I was tired last night. Too many consecutive nights without enough sleep, I guess, and I was quite content to go to sleep around 9pm. Before heading to bed, though, I took a peek outside to see if the evening’s forecast of thunderstorms had any merit.

At first glance, it didn’t look like it. The air was warm and while there were ominously dark clouds overhead, the air was still and Oksana and I were able to stay out on the porch in nothing more than a T-shirt and shorts. It was so uncharacteristically pleasant for a Juneau evening that, despite my desire for nothing more than an early bedtime, we stayed outside and watched the weather.

A huge black cloud was directly over us. We watched it churn its way north, over Spaulding Meadows before it began to break up. If I hadn’t looked out over Auke Bay to see another large mass of dark clouds forming, that would have probably been it – we would have been asleep by 9:30pm. But I thought that the conditions might be right for a third (a third!) thunderstorm this summer. And wouldn’t you know it, while we were waiting, we caught a few flashes of pink on the western horizon.
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My 4-day 4th of July weekend has come and gone, and I spent most of it planted squarely in front of my computer monitor. Part of it was futzing with my cable modem and GCI’s tech support (only to have them tell me after a house call that “it must be network problems”), but most of it was playing computer games. Every once in awhile I rediscover the catharsis in casting aside my responsibilities and losing myself in frag-filled entertainment.

The weekend wasn’t a total creative loss, though. I pried myself away from the keyboard long enough to show up at a friend’s fireworks-watching party on the night of the 3rd. Years ago I admitted to myself that I didn’t find the festivities on the 4th very exciting. The parade, fireworks, street events and parties, I can take ‘em or leave ‘em, but I do enjoy hanging out with my friends. The house we were visiting was high up on a hill downtown, too, and it offered the perfect vantage point to try to capture the fireworks show.

I’ve been looking for years for a good place to rig up a time-lapse of the Juneau traffic after the fireworks display. Thousands upon thousands of people drive downtown for the show at midnight and before the last explosion finishes echoing off the mountainsides, the mass exodus along the only road out to the valley has already begun. For the next hour (at least!) you can see mile after mile of red taillights filling the north-bound lane contrasted with only the occasional pair of headlights going south. Seeing wave after wave of red running lights turning to redder brake lights at each stoplight’s intersection has always entranced me, and although I’ve recorded it to videotape twice, I’ve yet to do it from a really good spot.

Location, in photography as well as in real estate, is everything. I know that I should be scouting the best vantage point weeks in advance for pre-planned events like this. Photos and video could soar from good to great just by having the right foreground or background element. Why then do I rarely make the effort?

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