Patience pays off with shot of Muttart’s moon
More often than not my job is to find the single moment from an assignment that encapsulates an entire story. Other times my job is simply to go out into Edmonton and find a moment that says something about our community. The photo I chose as my “Photo of the Year” is from one such moment. Photos such as these are usually referred to as enterprise or feature photos — an image that don’t belong to a story.
I had wanted to photograph the Museum of the Moon exhibit at the Muttart Conservatory since it opened, but never had the chance while on shift. Finally, in late August I made a point of going on a night off. As the exhibit had been on display for nearly three months, my goal was simply to try to find an angle that I hadn’t seen already.
I sat on the roof of the Muttart waiting for people to walk past the moon, in just the right spot, for close to an hour. The longer I waited, the later it got and the less likely someone was to hike up the hill, in the dark, to the roof to check out the illuminated sculpture. One of the truths you learn about feature-photo hunting is that as soon as you give up and start to leave, you inevitably will look back and see people walk past the exact spot you had been watching just moments before. So I waited. Just when I was sure I would have to come back, I saw a group walk along the edge of the glass pyramid that housed the exhibit.