Pro-Tip #6: Plan Your Shot - The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE)

Planning is an important activity you need to do to increase your chances of getting great shots. No app is more useful than TPE for outdoor photographer's. The Photographer’s Ephemeris helps you plan outdoor photography shoots in natural light, particularly landscape and urban scenes. At it’s core is a map-centric sun and moon calculator allowing you to visualize how the light will fall on the land, day or night, for any location on earth. It’s a fantastic app and I use it all the time, even for planning trips months in advance as it helps me to work out where to go on which day to get the best light or include the moon in my images. Features include:

• Time and direction of sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moon-set
• Phase of the moon and % illumination
• Times of civil, nautical and astronomical twilight
• Graphical display on a wide selection of map types
• Movable map pins – drag and drop the pin exactly where you need it
• Compass display built-in for scouting in the field (on compatible devices)
• Shadow lengths displayed to scale on map
• Save any location you want – no fixed lists
• Key celestial events for the year, including moon phases, solstices, equinoxes
• Does not require network connection for rise/set time, azimuths and sun/moon position

TPE takes the guess work out of working out where the sun will be and hence how shadows will fall allowing you to have a good idea of what angle you need to shoot from. You can download a free Windows or Mac desktop version at www.photoephemeris.com or buy the app for your smart phone or tablet.