough for sailors to steer by. For two centuries it was also a prison. Dostoevsky was locked up here. So was almost everybody who said the wrong thing. Now it is a tourist site with a small beach. A few people were already out on the sand at this hour in heavy coats, waiting for the same sun I was. Nobody said anything to anybody. There was nothing to say that the light was not already saying.