On April 8th, 2024, was the great solar eclipse of 2024; the news had only reached me 3 days prior, and I hadn't had any time to prepare. Nonetheless, having missed the beautiful eclipse of 2017, I wasn't going to miss this one. Planning, needless to say, was expedient - I'd bought the train ticket to Niagara Falls just the midnight prior.
Weather too, was fairly poor that day. A spectacular journey nonetheless, having not been through the Western part of the GTA / Falls region in nearly 5 years. I'd lived in the region of Waterloo in 2020, but seldom ventured beyond the city's limits. Still, just the train trip alone was well-worth it. Having met nearly a dozen fascinating characters - from all sorts of backgrounds, and stories of their own to share, I can safely say that I'd made new friends that day.
After arriving, I'd gotten separated from a pleasant chap, a vlogger, with whom I'd failed to trade numbers - a shame. Still, I continued to the site of the falls, and the observation platform, where hundreds had already set up camp - from astrophotographers with enormous, multi-thousand dollar cameras, to people filming on their iPhones.
While I didn't manage to snag any incredible footage, an very helpful and pleasant gentleman who enjoyed astrophotography at a much higher level than mine gave me an enormous wealth of useful information on how to take better shots. With it in mind, here are a few of them:
Now, unfortunately, the weather that day was rather disappointing - the cloud cover was so dense that many opted not to don their eclipse glasses, and just gaze into the heavens with an unshielded eye.
Nevertheless, for a first-time attempt at shooting the (day) sky, I'm rather pleased with my results.
While the skies were rather cloudy, I did manage to get a lovely shot of the magnificent Niagara Falls:
I'd also decided to get a couple shots of the moon, a few weeks later:
