With a 365 photo-a-day project and weekly multimedia work with Mercyhurst’s student newspaper, I have shot enough material to keep my photography portfolio updated.

But, until this week, no photos had made it to my photography Web site, http://ethanmagoc.net

Now, if you visit, images are organized chronologically from the most recent backward and there’s more to look at. Most sections have at least 20 images, and a new portion, Editorial, has developed with about a dozen photos.

Below, I have posted a few of my favorite shots from each collection. These are all available for printing and licensing in my searchable archive.

Sports Action

ERIE, Pa. -- Mercyhurst College's Ashley Cockell dives as she shoots against Niagara University during the second period on Jan. 30, 2010 at Mercyhurst Ice Center.

ERIE, Pa. -- Mercyhurst College lacrosse player Luke Prattico (15) topples over Todd Richardson (15) during practice in the snow on Feb. 15, 2010 at Tullio Field.

EDINBORO, Pa. -- Cathedral Prep's Sheldon Zablotny clutches the ball while battling for a rebound with McDowell High School's Michael Conner during the District 10 playoffs on Feb. 25, 2010 at McComb Fieldhouse. Cathedral Prep's Phil Hampy watches at right.

ERIE, Pa. -- Niagara University's Mary McKinnon falls during the second period against Mercyhurst College on Jan. 30, 2010 at Mercyhurst Ice Center.

ERIE, Pa. -- Mercyhurst College's Johnny Pawluk loses control of the ball after a Seton Hill players hacks his stick on March 27, 2010 at Tullio Field.

Sports Feature

ERIE, Pa. -- Mercyhurst College's Tyler Burton celebrates a goal against Seton Hill on March 27, 2010 at Tullio Field.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Cornell players jump in the air to celebrate their 3-2 overtime win against Mercyhurst during the NCAA women's ice hockey semifinal at Ridder Arena, March 19, 2010.

ERIE, Pa. -- Mercyhurst College's Vicki Bendus celebrates her goal against Boston University during the NCAA Quarterfinals on March 13, 2010 at Mercyhurst Ice Center.

EDINBORO, Pa. -- McDowell High School's Mychal Molnar receives help from his school's cheering section before a foul shot during a playoff game against Cathedral Prep on Feb. 25, 2010 at McComb Fieldhouse.

ERIE, Pa. -- Mercyhurst College tennis coach Ray Yost watches a volley between his player, Kyle King, and Carnegie Mellon on Feb. 14, 2010 at Westwood Racquet Club.

Nature & Wildlife

Golden night sky, Erie, Pa. -- July 9, 2010

Orange clouds, Erie, Pa. -- June 19, 2010

Lightning strike, Mercyhurst College, Erie, Pa. -- May 5, 2010

Branch shadows, Mercyhurst College, Erie, Pa. -- April 14, 2010

Foggy campus, Mercyhurst College, Erie, Pa. -- March 23, 2010

Panorama

Jerry Uht Park, Erie, Pa. -- Sept. 4, 2010

Stormy sunset, Presque Isle State Park, Erie, Pa. -- Aug. 25, 2010

Monterey Bay, Monterey Calif. -- Aug. 8, 2010

Row of Porta Johns, Lollapalooza, Chicago -- Aug. 2, 2010

Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center, Mercyhurst College, Erie, Pa. -- May 26, 2010

Editorial

MONTEREY, Calif. -- Tourists gather in front of the Outer Bay tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Aug. 8, 2010.

ERIE, Pa. -- Students from Penn State Behrend play jazz music during the 2010 ADDY Awards at the Bayfront Convention Center on April 23, 2010.

ERIE, Pa. -- Performers from the Brooklyn-based dance company STREB spin on a moving platform during a show on Feb. 16, 2010 at Mercyhurst College's Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center.

ERIE, Pa. -- Maintenance crews at Mercyhurst College blow more than a foot of snow the morning after a severe mid-winter storm on Feb. 10, 2010.

ERIE, Pa. -- Mercyhurst College students walk to classes during the first week after Christmas Break amid frozen branches on Jan. 6, 2010.

Again, visit my portfolio page by clicking on the image below to see the entire collection from each of these areas.

http://www.EthanMagoc.net

In 2002, the four of us drove an Oldsmobile station wagon from Erie to Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, the Great Plains and all the way back in a span of 14 days.

This year’s trip, nine days in length, encompassed a red-eye train ride from Erie to Chicago.

Train station, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

We spent the afternoon walking around downtown Chicago, a city I had only been through or seen from afar.

Sears Tower, Chicago, August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

From Union Station, we boarded the California Zephyr and spent the next two days riding through the Rockies, desert and northern California mountains.

Colorado River aboard the California Zephyr, Colorado, August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Train station in Colfax, Calif., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Then it was onto Sacramento for a day and a half.

California Capital Dome, Sacramento, Calif., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Bathroom, Fanny Ann's, Old Sacramento, Calif., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

From there, it was through Berkeley to San Francisco and down the coast to Monterey. Because I took a few days off from shooting to recover from jet lag and jump back into another ‘Wolves homestand, I’ll include an extra couple of photos from the 900 that I took in California to substitute.

People's Park, Berkeley, Calif., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Red flower, San Francisco Golden Gate Park Botanical Gardens, August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Alcatraz, San Francisco, Calif., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Mural inside Coit Tower, San Francisco, Calif., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Big Basin State Park, Calif., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Jellyfish at the Monterey Aquarium, Monterey, Calif., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Monterey Bay panorama, Monterey, Calif., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

The Lone Cypress at Pebble Beach, Pebble Beach, Calif., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Bubbles blown at Jerry Uht Park, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Lighting setup at the Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Sunset and tree silhouette, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Evening light on trees, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Bird statue, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Mercyhurst College front entrance, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Evening rays of light, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Dryer ball, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Street light painting, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Night storm, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Bridge at Penn State Behrend, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Storm over Presque Isle, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Fern silhouettes, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Evening light on trees, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Purple flowers Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Jerry Uht Park ushers Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Dead flower, Erie, Pa., August 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: August 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

And there’s the end of summer.

I certainly won’t attempt to claim creativity on this project. It’s been done a few times before, and mine will not be the last. Gatorade’s League of Clutch commercials popularized the technique a few years back, and I was most recently inspired by the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Defy Ordinary campaign in the spring.

But toward the end of this summer, I needed to continue to develop my editing portfolio and skill set and set out to create a Jerry Uht Park videoboard spot similar to those linked above.

Using 2010 photography intern Cory Byknish’s images from this season, I selected approximately 10 images from more than 2,000 for editing. I used a tutorial to help master the initial technique of creating movement within still photos.

After creating three to four PNG with masking techniques within Photoshop, I was left with a not-so-clean background file. Though Photoshop CS5’s new content-aware fill option is groundbreaking, it’s not a perfect solution for cleaning up mask holes. I spent another hour or two with the healing brush making sure that the green grass behind Shawn Roof didn’t have streaks of his black jersey left behind!

When finally through in Photoshop, I imported all the images for each separate sequence into After Effects and began to make the players, fans and other objects within the photos move around in their own composition.

Final Cut Pro brought these three-second edits, along with transition photos and the concluding video, together in a roughly one-minute final product.

If you didn’t make it out to the park to see this video in 2010, it will run again there a few times next year and permanently here!

You might say I took summer classes this year.

When school let out in May, my Mary D’Angelo Center Performing Arts Center marketing manager and boss Michelle Ellia gave me three big projects.

The first was to create walkthrough tours of each of our four venues, which I completed in June and wrote about with descriptions of my DIY steadicam.

Next, I needed to edit this year’s season preview, highlighting each visiting artist or group with the goal of attracting more Erie residents to each show. I contacted nearly a dozen artist agents for promotional video, wrote and revised (and revised and revised and revised) a nine-minute script and converted hours of footage into ProRes 422 for easy editing and changes in Final Cut.

Finally, I needed to produce enough creative content on a (hopefully) weekly or bi-weekly basis to keep our YouTube page fresh and oft-watched. Between completing the first two tasks and uploading many of those promos, that wasn’t too tough.

But what did prove to be quite time-consuming was that season preview, which still isn’t 100 percent complete. When it is, I will post it here.

For now, I have uploaded the transitional portion of the nine-minute video. It’s the one that easily took the most time to complete.

Michelle and I sat down and conceptualized this part of the video soon after I began the edit. To break up the artists’ promo footage, we needed personalized messages to remind viewers about the PAC’s importance to the Erie community.

Based on the recent popularity of the usage of kinetic typography, it became clear which direction we should head in. The only problem?

I had no idea how to create this effect.

After a few mornings consisting entirely of watching YouTube and Vimeo tutorials and examples of typography that others have produced, I was ready to begin.

Sort of.

I had sat down a few weeks earlier and completed this entire Apple Pro Training Series text for Motion 3. Great book, but I wasn’t sure I knew exactly how to create typography based on the tutorials provided in that book. I gave one a go in Motion (and you can see my first few seconds of effort it in Mary D’Angelo’s words above), but as I got further in, I realized it wasn’t going to get the entire job done.

Back I turned to those YouTube tutorials.

Several, though, were ineffective for beginners. I finally found this blessed 15-minute walkthrough from a talented German chap named Markus Gustafsson.

And I was on my way.

We used audio chopped from various post-performance events last year, a mini-documentary produced by Mercyhurst students for the venue’s 15th Anniversary and others that I have recorded this summer with the 7D and a nifty lighting setup (a story for another day). Using After Effects, I typed out each word a person said as a new layer–one of the most tedious video editing/animation steps ever.

After timing out sets of words on screen to match the spoken audio, I had a lot of fun deciding how exactly I would animate each clip. The whole ordeal of learning kinetic typography to having nine finished messages comprised at least 60 hours of work. Fortunately, Michelle was understanding and encouraging throughout. This is a lot of fun, but not for the faint of heart.

And if you watch the full three minutes of video, a noticeable progression in technique and skill is evident. Practice, even in the world of After Effects, does make perfect.

Never has forgetting a piece of gear turned out better.

Canon 7D set up in an Amtrak train car for sunset capture.

Though I spent at least an hour the night before departure assembling my photo gear haul and packing it tight for train and plane travel to California and back, I forgot the most essential piece of equipment for time lapsing in such a beautiful part of America. My Canon 7D intervalometer, a remote timer and shutter release device, stayed behind in Erie when we boarded Amtrak’s Lakeshore Limited late one night earlier this month.

Of course, I didn’t figure this out in time to buy a new one during our layover in Chicago. Not until we were zipping through the Rockies on the California Zephyr did I notice that I’d only brought my tripod and camera along.

Aug. 3, 2010 sunset in Utah

But during our second night after leaving Chicago en route to Sacramento, I simply had to capture that evening’s sunset. We were somewhere along the Colorado and Utah border, with telephone lines (our companion through much of the mountains) the lone sign of civilization for many miles.

In the room across from ours in one of the sleeper cars, a fortuitous break in Amtrak’s booking meant the room was empty for the night! Or for most of it anyway. A young couple had moved in by the time we woke up the following morning.

I set up the tripod at an awkward leaning angle against the car’s window to reduce most of the glare, framed up a nice, consistent composition and hit record. Unfortunately, as anyone who has shot for a long time with the 7D’s video mode knows, there is a time limitation for each clip. We would roll along for about 15 minutes/miles and the camera’s data rate forced the clip to an end.

I was also limited to an 8 GB and 4 GB pair of memory cards (really need to re-examine my packing skills), so my MacBook Pro served nearby as a quick memory dump each time one filled up. I hit record again and again, let the card fill up, dumped it, and swapped it–repeating this process for about an hour straight. Not the most effective time lapse method, but it was worth it in the end! I converted all the files to ProRes overnight (which took up a TON of hard-drive space) and, the next morning, set the clips’ speed to about 1000% in the Final Cut timeline.

After exporting through Compressor, when we arrived in Sacramento I had the previous night’s sunset to play again and again.

I originally recorded a time lapse similar to this on my family’s previous Western vacation, but this sky and the mountain silhouettes made this edition far more dramatic.

Aug. 3, 2010 sunset in Utah

It’s not too far off yet, though, to post last month’s edition of my 2010 365 photo-a-day project. And the delay means that August’s collection will be up that much sooner!

In July, I worked far more minor league baseball games than most souls should be subjected to, but split those nights up with a sojourn to Gainesville, Fla., for a few days. I visited the graduate program at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and found it would be a fantastic place to spend two years should I be accepted.

At the very least, I enjoyed a new setting for this project, if only for five days.

Evening rays of light, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Blue sunset, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Fireworks viewed from the cement, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Lightpainting, WICU-TV, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Eight-second exposure, blue sky, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Blades of grass, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Bee on a sunflower, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Star-filled red sky, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Golden night sky, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Black-eyed Susan silhouette, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Sunset over Jacksonville, Fla., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

I was simply amazed at the stacks of books in the image below. Florida’s collection is so large that hundreds of thousands of books are contained on moving shelves that slide back and forth when a patron presses the directional buttons.

Stacks at the University of Florida Library, July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Atrium at the University of Florida College of Journalism, Gainesville, Fla., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Ducks hunting for lunch on the campus of the University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Dog on endtable, Gainesville, Fla., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

And the drawbacks to living in a swamp…

Beetle, Gainesville, Fla., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Sunset in Gainesville, Fla., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Salamander in Gainesville, Fla., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Sleeping dog, Gainesville, Fla., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Boiling sap from fire, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Groundhog, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Beetle, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Ethan Magoc self-portrait, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Jerry Uht Park light tower against sunset, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

I’m not sure of a better guy to sit next to for 70 baseball games this summer. Simply known as Bubba, this retired GE employee runs the side ad boards on our video screen at Jerry Uht Park. He’d be glad to give a tour to anyone who stops up to the PA Room the rest of this season.

Bubba, Jerry Uht Park, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Jerry Uht Park panorama, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Jerry Uht Park, pink sunset, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

The above photos were each taken on the same night, but I just couldn’t pass up two different looks at that sky.

Blue sunset, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Satellite in motion, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Pink sunset, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Orange sunset at Jerry Uht Park, Glenwood All Star Game, Erie, Pa., July 2010. Images from 30 Days & 30 Clicks: July 2010 Edition. Copyright Ethan Magoc.

Check back tomorrow for the extended version of my Utah sunset time lapse, excerpted in this video from last night.

Earlier this month, I took a family vacation by train from Pennsylvania to California aboard an Amtrak train.

I had been to California before, though not to the specific regions we were headed for this year (Sacramento, San Francisco, Monterey, and Pebble Beach). And I had definitely never been there aboard a train.

The above video is a quick compilation of a selection of 800 photos taken during that nine-day journey. Combined, my Mom, Dad, sister, girlfriend, and myself took more than 1,600 photos.

These are some of the very best from that mass of images.

Also included is a one-hour time lapse across Utah. The sky in this part of the country is absolutely magnificent to watch. Its changes, colors and depths all unfold in a particularly unique and awesome way when traveling the land by train.

Now that I have returned from this trip and the lengthy AA baseball season in Erie is winding down, this site will again be updated at least once a week. I have many exciting projects planned for my final year of undergraduate study, and I’d love to have you along for the ride!

One of the side perks of being at the ballpark all day many days is the opportunity to be involved in tarp pulls. I did it in high school, so I was used to the routine, but decided to make it look like fun one night using the park’s home plate security camera. I recorded the entire 10-minute stretch as park employees rolled it out onto the field before a rainy night, then sped it up and reversed it in Final Cut the next morning.

That awful pumping techno track? The team’s home run/run scoring/tarp pulling theme. Dig it.

There are plenty of cool 7D time lapses with fireworks around the net, but none of them, to my knowledge, have been recorded at a baseball park. I had the idea to capture it the homestand prior to that one and cleared it with my boss the day before to abandon my normal postgame responsibilities while I went into the right field grandstand.

Items to look for — the flying “launch a balls” at the beginning and the video board countdown, which fellow intern Ted Hoag edited, that runs just before fireworks go off for the fans.

Finally, this past Monday was yet another buck night at Jerry Uht this summer. These promotions routinely average three to five thousand fans, including a large pregame walk up. I set up the time lapse just outside the PA room where I could monitor its progress and also shoot down on the fans as they lined up to enter the gates.

If you happened to be there that night, see if you can spot yourself. If not, check out the patterns of people milling around in line as they come and go.

I shot the above video on a rainy Saturday morning in May at McDowell’s Gus Anderson Field. State College was in town to face the Trojans on their senior day, and Colleen Stubbs, creative director at Altman-Hall Associates and mother of a senior on the team, hired me to shoot for the day.

Unlike other lacrosse events I have recapped, though, I was not necessarily there to capture the action or tell the story of the game. Rather, I was shooting to show the seniors together with their teammates for the last time on their home field. Unfortunately, about halfway through the first half, the weather turned absolutely rotten.

Hurricane-like, in fact.

That made shooting the halftime flower presentation with the eight seniors and their parents a bit of a nightmare, but I brought my football season rain gear out of retirement and got the shots we needed.

In the edit, I wanted to use as much nat sound as possible, but the wind gusted about 40 mph all afternoon. Even with a heavy wind screen on the Zoom H4N, this made getting crisp audio very difficult. I was able to salvage a few, and you can hear them throughout, but I used a music loop underneath (disabled on the above version) since it was all about the visuals for those eight seniors.

It’s often tough to pinpoint the exact moment that creative inspiration strikes or develops.

But for the above project, doing so is pretty easy. While driving to work at the Mary D’Angelo Performing Arts Center on the final day of June, I noticed a perfect sky of puffy clouds, which were moving quite quickly across the region. Hoping for them to hang on for a few hours, I worked through the morning inside, then raced home at lunch to set up a tripod and Canon 7D on my home’s balcony.

I wasn’t planning to have it run the entire day when the shutter began clicking around 11 a.m., but when I returned home at the end of the workday, I noticed a great sunset coming on. Simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have it run through nine that evening.

Oh, and as for the thumbnail frame? I’m guessing a shooting star or jet moving through the sky… but that’s open for extraterrestrial debate!