sanmiguelphotographyblog

Yes I admit it.  There are those Saturdays and Sundays when I don’t have enough motivation to awake at 3:30AM and drive 2 hours for a sunrise shot in the mountains or to stay out in the field until after 9:00PM for the last light.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a very motivated photographer.  And if I am not, my two Rottweiler photography assistants Maggie & Rocket are always motivated!

Where I live in San Jose California, the summers are long, dry and hot. Usually, it doesn’t rain a drop in San Jose from mid-May until October or mid-November.  Mornings in the summer are often cloudy until around 10:00AM when the cloudless blue sky appears for the remainder of the day and evening.  It’s not my favorite time of year for photography.

So last April, when a late Pacific winter storm was blowing in the Santa Cruz Mountains near my home, I knew it could be the last photo opportunity for “dramatic light” until the fall.  But wait, it was a Saturday afternoon and I was “stuck to the couch”!  My mind kept saying, “It will take over an hour to drive to the mountains.”  “What if it is too cloudy in the mountains?”  And my favorite, “I wonder what’s on TV?”

Well, I managed the fight my way off the couch and go up to the Santa Cruz Mountains.  After waiting about two hours in the cold blowing wind, I was rewarded with the God Beams in the photograph below.  I consider this photograph my Signature image for my Santa Cruz Mountains collection of fine art prints.