Ohio University botany rocket

This was fun.
Ohio University students and professors developed an experiment to determine the extent to which plants are guided by gravity. It was scheduled to ride a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station December 19, 2014.
In honor of the launch, students involved in the experiment did a demonstration in miniature of the SpaceX rocket and their payload. The day was chilly and rainy.
To get what I thought would be the best angle on the launch -- I wanted to avoid shooting against a grey sky, where the trail and the rocket would be lost -- I spied a balcony on a nearby building. (I didn't know it at the time, but this would involve my sort of breaking in to the Deans Conference Room in order to get to the balcony, and propping the door open with my gadget bag so I didn't get trapped on the balcony.) The crowd was a couple hundred feet away, but they helped me out by shouting out the countdown as it progressed. The fact that I got the picture, though, was sheer good fortune. But it worked!