Alexander Stuart

Ana Fouster.  Photograph  copyright © 2016 Alexander Chow-Stuart. Happiness is a short film c onceived and directed by my wife Charong Chow, which I photographed and edited.  The film features Ana Fouster and Greg Sanders as a blissfully newlywed couple. Many thanks to Ana and Greg for their wonderful participation, and also to Captain Chris Reuter of High Seas Yacht Deliveries and the Perspective Yacht, on which we shot the film. Chris was remarkable in terms of piloting the yacht precisely where we wanted it - and getting the sun in just the right place for every shot. He also let Hudson steer the yacht back into harbor, which was a huge thrill for our son. Thanks, too, to Marc Kraft of Pacific Yachting and Sailing at Santa Cruz Harbor for enormous help in organizing the cruise and the shoot. The entire experience was  a blast! Greg Sanders and Ana Fouster.  Photograph  copyright © 2016 Alexander Chow-Stuart. The beautiful music is one of my all-time f

Photograph  copyright © 2016 Alexander Chow-Stuart. The waves, and the light, on the beach in Santa Cruz for these moments in my brief YouTube video were awesome.  The wooden posts only appear in winter - remnants of an ancient jetty, although there were also old railroad tracks that ran literally at the water's edge, all the way up to San Francisco, I believe.  The posts are only visible in winter. In summer, they are buried by the sand, which the ocean tears away in winter months, completely reshaping the beach and filling the harbor mouth (if it weren't dredged). If you enjoyed this post, please follow me on Twitter  @alexanderchow .   And please  subscribe to this blog via email by clicking here.

Photograph  copyright © 2015 Alexander Chow-Stuart. One of my all-time favorite shots of our family on the beach at Santa Cruz at high tide.  The beach in winter is fascinating to listen to and observe. The waves pound the sand with a force you can hear streets away.  They would entirely block the harbor mouth with sand if not for constant dredging by the harbor authorities throughout the winter - which redistributes sand onto the beach, where an earthmover works pretty much constantly to shore up the road side of the beach against natural erosion.  It's strange how we take our California beaches for granted, yet most of them (the ones people use, anyway) require management in some way.  I remember in Miami Beach, after Hurricane Andrew, when the lifeguard huts were swept 100-300 metres across the sand and the seaweed piled high in mounds you could climb, I realized how much work daily went into keeping the beaches manicured, evenly leveled and seaweed-