Landscape Photographers' Latest Tool by Matthew G. Schmidt - Northern Virginia Photographic Society

A friend recently sent me a link to a new tool that has proven to be so beneficial for me, I thought that I would share it with the rest of you. If you are photographing landscapes, the times for sunrise and sunset are probably already on your list of information to gather before you venture out. This ephemeris will give you that information as well as the moonrise and moonset times, but what makes it especially beneficial to the landscape photographer is that you can map out a location (it uses Google Maps) and it will project the angle of the sun and moon at their respective rising and setting times. You can use this tool to determine the ideal day to visit a specific site because the sunrise will be in the best location with respect to your position.

For instance, say that you are going to Big Meadows on Skyline drive for the weekend of July 11 and 12. You can enter the location as Big Meadows, Va and then select the date that you will be at Big Meadows.

You can see from the chart below that the sun will rise in the North East at 05:59 and will set in the North West at 20:38 (or 8:38 PM).

Using the Terrain map from Google, you can see that the sun will rise almost directly in line with Dark Hollow, which may dictate where you want to start with your camera. You can also use the Satellite or standard Map, especially if you are trying to orient your location

with the roads or a building that would only be visible with those views.

So if you are planning a trip or a workshop and you think that you might want to take some sunrise or sunset photos, you can choose the best locations before you even arrive, increasing your odds of getting that once in a lifetime landscape.

The Photographer's Ephemeris has been released in BETA form, but I have found it to be very stable on the Macintosh platform (I have not tried it on Windows myself). It is written in Adobe Air, so you will need to download Adobe Air in order to run it. The following

link will direct you to the download of The Photographer's Ephemeris as well as Adobe Air.

http://stephentrainor.com/tools

Matthew G. Schmidt

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