Once in awhile, the proverbial photographic stars align for the perfect photograph that really emotes a photographer's style and vision. Working at a newspaper, finding photographs that meet that combination can be difficult, given time constraints and the fact that a large bulk of assignments don't lend themselves very well to the perfect marriage of content and form.

Recently, the need for a last-minute, last-ditch effort for a heat feature sent me to Six Flags. Here was the plan -- hatched over a year ago -- photograph an aerial view of a very crowded swimming pool of heat-relief seekers. Inspiration came from Joel Sternfeld with his cover photo from the amazing photo book American Prospects and Vincent Laforet's aerials. We tried for it last year but the busy news schedule just did not work out to our advantage.

Nevetheless, as I made the trek out to the Hurricane Harbor waterpark, I found a large funnel shaped water attraction next to the pool -- known as the Tornado from PR exec Melissa Vogt -- and it was love at first sight for a photographer with a penchant for color and light. With a striking yellow and blue pattern, it was easy to lose sight of my original goal and instead focus on the lovely Tornado (not that those two words go together like that, but in this case it does). Fifteen minutes later, about a quart of sweat down my shirt in blazing heat, and two dozen frames, and voila -- one of my favorite images this year. Since it took a bit of a crop in the paper, here is the unfettered frame with the exact framing I made over sweat-bleary eyes. Enjoy.