Home Skies
Photographing the brief, dramatic moments that unfold above Sonoma County.
For anyone who loves the outdoors, it's hard to imagine a better place for laid-back adventures in nature than Sonoma County, the place I've always called home. The Pacific Ocean, oak-covered rolling hills, redwood forests, gentle mountains, and countless hiking trails are all within easy reach.
Even so, I often find myself with a bit of landscape photographer’s FOMO. As beautiful as the landscapes are, the sky doesn’t always live up to what’s on the ground. Much of the country seems to experience dramatic weather more frequently and predictably than we do, and those conditions can transform an ordinary scene into something extraordinary. Here, it’s often a matter of waiting for the landscape and the sky to finally come together.
We get fog, but it's rarely the wispy, cotton candy kind that seems more common farther north, like what I experienced along the southern Oregon coast a few years ago. More often, it's a solid wall of cloud hugging the ground, making it surprisingly difficult to incorporate into a compelling composition. Summer is largely dominated by the marine layer. It ebbs and flows for months, and while I'm grateful for the natural air conditioning, it's easy to understand why locals call it "June Gloom." Most mornings begin beneath a thick, uninterrupted blanket of gray that lingers until mid-afternoon, only to roll back in again by early evening.
Every now and then, though, something special happens. A monsoonal system brushes the coast, bringing fiery desert sunsets, long rain bands, and clouds sculpted into every imaginable shape. Rarer still is the occasional supercell, massive UFO-like structures that sweep through as quickly as they arrive.
Winter has its own personality. Some storms are little more than flat gray skies, while others layer together rain, mist, shifting clouds, and pockets of light into something far more compelling.
One of the frustrations of working a traditional day job is watching those moments unfold from the office. My desk sits beside floor-to-ceiling windows facing west, and I’ve lost count of how many promising weather systems I’ve watched drift by, only to disappear before I can get out with a camera. By the end of the workday, I’m often low on energy or motivation anyway, and sometimes all I can do is admire the show from my backyard. That’s okay, too.
The photographs below are moments when the timing happened to work in my favor. A collection of fleeting conditions across Sonoma County, and a reminder that not everything worth chasing lies over the next horizon. Sometimes it simply requires the patience to wait for home to reveal its self fully.
I'd love to hear from you. Is there a place you find yourself returning to again and again, waiting for the right light or weather? What keeps drawing you back?