When doctors diagnosed Cathy Gregg with a debilitating neurological condition, the retail manager’s life was sent into a tailspin that eventually set her on the path toward finally fulfilling a lifelong dream and becoming a photographer.

Thirteen years later, Gregg has mastered her illness and her art, and she’s ready to show the world through “Frames of Light,” an exhibit of her work on display through Sept. 5 at Allan Hancock College Student Center Gallery.

The exhibit features Gregg’s most noteworthy work, including a series of photographs of a stunning Central Coast lightning storm which garnered the attention of a National Geographic editor.

“I love to photograph the way light hits an object,” Gregg said. “I ... try to show how the light creates a shadow, a contrast or a palette of color. In every photograph I take, I hope to capture this beauty, to capture iridescence.”

A Southern California native, Gregg grew up in Pasadena and the Santa Ynez Valley.

At 9 years old, the budding artist picked up a Kodak Instamatic camera for the first time and was immediately hooked, though it was painting that Gregg said she really considered her “first” art for most of her life.

Despite her talent and promise as an artist, Gregg eventually settled into a job as an assistant manager at a shop in Solvang, effectively relegating her art to hobby status.

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Then, one day in 1994, Gregg reached for a book, and her arm — along with the world as she knew it — gave out.

“The next day my arm was numb,” Gregg said. “It was like I had slept on it funny.”

Three days later, Gregg finally got herself to a doctor, though it took a year before she was properly diagnosed with bilateral thoracic outlet syndrome, a neurological condition that causes numbness and weakness in the arms and hands.

On disability and unable to work, draw, or paint, Gregg enrolled in computer graphics design classes at Hancock.

To supplement her graphics design coursework, Gregg decided revisit her old childhood hobby, and took a class in black-and-white photography.

Eventually, she stepped it up a notch and enrolled in part-time professor Dibblee Hoyt’s digital photography class.

It was Hoyt, Gregg said, who encouraged her to turn her hobby into a profession.

“She has the discipline and the ability and the desire. She just seemed very capable and she was at the point in her life where she was ready to make career changes,” Hoyt said.

Ever since, Gregg has enjoyed a steadily growing reputation as a photographer specializing in vineyard and weather photography, and has developed an international following.

Among her most notable honors, Gregg took home the People’s Choice Award at the 2007 Autumn Arts, Grapes and Grains Festival, and the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission chose her and nine other photographers to shoot “The Essential Worker,” an exhibit set to run through Sept. 12 at the Channing Peake Gallery in Santa Barbara.

“I’m glad (my condition) took me down the path I should have been on because I’ve been an artist all my life,” she said. “It was definitely a blessing in disguise.”

Gregg’s eyes positively sparkled as she told the stories behind the prints displayed in her Hancock exhibit, which ranged from a ladybug lounging on a plant, to wind patterns on the sands of the Guadalupe Dunes, to a series of photos taken during a rare lightning storm that hit the Central Coast in October 2006.

“I don’t know too many people who would hang out in the biggest thunderstorm we’ve seen on the Central Coast in decades,” Director Marti Fast said, “but Cathy got the amazing shots she did because she is patient and focused. She captured images that are visually gripping by sticking with it in those three or so hours, learning by doing about how to shoot lightning with her camera.”

Gregg chased the storm’s progress as it ripped through the Santa Maria Valley and captured bolts of lightning framing various vineyards and other familiar local landmarks.

“As you can see, I like to put myself in peril,” she said, laughing, but adding that she does take necessary safety precautions, such as shooting photos from the inside of her car during lightning storms.

Though on some days the pain is harder to bear than on others, “I’m glad that I’m doing something I love, that I’m following my passion,” Gregg said.

FYI:

Summer hours for the Allan Hancock College Student Center Gallery are from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday. The gallery is inside the Santa Maria campus Student Center, Building G, south of the main entrance.

For more information, call 922-6966, Ext. 3764.

For more information about Cathy Gregg, visit her Web site at www.rhinoconcepts .com or her studio at 1960 S. McClelland St. in Santa Maria.