Frank Abbott is a physician who practices radiology in Pensacola, Fla. He’s also a photographer with an extensive background of shooting the area.

Frank tells us:

I have been taking landscape and wildlife photographs for the past 20 years. One of my favorite shooting locations is my back yard on Santa Rosa Sound. I was making my normal rounds and noticed a huge [storm] front developing to the east. Within the next five minutes, it spawned one of the largest water spouts that I have ever seen in my 50+ years of living on or near the water. It was absolutely spectacular!!

I took a couple shots with a couple different lenses then watched in absolute awe as this beast slowly moved across the sound then magically degraded into rain. I quickly went inside to process and share what I had seen online.

That’s where Elissa Macarin of the Gannett Design Studio in Nasvhille picks up the story…

When I came in to work, I only knew that the waterspout story was going to be the centerpiece with “more photos to come.” Katie King, the consumer experience director for Pensacola, said she did a reader call out for photos on Facebook and Twitter to make an online photo gallery. She picked a handful of the most impactful/dramatic photos submitted and put them into the print package for me to choose from. A couple of hours later, Florida Team Leader Michael Babin checked in with me to see how things were going. We both saw the waterspout photos for the first time, and all he said was “have fun” — and I did. As soon as I saw the photo I chose as the main, the idea for the page immediately came to mind. I asked the PNJ editors if we could scale back their typical skyboxes – I knew the one about the Escambia football coach had to run because it’s been a big controversy there for the past few weeks — so I could have more space for the waterspout art. They said “Go for it.”

I went with my gut instinct and that’s the page that ended up printing.

A 2005 graduate of Kent State, Elissa spent a year as a copy editor and designer at the Dothan (Ala.) Eagle and then four years with the Press-Register of Mobile before moving to the Daily Herald of Wausau, Wis., in 2010 as presentation editor. She joined the Nashville studio in 2012, where she also works on pages for the Staunton, Va., News Leader, the (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger and the Hattiesburg (Miss.) American.

Find Elissa’s portfolio here and her Twitter feed here.

And again, see more of Frank’s wonderful photography here.

Average daily circulation of the News Journal is 40,435.