The Photographer's Ephemeris

[Tucson T4R]

When planning trips and wanting to understand the best time of day for landscape photography I ran across this awesome program.

It shows you on either satellite or topo maps when and in what direction the sun and moon will rise and set for any given day at any given location. :wings:

http://stephentrainor.com/tools/

Edit: Added formal TPE Website: http://photoephemeris.com/

 

[ThomD]

Nice find.

 

[Overland Hadley]

Very interesting. It will be fun to spend some time with the program and see how it works.

 

[Tucson T4R]

The video tutorials on Stephen's site are pretty good for giving you a kick start. I installed the program and experimented on a couple upcoming places I plan to visit. So far from what I have seen it appears to be very well done. I like it.

 

[Wander]

Neat program-thanks for sharing it with us!

 

[Tucson T4R]

Thanks go to Stephen. :sombrero:

Even though it's free please remember to give Stephen a donation if you decide to keep and use the program he worked so hard on.

 

[Lost Canadian]

Killer find Brad!!! I'll get a lot of use out of this program. I purchased the iPhone version as well, which will be wicked handy.

 

[Tucson T4R]

Glad you guys thought it was as useful as I did. :victory:

I edited the first post to include his current formal TPE website.

I'm purchasing the iPhone version too Trevor.

 

[Michael Slade]

The program looks neat. I'm afraid it will make photographers lazy though. I am going to liken it to the GPS of photography. You will rely on the computer and quit looking out the window. Using this will eliminate the 'not so prime' days from many photographers calendars. I have found that you can make a great photograph on ANY day, and using this tool I'm afraid will keep people inside when they should be out looking.

My .02 cents...

 

[Tucson T4R]

The program looks neat. I'm afraid it will make photographers lazy though. I am going to liken it to the GPS of photography. You will rely on the computer and quit looking out the window. Using this will eliminate the 'not so prime' days from many photographers calendars. I have found that you can make a great photograph on ANY day, and using this tool I'm afraid will keep people inside when they should be out looking.

My .02 cents...

Na, I'm still going out this weekend even though this program tells me it's not the best day for where I'm going. Just being out there is more important to me.

Now if I see an amazing shot that will take the right light, I can use this program to help me figure out when to go back.

But I'm going this weekend no matter what this program says. :elkgrin:

 

[Overland Hadley]

Downloaded the program. What an amazing amount of information.

 

[Tucson T4R]

Downloaded the program. What an amazing amount of information.

Agreed. :sombrero: You can even figure out when the sun or moon will rise above the ridge in your specific terrain. :wings:

 

[Lost Canadian]

The program looks neat. I'm afraid it will make photographers lazy though. I am going to liken it to the GPS of photography. You will rely on the computer and quit looking out the window. Using this will eliminate the 'not so prime' days from many photographers calendars. I have found that you can make a great photograph on ANY day, and using this tool I'm afraid will keep people inside when they should be out looking.

My .02 cents...

Well I'm not going to lie, this program has already had an influence on where I'll be, albeit a minor one. I have a canoe trip planned for Algonquin at the end of September and I've already made one revision to our route and one lake we were planning to stay on. Instead of staying on Timberwolf Lake, I'm now thinking that I'll try to make camp at the tip on the northern shore or McIntosh Lake. There I'll have a good shot at a sunrise, sunset and a moonrise, which should be close to a full moon at that!

Not to mention the flip side could be that this will get people out when they perhaps originally had no intention of going out.

 

[Overland Hadley]

If nothing else it is a great program just to play around with. Anything that helps one understand how light works and moves is good. It was fun to see how the sun moves each day in the winter/summer, and compare that to how it moves in the sring/fall.