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If you’re into photography, specifically landscape photography, you’ll probably know it’s important to plan your shots according to the sun or the moon depending on the shot you want to get. Keeping track of sunrise or sunset times, the sun’s azimuth or maybe the moon’s current phase can be a difficult task. Fortunately, there’s an Adobe AIR app for that — The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE).

The Photographer’s Ephemeris calculates just about everything you need to know to get the right shots anywhere in the world with Google Maps integration. We’ll take a look at how you can use the app to plan your landscape photography to get those great shots.

Adobe AIR and iPhone

The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE) runs on Adobe AIR making it multi-platform compatible with an iPhone app on the way. Although, a web app version would be really great as well.

TPE: Adobe AIR Marketplace

Planning Landscape Photos

When you want to get some really amazing landscape photos, or any photos for that matter, you’re going to want to be aware of lighting conditions to get things just right. Landscape photography relies on natural light coming from the sun (maybe reflected on the moon), so you’ll need to plan your shots right to get exactly what you’re looking for.

Landscape Lighting

Using TPE, we can easily keep track of the information needed to be ready for those amazing shots. The app integrates Google Maps to show the direction and angles of sunlight or moonlight on your desired shooting location.

The Photographer's Ephemeris

Using TPE

Using TPE is pretty simple for the most part but using the information TPE gives you may take awhile to get the hang of and really utilize. Starting out, you’ll search for the location you want to take your photos at to bring up the marker in the Google Map. Because the app is using Google Maps, you shouldn’t have a problem finding your desired location anywhere in the world.

Search For Location

Although the search will result in the general location you were looking for, you’ll probably want to refine the exact spot by zooming in a bit and dragging the red marker to the actual spot you’ll be in. The great thing about the Google Maps integration is the ability to quickly switch between Map, Satellite, Hybrid or Terrain views in order to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Map Views

I’ve switched between Terrain and Hybrid to find the spot I was standing when taking the photo above. Now that I have my location, I can use the information provided in the right column, shown in the image above, to figure out when I should be there for the shots. On Tuesday, Feb. 16th, sunrise is at 6:26am with a 105.1 deg. azimuth; sunset would be at 5:18pm.

Moon Illumination

If I’m interested in taking night shots, moonrise and moonset are listed along with the moon’s disc illumination. The moon’s disc illumination is a fantastic feature so I can be ready to take pictures of different phases of the moon, like when it’s a full moon. On Feb. 28th, at 8:37am, there will be a full moon.

If you’re interested in more details on a particular day, clicking the Details button gives you more information than you might know what to do with — but it’s certainly fascinating! One of the neat features is a graph showing sun/moon; dragging the slider changes the map to reflect the sun or moon’s position, angle, etc.

Details

I’m fairly new to all this information so I won’t be able to tell you how to use it to get just what you’re looking for, but I do know there’s enough information (the correct information) provided by this app for photographers to find the right time and place to get their shots.

Locations

If you want to keep track of multiple locations, you can add a full list of locations to the app for later viewing. You can also add notes to each location, filter through them if you have a long list and quickly view their latitude and longitude (great for use with GPS).

Locations

Settings

The optional settings in the app are relatively limited, although there aren’t too many things you really need to configure anyway. I’ve changed the units of distance to imperial but I suspect most people will just leave these at their defaults.

Settings

Uses

You might be wondering how or when you would want to use an app like this if you’re new to photography like I am. A quick read of the About page in the app lists a couple uses that make this app invaluable; “determining when the sun will set along the axis of a mountain valley, or when a full moon rise will rise across a lake.”

There are many more landscape photos I can think of that this app will be very useful in helping me achieve as well. For a full users guide, videos and more, see stephentrainor.com.

Final Thoughts

While there are many sites around the web that offer information such as times of sunrise, sunset, moon phases, etc., very few actually combine all these features in one easy to use app that integrates Google Maps (or another quality map system); The Photographer’s Ephemeris does.

The app interface is very easy to use so it isn’t overwhelming or intimidating for beginners such as myself, but includes the kind of information experts might be looking for — all in one place.

I’d love to hear what you think of this app and if you have experience with this kind of information, do you use another source or web app? Please share with a comment below. Thanks!

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