SUPER MOONSTRUCK

It’s not what you may think… It’s not the sun. It’s not just the moon; it’s the supermoon. Okay, technically it was the night after the super-full-moon. It’s not the traditional island-view of Toronto we’re used to seeing. It was shot from 60K north of downtown in Caledon, using 840mm worth of lens. It’s not a cheat. The moon appears huge because: Obviously, the farther away, the smaller the city appears. But as I used a super-telephoto lens, downtown appears large in frame. And since the moon stays relatively the same size no matter where you are, and because during that “super” cycle it was roughly 13% larger, it appeared huuuge compared to the buildings. It’s not a comp. I didn’t move anything. This was the moon’s actual trajectory. That strange howl you might’ve heard that night, downtown? That was me whooping when I saw it passing perfectly behind the CN Tower. Photoshop was used only to stitch the sequence together. It wasn’t (just) luck. I used an “app” (LightTrac) to determine when and where to position myself. It was lucky: - That I had access to the perfect viewing location. - That the horizon was free of cloud-cover yet cloudy enough overhead to add interest as the moon peeked in and out of view. (The night of the supermoon it was completely clouded at the horizon and only clear well above the skyline.) And, it was lucky that everything came together perfectly.