About a year ago, this city was treated to stunning portrait of itself via Ryan Emond's masterful timelapse sequence, Toronto Tempo. In the interim we've seen similar films pop-up, but nothing that was quite so captivating or, quite frankly, beautiful. Well, today it looks like that might have changed with the release of City Rising, a gorgeous sequence of Toronto images, many of which were shot from the dizzying heights of our tallest buildings.

"With City Rising I wanted to bring others up to this perspective," explains Tom Ryaboi (who, I should note, shoots for blogTO on occasion). And while many of us have seen our fair share of rooftopping photos over the last couple years, there's something more intriguing and unfamiliar when they become animated. The city comes to life, as it were.

Here we get a sense of how quickly the weather changes, how constant the flow of traffic is, and how gorgeous Toronto looks from 50+ storeys high. But it's the little details that make the whole thing for me: the smouldering cumulous clouds that bubble up around the one minute mark, the morse code-like light patterns just before two minutes, and the people pacing in their apartments while your eye is drawn to the Rogers Centre roof, which does this little tap to conclude its closing sequence.

This is Toronto at its prettiest. Enjoy!

City Rising from Tom Ryaboi on Vimeo.