The family and I spent Sunday at the San Francisco Zoo, drove down to visit some friends in Half Moon Bay, hit up Martins Beach around sunset and then spent the night in Santa Cruz. Since we were staying a few minutes away from Natural Bridges, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to shoot the location at sunrise before we headed off to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for our second day of looking at animals in cages.

Man, what a way to start the last day of 2018! This might have been the most colorful sunrise I’ve ever photographed. I spent 30 minutes in near waist deep December Pacific Ocean water, but it absolutely paid off. I finally got a wave to cascade over the foreground rocks right at the peak of color in the sky. This is pretty much straight out of camera with very little edits (definitely didn’t need to touch the saturation slider!).