The Photographer's Ephemeris

Location Lists Now in TPE Web

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 19:22:28 GMT

The locations page of TPE Web has had an overhaul today, adding a new feature: Lists. You can now organise your saved locations into discrete lists, each with a customised name, description, icon, and colour.

The lists are synchronised to your account, just like locations, so you can use them on multiple computers. They’ll soon be available on iOS as well.

Locations can be assigned to as many lists as you like, allowing you to organise them in different ways according to your use case. For example, you might have a list named ‘Sunrise Spots’ that includes Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park. You might also add Mesa Arch to a list of ‘Southwest USA Geological Highlights’.

You can also use lists to order your locations. You can drag and drop locations into a list-specific order, allowing you to set up a sequence of places to visit during a trip. Lists can be put into a customised order too.

12 August 2026 Total Solar Eclipse in Mallorca

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 04:49:30 GMT

There’s been plenty of discussion in some of the Facebook Solar Eclipse groups recently about the visibility of the 12 August 2026 eclipse on Mallorca in the Balearic Islands.

It will be a near‑sunset eclipse there, meaning that sight‑lines are critical. Locations on the north‑west coast with clear views over the ocean will be fine; for example, Banyalbufar:

But what about farther south and east on the island, for example, Can Pastilla, near the airport? There are mountains to the north‑west. A strict sight‑line analysis using TPE (The Photographer’s Ephemeris) at the time of Third Contact (C3 — the end of totality) suggests you’d be just OK:

Using Shadow Maps

Eclipse chasers have been using shadow maps to assess visibility. The notional shadow of the uneclipsed Sun is used as a visual proxy for whether it will be visible or not. The nice thing about the approach is that you can assess multiple potential viewpoints at a glance by seeing where the shadow falls.

Of course, on the day of the eclipse, there will be a very different shadow during totality — that of the Moon! But that doesn’t preclude assessing a normal shadow map for potential spots.

Some caveats

The discussion on Facebook got me thinking: there are a few issues that a standard shadow map may not account for:

Penumbra: you’re not in complete shadow until the upper limb (12 o’clock on the Sun’s disc) has dropped behind the ridgeline – but wouldn’t you be disappointed to see the eclipsed Sun slipping away before totality ends?
Corona: during totality, you’re not just looking at the black disc of the Moon. You’re looking around the Sun at Baily’s beads, the chromosphere, and perhaps most importantly of all, the corona. The corona extends a long way out from the Sun. With specialist imaging equipment, you can capture it at distances up to ~10× the Sun’s radius. Regular observers can reasonably expect to see it up to 3–4× the Sun’s radius away. That means you need the Sun to be higher than you think in order to see the full splendour of totality.

Other issues with a low altitude relate to clouds (there’s a higher chance they can block when the Sun is low), and haze and atmospheric turbulence, which can impede visibility. A shadow map cannot account for those.

A Totality‑Aware Shadow Map

The interactive map shown below accounts for the penumbra AND the corona. It assumes you can see the corona up to 4× the Sun’s radius away.

Regular shadows are dark grey
Penumbral shadow is highlighted in blue
The notional coronal shadow is shown in turquoise: if you observe from the coronal shadow during totality, you’ll be watching the corona sink behind the mountains during the eclipse!

Try changing the Shadow Style in the control panel:

Standard shadows are the umbral and penumbral shadows combined using the standard dark grey colour
Point shadows render as if the Sun were a point light source with no penumbra at all. You may have seen this simpler style in other shadow maps.
Penumbral renders the penumbral shadows in a brighter blue so you can distinguish them visually and understand the effect
Coronal renders the notional coronal shadow in addition, as discussed above

You’ll notice that both penumbral and coronal shadows extend significantly further than just “ point ” shadows!

One other pitfall to note: on other shadow maps, be careful with the map zoom level. Sometimes, as you zoom in, shadows that were previously there start to disappear. That can be very misleading if you’re unaware of it. The map above avoids this issue.

We’re working on integrating these new maps into TPE directly, but for now, for TSE2026, you can try the example above for free. Let us know what you think!

A Better Lunar Eclipse Map

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 22:15:36 GMT

Perhaps you, like me, have at times been left a little confused by lunar eclipse maps.

Some maps, like the older NASA examples, indicate the area where you can see a total lunar eclipse using a clear colour. Others show the area where the entire eclipse can be viewed using a ‘blood moon’ colour, but leave the areas where you see nothing as clear. It’s confusing.

And then, some maps are designed for printing and so give times in UTC, forcing you to try to convert the times (and often requiring a change of date) in your head – always a risky proposition for me!

The new TPE (The Photographer’s Ephemeris) Lunar Eclipse Map for 3 March 2026 tries to solve these issues!

No View Zone

The ‘no view zone’ is unmistakable: it’s shown in a dark colour with 45° stripes, the universal visual mnemonic for ‘not here!’ This should resolve the ambiguity about whether ‘clear’ indicates that the eclipse is visible.

Local Times for Local People

No more time zone maths required: the new map allows you to drag and drop a map pin to your location of interest. The contact times are shown in the local time zone, with airline-style +1 suffixes for eclipses that straddle local midnight.

Dynamic Map Legend

The map legend updates according to the pin position, showing you exactly which phases of the eclipse you will and won’t see. Contact times, e.g., U1, the start of the partial eclipse, are de-emphasised if they are not visible at the selected location.

You can click on any contact time, and you’ll be taken to TPE with the app set for the selected location and time. This lets you explore the local circumstances that dictate photographic opportunities, such as the Moon’s azimuth and altitude, sightlines, and more.

We hope you like the new map – you can check it out here: 3 March 2026 – Total Lunar Eclipse.

We’ll publish more maps soon!

Total Lunar Eclipse Coming up on 3 March

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 17:01:35 GMT

The last total lunar eclipse until the very end of 2028 – nearly three years away – occurs just a few days from now: 3 March 2026. You won’t want to miss the opportunity to photograph it, if you can. The eclipse is visible before dawn in the Midwest, overnight in western North America and over the Pacific, and after sunset in Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, New Zealand.

We have some great resources to help you plan your photography of the eclipse. We highly recommend checking out the Moon Simulator in TPE Web. Here’s a preview you can try out:

Try clicking play to watch how totality begins as observed from Legion Park in Boulder, Colorado, in the early hours of next Tuesday morning. You can also use your mouse or trackpad to zoom in or out or pan around. The red circle is the projection of Earth’s umbral cone. The yellow circle is the projection of the penumbral cone. You can view this location and time in the TPE Web using this link.

Photography Tips

Check your sightlines. Depending on your location, the eclipse may happen when the Moon is low in the sky. You’ll want to check that it’s visible above surrounding terrain – use the sightline tools in TPE Web or iOS.

You’ll need a tripod. During totality, the Moon is so dark that handheld exposures will be difficult or impossible. For a sharp image, use a tripod.

Acquire focus during partial phases. High-contrast edges during partial eclipse make autofocus easier. During totality, the Moon is much darker and more difficult for autofocus systems to lock on to. Avoid refocusing during totality unless necessary.

Expect significant exposure differences. The brightness difference between partial phases and totality is substantial – seven stops or more. Exposure settings suitable for a bright partial Moon will not be appropriate during totality:

The exposures shown above are for guidance only. Each eclipse is different: a higher-magnitude eclipse is darker at maximum eclipse than a lower-magnitude event. Atmospheric conditions can affect brightness. Adjust accordingly.

Plan for movement across the sky. If creating a composite sequence, record altitude and azimuth at key stages to determine the required horizontal and vertical framing.

Consider atmospheric effects. Low-altitude shots may include haze, distortion, or colour shifts. What you see may not be the same as observers at other locations.

What to Read Next

Wishing you all clear skies for the eclipse!

Playing 'what if' with the weather for the August 2026 total eclipse

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 17:28:11 GMT

We’re approaching the 12‑month countdown to the 2026 total solar eclipse, which most viewers will see from either Iceland or Spain. It’s always interesting to ask, “ What if we had the same weather on the day of the eclipse as we’re seeing this year? ”

Photo WX ™ can help.

In the 1.5 update, released today, when you select a solar eclipse from the drop-down menu (see right of the screenshot, outlined in pink), the map now shows the direction (azimuth) of the sun and moon for the selected time of day (8:29 pm in this example for Burgos, link), but for the date of the eclipse:

This means that you can assess the available weather forecast for 6 August 2025 as it would impact the 12 August 2026 eclipse.

In this example, the high-resolution Arome HD model from Météo‑France is forecasting a lot of high cloud (yellow on the map). The sun will be positioned low in the sky to the west‑north‑west, indicated by the orange line (labelled above).

As you might expect, if the clouds play out like this, it could be problematic for eclipse viewers, given their extent.

What about tomorrow’s forecast?

Things look a little better if we look at the forecast for 7 August:

This screenshot shows Cloud observability enabled (the sixth button from the top right on the map). As labelled, any high cloud under the yellow segment of the line will potentially obscure the line of sight to the sun at this time. This is calculated based on the altitude of the sun and the range of heights above the ground that are included in the high cloud forecast layer.

Overall, though, the forecast cloud density and extent are less ominous than those of the 6 August forecast.

Weather Models and Locations

The examples above show northern Spain, but you can do the same exercise for other locations, e.g., western Iceland. The Arome HD model does not cover Iceland, but its sister model Arpege Europe (slightly lower resolution at 11 km) does:

Why play ‘what if’?

A few reasons to indulge this strange weather prognosticating:

You will get to see some of the forecast patterns that may be repeated a year from now
You’ll get better at reading the forecasts — particularly the multi-level cloud layer, which is critical for eclipse weather planning
You’ll develop a sense of which way weather models tend to skew — some predict more cloud than others
You’ll develop a sharper sense of what cloud patterns are problematic for your planned location
You’ll be able to start to think about “ Plan B ” relocation options in case the weather is challenging

Enjoy exploring the forecasts — in the next few days, why not:

Check out your planned location (and any backup plans you have) in Photo WX
Compare and contrast the different weather models (e.g., AROME HD vs ARPEGE EU vs ECMWF vs GFS)
Make a note of the types of weather patterns you see in the forecasts (particularly cloud) and how they tend to move over time: do the clouds move into your line of sight over time or away?

Don’t forget: in addition to the ‘what if’ weather functionality in Photo WX, we have comprehensive eclipse planning tools available in The Photographer’s Ephemeris® (TPE). More about all of these below:

Key Weather Forecasts for Night Photography

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 22:58:28 GMT

When planning a night photography or astrophotography shoot, the weather is a critical factor. It’s not just the obvious things such as the absence of rain and cloud, but many other factors that can create or prevent great conditions.

In this article, we’ll review the primary weather and atmospheric-conditions forecasts that you should check before heading out.

But first, what’s the plan?

The Plan: Milky Way over Bear Lake

Annaka, Alice and I decided we wanted to head up to Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. The lake lies at about 2,926 metres above sea level. There’s a trail that follows the entire lake – it’s flat, easy and right next to the car park. As a result, it’s overrun during the day in peak season, and a timed entry permit is required to get there. But at night, not so much – you can drive right up all year round after 6pm.

From the north side of the lake there’s a view to the south that encompasses Longs Peak to the left and the rising terrain of Otis Peak, Thatchtop and Taylor Peak, among others, to the right. You can shoot over the water and get the Galactic Centre right in the middle of the frame just above the mountains on a July evening after dark.

Here’s what we were aiming for, shown in TPE 3D:

The Moon is only a couple of days old and will have set in the west some time before the end of twilight, giving us a truly dark night to look forward to.

To get the shot, we’d need unclouded skies and, ideally, a few more things to line up. But what?

Key Weather and Atmospheric Variables to Check

Our weather-check shortlist includes:

Multi-level clouds
Astronomical transparency
Astronomical seeing
Total column smoke
Near-ground smoke
Visibility
Wind gusts

We weren’t too worried about temperature or dew-point depression: it’s regularly warm and dry up there at this time of year, as long as there isn’t a storm system moving through.

We used Photo WX ™, our weather service for photographers, to check all the key forecasts. Here’s how it lined up as of Saturday morning.

Multi-Level Clouds

Multi-level cloud is a highly efficient way for photographers to assess cloud cover and its potential impact on shot plans. Here, we see some mid-level cloud shown in magenta, but it’s well to the east of our location (red map pin) and not in our line of sight. There are some small areas of high cloud forecast, but they’re well to the south‑west and, again, shouldn’t affect us.

This is from the HRRR, a high-resolution hourly model that covers much of North America.

Astronomical Transparency

Next, we checked astronomical transparency, using the new 10 km forecast from the Canadian RDPS model. The greater the transparency, the more brilliant the night sky will appear. It accounts for cloud, but assuming clear skies – which we expect already – transparency shows how humidity and moisture in the atmospheric column will affect what you can see.

The clearer areas in this forecast show better transparency (on a 0–5 scale, where 5 is best):

Transparency was looking great (4).

Astronomical Seeing

Astronomical seeing forecasts tell you how much or little scintillation you can expect to see in the stars. When there is too much wind shear between layers of the atmosphere, the effect is to make the stars shimmer or twinkle – that can look nice, but it’s not what you want as a photographer. Again, the clearer the map, the better the forecast seeing, on a 0–5 scale, where 5 is best:

So, not great, but certainly not terrible either. The area just east of Denver looks good – but the transparency is not at all good there (not to mention light pollution). You can evaluate both seeing and transparency together on the special combined-forecast map in Photo WX:

Again, light areas are better.

Total Column Smoke

It’s important to be aware that the dedicated seeing and transparency forecasts from Environment Canada do not account for the effects of wildfire smoke. Therefore, check a smoke forecast independently.

Total column smoke from the HRRR model shows the density of smoke particles through the entire atmospheric column. You want it to look largely clear if you’re going to attempt night or astrophotography:

You can see that our location (red map pin) is on the edge of some mild smoke, with much worse approaching from the west. Check out the scale on the map – the light blue colours show you there’s something there, but it’s very little. This is not too concerning.

Near-Ground Smoke

Sometimes, if there’s a nearby fire or an atmospheric inversion, you can end up with a lot more near-ground smoke than smoke aloft. As near-ground smoke affects the air quality we breathe, as well as our ability to see the stars, it’s worth checking:

In this case, it’s pretty consistent with the total-column-smoke forecast, and the blue colour suggests it’s not too concerning.

Visibility

If you don’t have a smoke forecast that covers your location, a visibility forecast can be a reasonable – but not foolproof – substitute. Visibility forecasts predict “ all causes ” horizontal visibility from the ground, i.e. how far you can see before haze, mist, fog, low cloud, rain, pollution, blown dust or smoke blocks your view.

In this forecast map, the clear colour means you can see farther, which is a good thing for our nighttime shoot. You can see there’s some more limited visibility way off in eastern Colorado. This broadly corresponds to an area of poorer transparency (see above) and some mid-level cloud.

Note that the visibility forecast is not picking up the effect of total-column smoke in the western part of the state – this is because it forecasts horizontal visibility, not vertical.

Wind Gusts

Finally, wind gusts. As we’re shooting across a body of water, there’s a chance we can get some reflections of stars in the water – but only if the wind is still:

Miraculously, for the notoriously windy Rocky Mountain National Park, there are hardly any wind gusts predicted!

How did we do?

The forecast looked good.

And it turned out to be a perfect evening – still, clear, not at all cold, overall quite beautiful. Here’s the shot we planned:

Conclusion

When planning your night photography, be sure to check the critical weather variables as well as the usual questions of twilight times, moon phase, altitude/azimuth, and alignment of the Milky Way and Galactic Centre.

Use Photo WX – it’s designed to give travelling photographers exactly what you need to determine relevant conditions for your shoot. With multiple weather models and variables available, plus some speciality-derived weather layers (e.g. multi-level cloud, seeing + transparency), it will set you up to make the best possible decision about where and when you try to capture the night sky.

Quick Night Shoot Weather Checklist

Check multi-level cloud cover
Review transparency forecast (0–5 scale)
Check seeing forecast (0–5 scale)
Evaluate smoke (total column + near-ground)
Confirm visibility forecast
Assess wind conditions (for reflections or stability)

Forecast Models Used

HRRR – High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (US): clouds, smoke, wind
RDPS – Regional Deterministic Prediction System (Canada): seeing, transparency
Photo WX Derived – combined layers (e.g. seeing + transparency, multi-level cloud)

New Seeing and Transparency Forecasts

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 18:51:44 GMT

Seeing and Transparency, along with light pollution and smoke, are two of the most important considerations for astrophotographers when deciding where and when to plan a shoot.

We’re pleased to be offering new Seeing and Transparency forecasts with Photo WX, our weather service for photographers. The new forecasts, based on data from Environment and Climate Change Canada, represent a very significant upgrade over the predecessor forecast.

And we’ve added our own spin by publishing a new combined seeing and transparency forecast map that allows you to assess conditions along both dimensions at the same time.

Why should I care about Seeing and Transparency?

Seeing is a measure of the apparent scintillation of stars as viewed by an observer on the ground. The greater the scintillation — the flickering, if you like — the worse the seeing. Why? Because the image of the star loses definition and spreads out over a larger area. Better seeing is associated with sharper stars and improved resolution of detail in your images.

Seeing tends to worsen when there is strong wind shear between layers of the atmosphere — seeing forecasts take into account wind speeds and other factors at multiple levels.

You can have excellent seeing, but at the same time poor transparency. Transparency measures the impact of clouds, haze and humidity on the ability to perceive stars in the night sky. Again, the transparency forecast looks at multiple levels in the atmosphere. Remember, you can have clear skies (no clouds) but still suffer from poor or average transparency.

What’s New?

The new forecasts are based on the Canadian RDPS model. Some major differences in the new forecasts are:

Much higher resolution: 10 km vs. 35 km for the GEM Regional Model
Much broader coverage: Central America and northern Europe are included
Longer forecast range: the new forecasts extend out to 84 hours

For the first time, we’re able to offer Seeing and Transparency forecasts to photographers in the UK and Ireland, Scandinavia and northern continental Europe as far east as Ukraine. The previous GEM forecast (still available) covers only North America at a much coarser resolution.

New Colour Schemes

We previously followed the colour convention long established by Clear Dark Sky, where excellent conditions appeared dark blue and poor conditions appeared white. This had the benefit of leveraging “ colour memory ” for users familiar with that site.

However, the colour scheme has two disadvantages for use on maps:

We’re used to reading weather maps for things like clouds and rain: you see something on the map where it’s raining or cloudy, but otherwise the map is clear and unobstructed. The Clear Dark Sky convention inverts this (to be fair, it was not necessarily intended for use on maps — that was our decision).
The fact that both seeing and transparency use the same colours makes it impossible to combine the colours to produce a legible composite map.

To address these issues, we’ve changed things up:

Clear means clear — if the map is unobstructed, conditions are excellent
Seeing uses a cherry-pink scale: dark pink means poor seeing
Transparency uses a teal scale: dark teal means poor transparency/clouds

Combined Seeing and Transparency

Armed with our new colour map design, we can now combine seeing and transparency into a single forecast map, so you can read both at once.

In the example above, you can see that for the night of 1–2 July in central Germany, conditions are looking very good. The map appears pale pink, indicating very good seeing and excellent transparency.

In stark contrast, conditions in the UK are mostly poor (dark plum colour), with only Northern Ireland showing clearer conditions with decent seeing.

The pink and teal colour schemes combine to produce unique colour combinations in a range of lilac/plum hues, so you can visually distinguish where seeing is good versus where transparency is good.

As with the GEM model, the forecasts grade seeing and transparency on a 0 (poor)–5 (excellent) scale. In the combined forecast, the colour legend shows the colours for the extremes:

S5T5: excellent seeing and transparency — white/clear
S5T0: excellent seeing, poor transparency/cloudy — dark teal
S0T5: poor seeing, excellent transparency — dark pink
S0T0: poor seeing, poor transparency/cloudy — dark plum

We’ve applied the new scheme to the GEM model as well, for ease of comparison.

Conclusion

We night-time photographers and astrophotographers in North and Central America — and now Europe — will enjoy the new forecasts; it’s a major improvement in coverage, resolution, and convenience.

The new Seeing and Transparency forecasts are available to Photo Ephemeris Web PRO subscribers today.

Architectural Photography, Part 5: Natural Light

Fri, 02 May 2025 22:09:42 GMT

Lighting is a critical aspect of architectural photography and something you should plan for in advance. Depending on the circumstances of your project, you may be able to pick and choose your time freely (e.g. personal projects, planning future travel), to exercise some choice within a finite time window (e.g. a project with a future deadline, or time of day on site), or have very little discretion at all (e.g. photographing a public building with a busy operational schedule on a deadline).

In every case, you should know what you’re trying to achieve photographically and have a contingency plan in case conditions don’t work out as hoped, such as in cases of overcast skies or inclement weather.

The Photographer’s Ephemeris is an ideal tool for planning your architectural photography. It will show you light angles for any location, date and time, and with Photo WX™, our photographer’s weather service, you can check expected conditions in order to adjust your schedule or make a contingency plan.

A Case Study: Durham Cathedral

We’ll use Durham Cathedral as a case study to look at natural light planning considerations. It’s a large, prominent Grade I‑listed building in the north of England, a cathedral built in the 12th century in the Romanesque and Early English Gothic styles.

The Eastern Elevation

Most Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals are aligned on an approximate east‑west axis, with the altar and transept located towards the east end. This is true in examples all across Europe, including Durham Cathedral. The main entrance to many cathedrals is therefore located towards the west end.

Knowing this gives some obvious clues as to the timing of your photography of such a building. The east end will, generally speaking, be a morning shot, and the west end an afternoon or evening shot.

But, beware. The tradition of “ liturgical ” east corresponding with geographic east breaks down as you step outside the Catholic and Orthodox traditions into Protestant‑era buildings, or into more modern architecture, or indeed into certain locations constrained by their geographic circumstances. Venice is a prime example: many churches, for example the Frari, are not at all aligned east‑west, but instead are built to fit the constraints of their site.

It’s therefore critical to understand the alignment of the building before you attempt to photograph it - unless you’re happy with lucky grab shots where you happen to be in the right place at the right time. Architectural photography generally doesn’t work out so well with this approach.

We travelled to Durham from Hexham one morning early in April this year.

The time window was limited: Durham is one of the handful of locations in the UK where you can renew your passport via a face‑to‑face appointment using a priority service. The appointment was at 10:50, so we set off early in order to get some morning light on the eastern elevation of the building beforehand. Here’s the setup:

You can also view this interactively in TPE using this link. A few points to note:

The east‑west alignment of the building is approximate, not strict
OpenStreetMap‑derived maps are the best option to see details of recesses in the façade
The sun is off‑axis to the building (i.e. not aligned directly at the elevation)

Knowing the precise alignment of the building will give you clues as to when in the year and at what times of day a given elevation may be receiving light. Due to the slight south‑eastward orientation, the north elevation of the building will receive more morning light than evening light in general. Furthermore, it will receive that morning light for more days in the year, starting earlier in spring and into late autumn.

Many people often default to using satellite maps to plan these shots, but often they’re not the best choice. Why? Two reasons: often the satellite image is not directly overhead of the building, which can make precise alignments hard to ‘read’. Secondly, satellite maps come with built‑in “ lighting ” - the sunlight and shadows appear as they did at the date and time of the image acquisition, whatever that may have been. This can trick you into believing conditions may be different to what you’ll in fact experience on the ground.

It’s always worth checking the different map styles available in TPE. Different sources may give better or worse coverage of particular locations. In this case, Google’s Street Map footprint of the Cathedral omits all detail from the eastern elevation, but the OpenStreetMap footprint includes several useful points. For example, we can tell that the deepest recesses of the elevation will lie in deep shadow by around 10:35 in the morning on this day:

Let’s remind ourselves of the final shot, taken at 09:25:

If this had been taken at 10:35, the highlighted purple areas would have been in deep shadow:

Arguably, the right‑hand side of the finished image would benefit from a little more shadow to give more definition to the relief, but we certainly don’t want whole areas of the elevation to be in deep shadow that would obscure important details of the lancets (the tall, narrow windows with the pointed arches).

You might notice that the angle of the sunlight is more or less off‑axis to the camera view by the same amount as at sunrise, just that the sun is behind and to the left of the camera rather than to the north. Of course, sunrise would not work, as the sun would be too low in the sky to light the full elevation of the building – there are other buildings directly opposite.

So, our time of 09:25 is well‑nigh ideal.

In considering the type of lighting that will work for a building, you should try to be familiar with the architectural language that it expresses. I’d highly recommend Rice’s Language of Buildings for a fun (yes, fun!) and accessible introduction to the topic.

Avoid inadvertently obscuring or omitting important details due to your viewpoint, composition, or light planning!

Interior Photography

What about interior shots? Revisiting our case study from 8 April, we can see that by mid‑morning, the southern elevation is receiving plentiful light from the south‑east. However, be sure to ignore the sunlight in the satellite imagery - that’s misleading. It shows the lighting on the date and time of the imagery, not our intended date and time.

On the day in question, early morning low cloud had burned off completely by around 09:40, leaving aching blue skies. While that’s not ideal for landscape, it can be good for architecture, including for interiors.

Again, knowing a little about the building helps to set expectations. Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals don’t have windows at ground level. Instead, windows lie higher in the structure. In order for light to reach the lower parts of the building, the sun must be higher in the sky. For any light to illuminate the upper parts or ceiling, the sun must be lower towards the horizon.

Knowing this, we can expect that mid‑morning in April, we should see some light on the columns and arches facing the nave on the north side, as well as light on the columns facing the south aisle, and indeed, that’s what we get:

Looking northeast from the nave - light on the north side columns and arches

Sunlight through the stained glass on the attached columns of the south aisle

Shooting Towards the Sun

In architectural photography, it’s rare that you would want the sun to appear within the frame. Indeed, most commonly, you’ll want the sun to be behind the camera plane illuminating your subject.

An exception to this rule is where you have a repeating element in the shot that can be emphasised by increased contrast. Consider this blind arcade located at the east end of the cathedral behind the choir:

Blind arcade front lit (sun behind the camera)

Blind arcade back lit (sun off-axis in front of the camera to the left)

The front‑lit version appears rather flat, whereas the backlit image is far more eye‑catching.

These grab shots were taken seconds apart and with the same exposure settings – nothing changed other than the camera position.

If you were wanting to be sure to capture this detail backlit, you’d need to know that in April, it’s a mid‑morning shot. The arcade loses the light by early afternoon.

The Weather

Direct sunlight and blue skies are often ideal conditions for architectural photography. They allow the photographer to exploit contrast in the surface textures and details of a building. The absence of noticeable “ weather ” means it’s not something that’s competing with the true subject of the photo. Also, warm sunlight generally brightens the mood and can be important for real‑estate photography.

That said, unless you live in sunny Colorado like I do, then often the skies will not necessarily be clear. What to do? Here are a few ideas.

Weather as Drama

You can sometimes use threatening weather to your advantage to highlight the impact of a building. Here’s another stunning English cathedral, Lincoln, in sunlight but with dramatic clouds looming behind it. I’ve rectified the verticals and somewhat tamed the peakiness of the towers due to the wide angle lens. What we lose in exaggerated vertical thrust we regain from the strong contrast of sun and cloud. The cloud doesn’t distract from the main subject, but rather emphasises the scale of the building:

Artificial Lighting

If the weather won’t cooperate, you may be able to rely on artificial lighting instead. On this particularly gloomy December morning, the illumination on Tower Bridge made all the difference:

Black and White

With persistent cloud and no dramatic contrasts of light or artificial lighting to fall back on, a black and white treatment can rescue your shoot. Here, in this photograph of the bridge over the Tyne at Hexham, sunrise was blocked by thick clouds, but a black and white conversion using Nik Silver Efex gave a good result:

Here, I wanted to emphasise the contrast between the bridge arches and not encourage the viewer’s eye to wander unguided through the less interesting sky. Colour filters are a great way to achieve this in black and white processing.

It should also be said: black and white is certainly not just a “ fall‑back ” option for poor weather. Much of the greatest architectural photography is intentionally shot and/or processed as black and white, and to great effect.

North-facing Elevations

In the Northern Hemisphere, north‑facing elevations of buildings do not receive direct sunlight in winter. If the elevation faces directly north, then it’s safe to assume that it will begin to receive light some time after the vernal equinox (around 21 March) and will lose direct light again in the days leading to the autumnal equinox (around 21 September).

However, if the alignment is not exact, those dates will change. You can use TPE to establish the expected period during which light can be expected.

Returning to Durham Cathedral, here are some examples – click the links to view the setup:

The north transept begins to be grazed by light at sunrise around 7 March and retains light until around 7 October
At sunrise on the summer solstice, the north elevation receives plenty of light, but areas fall into shadow quickly to the west of the transept
In contrast, at sunset, the northern elevation loses all direct light as early as 11 September and does not regain any until 30 March

Parts of the Northern Elevation lie in shadow on the summer solstice an hour after sunrise

Generally, when photographing buildings, some direct light is desirable. If it’s impossible, then two options:

Photograph on a cloudy or partly cloudy day, relying on the clouds to diffuse the light and reduce the contrast
Photograph at twilight when the building may be illuminated by artificial lights

If relying on artificial lighting, evenings are generally a better bet: many buildings don’t turn on lighting in the early morning hours as often few people are there to see it.

Raking Light

If you spend enough time in art galleries or dealers, you’ll eventually come across the sight of a curator or appraiser looking closely at a painting while holding a torch off to one side. This raking light is used to reveal the texture of the surface of a painting. It can reveal how the artist used impasto to build up the paint, details of brush work, or highlight damages or losses.

We can use sunlight in a similar way with buildings. The key thing is to evaluate the texture and depth of the building’s façade in order to know the right angle of light. Here in Boulder, Colorado, we set out to document the changes of raking sunlight on the south elevation of an older brick building that faces onto Pearl St to the north (see the shot plan). Back in the sixties and seventies, this used to be a women’s clothing store called China Jones, which you can just about still make out painted on the left‑hand side in the photo:

We had begun shooting some 40 minutes earlier at 07:00 when the light was in theory just about to start hitting the façade directly. However, small details make all the difference in the world - the building to the right extended out a few inches farther, thus blocking the light from reaching the China Jones building. But looking how it evolved over those 40 minutes:

The gutters, the small recessing of the windows and doors, the random sticking out length of down pipe: all are involved in a play of light and shadow across the features and textures of this modest building.

So what? The key lesson is to stick around and keep shooting - no planning software could have indicated exactly how this scene would evolve. The first shots in the sequence are dull and flat, with the right‑hand window hiding in shadow.

By the end, we have the texture of the brickwork revealed in the shadows cast mid‑way across the boarded up windows, the grain of the wooden loading doors picked out in the morning light, and the rough hewn lintels showing their texture - much more interesting!

Planning and Patience

Architectural photography requires both planning and patience.

You need to understand your subject, its site restrictions, and how the light will evolve through the shoot in advance.

You need to know what the expected weather conditions will be so you can adjust accordingly.

Once on location, you need to be patient: even in the absence of weather, light can evolve quickly and in ways that can make or break a shot. Avoid being in a rush and give yourself the time and space to linger in order to make the most of the opportunity.

With the Northern Hemisphere summer and the travel season fast approaching, be sure to start planning now in order to maximise your chances to come back with a winning portfolio.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it with your photographer friends!

Architectural Photography, Part 4: Fixing Wide-angle Distortion

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 23:08:07 GMT

At the end of the previous article, we had corrected the converging verticals and the slight horizontal yaw of our photograph, and yet things still aren’t quite right:

The spires appear too thin. The perspective correction has left some unnatural-looking shapes, easily seen by comparing the original uncorrected image (left) with the corrected version (right):

While we now have properly rectified verticals, they have come at a price.

Avoiding Wide-angle Distortion

Wide-angle lenses can distort objects that appear towards the edges of the frame. The problem often occurs in vertical-format images, where the tops of tall buildings appear stretched out, or spherical light fittings in ceilings appear as ellipses.

This happens with both normal and tilt/shift lenses. It’s a natural consequence of linear perspective – it’s a geometric inevitability, not a fault in the lens or camera.

You can avoid this in a few ways:

Use a longer focal length lens: the longer the focal length, the less wide-angle distortion.
Move back from your subject as needed: this may go hand in hand with the preceding point, but even if you kept the same lens, the subject would be further from the edges of the frame, where distortion is greatest.

However, in many situations, it’s unavoidable, such as in the case of the east elevation of Durham Cathedral. There’s no way to move further back.

Correcting Wide-angle Distortion

There are a number of ways to do this. The simplest is to distort areas of the image using tools such as Photoshop’s Transform/Distort – you can make a selection of the required area and simply deform it to correct the distortion by eye.

However, DxO’s ViewPoint 5 software is dedicated to geometrical and perspective corrections, and that’s what we’ll use to try to improve our spires. In fact, if you visit the website, you may note that a number of the example images are buildings with towers, spires, domes or cupolas!

I’m using ViewPoint 5 as a plug-in to Lightroom Classic. I’m using the image at the top of this page as the starting point. As a reminder, this was taken using a Nikkor 14-30mm zoom at 19mm, with the camera pitched upwards to fit the building within the frame. The verticals have been rectified using the tools included in Lightroom. I could equally well have used ViewPoint to accomplish this.

With the image opened in ViewPoint, I’m going to start by using the Reshape Fusion tool. This displays a grid of points over the image. You can choose the number of grid points, but for our purposes, the more the merrier, so we’ll use 32:

The tool has three modes. We’re going to use Move mode so we can pull the pixels around by selecting and adjusting some of the grid points.

Widening the Towers

The towers look too thin with the rectified verticals. Let’s widen them a little. The key to these adjustments is not to overdo it so that they look like obvious corrections that have been applied. Our goal is to achieve a natural look such that the eye is not drawn to features because they look slightly bizarre.

First, we’ll widen the left-hand tower. Here, I’ve selected the first few columns of grid points using the mouse:

New in ViewPoint 5 is the Propagation slider. By default, this is at zero, so moving the selected grid points affects only that area of the image and nothing more. However, it’s often useful to enable some amount of propagation for better control and more subtle effects:

The points in red are fully affected by the move. Those in green are unaffected. The orange and yellow colours indicate how the move’s propagation changes. Increasing the propagation further would change more of the green points to yellow or orange as you move to the right across the image.

Why only select the points to the left of the building? That way we can use propagation to widen just the tower in a highly controlled fashion and avoid making any change at all to the proportions of the main façade.

Next, click one of the selected points and use the mouse or, even better, the keyboard arrow keys to move the affected part of the image. Here I’ve moved things left.

“ Move ” is slightly misleading, as really this is a similar effect to Photoshop’s Transform/Distort, but with variable distortion depending on the propagation.

Next, we can change the selection and do the same thing on the right-hand side:

Let’s look at what we’ve achieved. Here’s a comparison of the left-hand spire. The adjusted version with the widened tower and spire is shown on the left:

Hopefully, it’s clear the proportions now appear rather more natural. We’ll show the overall effect on the full image below.

Adjusting Local Distortions

There’s more we can do. We still haven’t fully addressed those uncomfortable-looking areas on the right-hand side of the left spire. The angles look too sharp to the eye. We can make a further local adjustment to try to address that. Here, we need very little propagation at all:

With the local selection made and propagation reduced to avoid pulling the roofline out of shape, we’re ready to go. Using the up arrow key, we can move the area up slightly to open up the angles better. Here’s the before (left) and after (right) – it’s a subtle change, but it makes it look much more natural:

We can do the same for the right-hand spire too. It takes a little trial and error to get things just right. Remember that you can always change your grid point selection and keep refining things until you achieve the results you want.

And here’s the before (left) and after (right) for the right-hand spire:

Final Comparison

Let’s look at the corrected image. On the left is the starting point for this article (vertical and horizontals corrected). On the right is the version with the wide-angle distortion corrections:

I haven’t tried to remove all the distortion as it risks introducing new oddities into the image. There’s some compromise between having fully rectified verticals and having no wide-angle distortion. Nonetheless, with the wide-angle corrections made in ViewPoint 5, I think the final result looks more natural and the spires no longer catch the eye for all the wrong reasons.

You might decide not to fully rectify the verticals in order to avoid the distortion, but you should know your audience first – some viewers will be much more bothered by converging verticals than any remaining wide-angle distortion!

In the next instalment of this series, we’ll discuss natural light planning for architectural photography.

Architectural Photography, Part 3: Fixing Converging Verticals

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 19:19:20 GMT

In this third post about architectural photography, we’ll look at how to fix converging verticals in your shots of buildings.

Fixing Converging Verticals

If we can’t avoid unintended converging verticals in-camera, we must fix them in post-processing.

Tools for this task are included in many photo software packages, for example, operating system apps such as Apple Photos, well-known titles such as Adobe Lightroom, and dedicated tools such as Hugin and DxO ViewPoint.

Transform Tools in Lightroom Classic

Let’s try to fix the 14-30mm lens image using Lightroom Classic. Go into Develop Mode and look for the Transform panel on the right-hand side. We’ll start with the image from Part 2, with the pronounced converging verticals:

There are a number of automated options in the button group at the top of the panel – we’ll focus our attention on these (you can use the manual sliders below instead or in addition if you prefer).

First: on this particular image, Auto really doesn’t work. It stops far short of actually rectifying the verticals. This may be due to how extreme the convergence is in this case. Generally speaking, there are better options than Auto if you want to be certain that things are actually correct.

Let’s try Vertical next – after all, that’s what we’re trying to fix:

This will detect and attempt to correct converging verticals in the image. You can see that it does a pretty good job, but you might note that it seems to have overdone things – it looks as if the verticals now converge towards the bottom of the image.

How about the Full option?

This gives the same result as the Vertical option, but it also corrects for any unintentional camera yaw relative to a direct on-axis view. However, the verticals are over-corrected.

The best option, I find, is Guided. This requires you to add guidelines to define the converging verticals and horizontal(s) if needed. Here, I’ve placed two guidelines that define lines on the building that should appear strictly parallel in the image. Lightroom shows a high-precision loupe that helps you to place them accurately:

Once applied, the verticals are now corrected – at a price:

In order to achieve parallel verticals, the lower half of the image has been compressed horizontally to a significant degree. The white areas indicate the extent.

Correcting Horizontals

We can make an additional correction as well. You would want to do this if you hadn’t quite achieved a perfect alignment in a composition that was intended to be on-axis. Here’s an exaggerated example of what an “ off-axis ” alignment would look like: note how the alignment of the camera to the east transept under the red pin is not straight.

If you have any off-axis alignment, you can add two guides to indicate which horizontals are intended to be on-axis and the tool will correct the image accordingly:

Let’s compare the Guided result with the Full result – I think it’s clear that the Guided approach gives a much better, more natural-looking result:

It’s not always possible for the algorithm to select the correct verticals or horizontals to align, particularly in more complex architecture. In this image there are multiple receding verticals in close proximity – that’s likely what causes the overcorrection observed when using the Vertical or Full options.

Comparing the Tilt/Shift 19mm and 14-30mm Zoom Images

This is an interesting exercise and might tell you something about whether you wish to invest in a tilt/shift lens. With the same Lightroom adjustments and the widest possible crop allowing for the guided transform correction losses (the white areas you see in the images above), here are the results – the tilt/shift image is on the left and the 14-30mm zoom is on the right.

It’s interesting to see how the tilt/shift image (right) provides more horizontal pixels and the zoom lens more vertical pixels, even though the camera position is unchanged between the two shots and the focal length is the same. Arguably the 14-30mm image is the better crop, even though it doesn’t need to be as tall as shown. A couple of conclusions stand out:

The tilt/shift gives more pixels that cover the actual subject, the cathedral
Due to the more extreme camera pitch angle, the pixels from the zoom lens have been “ pushed around ” a lot more in order to correct the perspective

Here’s a comparison of the images at 100% zoom (14-30mm left, 19mm tilt/shift right):

The pixel pushing in the 14-30mm image isn’t particularly apparent to my eye, even though this area of the image has undergone significant horizontal compression during the perspective correction process.

In this particular case, the best possible result would likely have come from doing a tilt/shift stitch, i.e., taking images with the tilt/shift at multiple orientations of shift and rotation around the shift axis. Because each image is already perspective-corrected, and the picture plane is not adjusted between each frame, stitching these together is a simple operation that gives very high-resolution results with an extremely wide field of view.

A wide-angle panorama can be achieved with much greater precision and control using the tilt/shift lens than with the zoom. This is a strong argument in favour of having one in your kit bag.

For high-resolution print display, the tilt/shift is clearly going to give you more usable pixels on the same camera than a non-perspective-correcting zoom or prime.

So, now you know how to fix both verticals and horizontals using the Guided tool. These tools work similarly in other software, so the principles remain the same.

Always be careful to place the guides precisely – a small error can result in strange-looking images. Even more important, carefully select where you place the guides – are you certain that the verticals should be vertical (hopefully yes)? Are you trying to apply a horizontal correction to something that was intentionally photographed off-axis (hopefully no)?

With these fixes in place, our image is looking much better. However, there’s still one slightly disconcerting thing – the top of the building on the left and right seems stretched and distorted. It doesn’t look natural.

We’ll cover how to address these wide-angle distortions in the next part of this series.

Architectural Photography, Part 2: Equipment

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 15:59:20 GMT

In this second post on architectural photography, we’ll discuss equipment selection (cameras, lenses, tripods and tripod heads) and some of the implications of the kit you have to hand, particularly in post‑processing.

A smartphone is enough

You don’t need to invest thousands in specialist kit to achieve good results. A handheld modern smartphone can produce excellent images. As long as you don’t need to blow up the resulting photographs for large‑scale print display, you’ll probably be fine.

Here’s an example from Siena, Italy, showing the Piazza del Campo in evening light, taken on an iPhone 14 PRO:

The photo was taken using the stock camera app, and wasn’t even shot in RAW. However, it has had a lot of post‑processing work to fix several issues in the original shot. We’ll cover the types of adjustments that were required in a later post.

Things you should do when using a smartphone for architectural work:

Shoot in RAW, using the highest resolution possible
Keep the camera as level as possible (more on this below).

Avoiding converging verticals

To avoid converging verticals in‑camera, you must ensure everything is level — the picture plane (i.e. your camera’s sensor) must be aligned with the horizon and not pitched up or down. If you’re unsure why it’s important to avoid unintentional converging verticals, read Architectural Photography, Part 1: Perspective.

First off, some words on equipment. All of the following will help you get your camera level and ensure you can capture sharp images.

Camera support

If at all possible, use a high‑quality tripod.

For travel, a lightweight model such as the Gitzo Traveller series is perfect. You’ll find many more options from other manufacturers too.

Where weight isn’t a consideration, a larger tripod such as the Gitzo Systematic series will add stability and give you the best chance of capturing the sharpest shots possible.

If a tripod is not an option, a good monopod will still be helpful. In the absence of that, find a wall, a lamppost, a park bench and use good camera‑handling technique — arms tucked in, breathe out before shooting, etc.

Tripod head

Many professional architectural photographers use geared heads, which allow fine control of camera alignment, usually in three axes (pitch, roll, yaw). If you have the budget, this is highly recommended. The ability to make micro‑adjustments is extremely useful in the field. You might never go back to your old ball head again! Additionally, geared heads are great for astronomical and even landscape work — the only trade‑off is usually higher weight.

At the top of the range, you’ll find things like the Arca Swiss D4 Series. You will need a healthy bank balance to buy one. Alternatively, you can find remarkably similar products from Leofoto at a fraction of the price, or even lower‑cost options from other makers.

Camera mount

For smartphones, something like the Oben ASPTA-20 is a great choice (it’s made of solid aluminium). You can pair it with a Bluetooth remote such as the Joby Impulse 2.

For cameras, an L‑bracket is a great choice. Three Legged Thing makes some nice models, but beware mechanical interference with remote releases. I had to switch from a hard‑wired model to a wireless remote to avoid problems in portrait mode when using the ZOOEY QD model on my Nikon Z8.

Note: the central tripod column is slightly extended in this photo. It’s best to avoid doing that unless strictly necessary.

Levelling the camera

Many cameras, particularly higher‑end models, include a digital level in the viewfinder or rear screen. If your camera does not have this feature, then some tripod heads include a two‑axis bubble level. You can also add a hot‑shoe bubble level to your camera directly.

If you’re shooting on an iPhone, some camera apps may include a digital level for both pitch and roll (although the stock camera app only shows roll). Alternatively, if you’re using the phone with a tripod and mount, you can level the camera using the Augmented Reality (AR) view in The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE):

Durham Cathedral - East Elevation

Let’s look at an example. Here’s a one‑point perspective view of the east face of the glorious Durham Cathedral in England. I’m using a 14–30mm zoom set to 19mm on a full‑frame camera. The camera is perfectly level, as shown by the green digital level marks, and we’ve avoided converging verticals:

Oh dear.

Even at a short focal length, the vertical field of view is nowhere near wide enough to encompass the full height of the building. We can’t move the camera any further back — there’s nowhere to go:

Even opening up the lens to 14mm won’t accommodate the full structure. We’re forced to pitch the camera lens upward. This is a very common scenario.

Perspective‑control lenses

We can fix the converging verticals in post‑production, but if you’re doing a lot of architectural work, a tilt/shift or perspective control lens may be a good choice. You can avoid a lot of pixel‑pushing with a tilt‑shift lens, capturing what you need directly in‑camera. For large volumes of work, this can be a real time‑saver.

The downsides of a tilt‑shift are cost, weight and, in some cases, a lack of weather sealing or the inability to use filters. They are also manual‑focus lenses.

Switching to a 19mm Tilt/Shift, we can adjust the shift upward to bring the building into the frame:

This is accomplished simply by moving the lens upward relative to the camera using the shift control:

The tilt function changes the focal plane of the projected image circle relative to the camera sensor. We don’t need that here.

You might notice that even with the tilt‑shift lens shifted almost to its maximum, we’re still not quite capturing the full height of the towers. So even here, a small degree of upward pitch is required — sometimes you just have to be flexible!

So, we end up with slightly converging verticals, but it’s considerably less than when using the 14–30mm zoom:

This image is not usable as‑is without correcting the converging verticals — it just looks odd.

You might say, hold on — that’s more upward pitch than was strictly required. There’s a reason for that, which will become clear when we try to correct the convergence; we’ll come to that in Architectural Photography, Part 3: Fixing Converging Verticals.

Architectural Photography, Part 1: Perspective

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 11:29:35 GMT

This is the first in a series of brief introductory articles on architectural photography. We’ll cover everything you need to know in order to plan, execute and process your images of buildings to a high standard.

In this part, we’ll consider perspective and how it applies to architectural work.

A Brief Recap of the Development of Linear Perspective

As our main focus is photography, this section is abbreviated - for a fuller account, see The History of Perspective.

But why bother with the history of perspective? It’s worth reviewing as the principles have informed representations of buildings in art, drawing, engraving and more for over 600 years, and arguably much longer.

The Renaissance

Perspective is the representation of a three-dimensional scene onto a two-dimensional picture plane (a sheet of paper, a canvas, or a camera sensor). While the roots of perspective can be seen in antiquity, such as in the frescoes of Pompeii, mathematically correct geometrical rules were first developed in the early 15th century and were employed by artists and architects such as Brunelleschi, Masaccio and Piero della Francesca.

Artists of the Renaissance frequently used single-point perspective, favoured for its symmetry and simplicity. One-point perspective is characterised by lines converging to a single vanishing point located within the picture plane. A famous example is Raphael’s School of Athens: all the lines converge to a point behind the central figures of Plato and Aristotle.

Note how horizontal and vertical lines that are ‘on-axis’ to the viewer remain parallel to the frame, allowing Renaissance artists to achieve beautifully balanced compositions with a nod to classicism and antiquity.

The 17th and 18th Centuries

The foundations of modern representational imagery of architecture were laid in the 17th century in northern Europe by Dutch painters such as Vermeer, in his View of Delft, Pieter Saenredam in his precise depictions of church interiors, and Gerrit Berckheyde’s townscapes, such as The Grote Markt and Grote Kerk, Haarlem:

Dutch-born Gaspar Van Wittel exported this tradition to Italy, moving there in 1674 and adopting the name “ Gaspare Vanvitelli ”. He created “ vedute ” (views) of Venice and Rome, which informed the development of the famous Italian vedutisti of the 18th century and beyond such as Luca Carlevarijs, Canaletto, and Guardi.

It was not until the 18th century that two-point perspective came into regular use. Two-point perspective employs two vanishing points on the horizon line. If you depict the corner of a building, the lines of each façade converge to different points, often lying outside the picture frame. Only vertical lines remain parallel to the frame.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi grew up in early 18th-century Venice, surrounded by its stunning architecture and light, and in proximity to its busy theatre scene, where scene painters such as Bernardo Canal, together with his son Antonio “ Canaletto ”, were busy reducing buildings to effective two-dimensional stage representations to dazzle audiences.

Piranesi, like fellow Venetian Antonio Visentini, was primarily an architect who earned fame as a draftsman and artist. Both Visentini and Piranesi recorded the architecture of Venice and Rome in highly popular collections of drawings and engravings. But the styles of the two differ significantly.

Visentini’s work and his collaborations with Canaletto mostly use single-point perspective, such as in The Canal Grande with San Simeone Piccolo and the Scalzi. He ventures only into two-point perspective to accommodate the twists and turns of Venice’s canals that place some buildings off-axis to the viewer (see San Geremia and the Entrance of Cannaregio).

In contrast, Piranesi frequently makes use of two-point perspective, for example, in this view of the Tempio di Bellona (more correctly called “ View of the Atrium of the Portico of Octavia ”):

Essentially all the 18th-century view painters and engravers, and their successors through to the 20th century, employed a mix of single- and two-point linear perspective — although some used additional tricks, discussed below.

Three Point Perspective

Three-point perspective introduces an additional convergence point: the verticals converge to a point either above (towards the zenith) or below (towards the nadir).

While the technique was known in the 17th century (it was illustrated by Hans Vredeman de Vries in 1605), it was not routinely used by artists until much later. The ever-imaginative Piranesi employs it in some of his studies (this example from his Six Studies of Colonnades is particularly fascinating).

Artists of the 20th century use three-point perspective much more frequently in their depictions of buildings, perhaps the most familiar being M.C. Escher, for example in Escher’s 1928 woodcut The Tower of Babel or Howard Cook’s views of the 1920s New York skyline, with the verticals converging towards the zenith.

Three-point perspective is used to create a sense of scale, or a feeling of unease - such as ‘falling’ to the nadir - in the viewer.

Arguably, the day-to-day role of depicting buildings was usurped in the 19th century by photography, causing artists to seek out new ways of expressing character and atmosphere.

Visual Language of Perspective

If you draw only one conclusion from the brief history of perspective above, I hope it is that we have been conditioned for hundreds of years to expect depictions of architecture that use one- or two-point perspective. Three-point perspective is the relative newcomer.

More fundamentally, single-point perspective provides a powerful compositional tool to emphasise the impact and monumental nature of architecture. It allows for symmetry, provides space in which to emphasise repeated elements - repetition being such a powerful visual aphrodisiac - and affords a sense of immediacy and depth for the viewer’s eye to explore.

Two-point perspective allows the artist or photographer to highlight volume and shape, to explore contrasts of lighting, and selectively to reveal or obscure secondary elements (a distant landscape, a neighbouring building) by careful choice of viewpoint.

Three-point perspective - assuming it is employed intentionally - destabilises an image for the viewer, in the sense of looking over a void or leaning back to absorb the view that looms over your head. Gravity has taught us that leaning buildings tend to fall down. Standing next to leaning buildings makes people uneasy - even if it is only a picture of one.

Architectural photography should be guided by a desire to reflect the character and merits of the building in the best way possible. If the architect is striving for stability or symmetry, then it’s likely inappropriate to seek to undermine this by use of three-point perspective. Worse yet, doing so unintentionally. If on the other hand, the architect has included an element of whimsy in the design, a playful three-point perspective might be the perfect complement.

However, your “ go-to ” compositions should be one- or two-point perspective.

Perspective in Practice

Some Terminology

Thinking about your camera mounted on a tripod, here are some terms we’ll use in the explanations below:

Pitch – Rotation up or down, like nodding your head “ yes ”. – The camera tilts forward or backward, changing the angle of view vertically (e.g., from the horizon to the sky or ground).
Roll – Rotation side to side, like tilting your head to the shoulder. – The camera rotates around the lens axis, so the horizon appears slanted or level.
Yaw – Rotation left or right, like shaking your head “ no ”. – The camera pans horizontally, changing what’s in the frame from left to right.

Here are three examples of one-, two- and three-point perspective for the same building, the Moot Hall in Hexham, Northumberland:

One Point Perspective

This single-point perspective photo of the east elevation of the Moot Hall illustrates a couple of key points:

The horizontal and vertical lines of the main structure are essentially parallel to the picture frame - allowing for a little medieval imprecision on the left-hand roofline
Pitch and roll are both zero: the camera is level
The lines of the terraced houses to the left and right of the image converge to a single point within the picture frame on the horizon line

The building is presented as the central focus of the image in a static, slightly monumental view.

Two Point Perspective

In the two-point perspective image, the camera has moved to the right of the previous position and rotated to the left to provide a corner view of the building (yaw adjustment). Due to other buildings opposite, the camera is also necessarily closer to the building and so cannot show the full height. Key points to note:

The verticals remain parallel to the picture frame (pitch is zero)
The horizontal stone lines on the east elevation converge to a vanishing point off to the left of the picture frame
The horizontal lines on the north elevation (darker, on the right) converge to a second vanishing point off to the right of the frame
Roll is zero - the picture is level, but yaw is adjusted such that the camera is now off-axis to the elevation of the Moot Hall that we showed in the one-point perspective photo above

Three Point Perspective

Finally, in this three-point perspective shot, the vertical lines converge to a point outside the top of the frame - towards the ‘zenith’. Otherwise, the shot is the same composition as used for the two-point perspective image above - the only difference is that the camera is pointed upwards (positive pitch adjustment).

Remember too that you can have converging verticals in an image that is otherwise one-point perspective: in such a case the horizontals remain parallel to the picture frame, but the verticals converge toward the top of the frame in this camera-back shot of Durham Cathedral:

Here’s the critical point: to capture one- or two-point perspective shots straight out of the camera, the camera must be level with the horizon. Here we’re talking about pitch: the lens must not be pointed either up or down, but must be aligned level with the horizon. This is not the same thing as a level horizon (the ‘roll’ of the camera) - having a ‘wonky’ horizon does not change the perspective (but it will usually detract from your image).

To master your use of perspective you’ll need to get comfortable identifying each type. Have a look at the images linked above and observe how the building horizontals and verticals behave. Then pick up an architectural photography book or magazine and do the same. Repeat until you can confidently identify the type being used - you’ll likely find most collections are dominated by single-point perspective examples.

Some Practical Realities

Art is not photography. Cities are not laid out on perfectly rectilinear grids.

It’s sometimes impossible to construct a reduction of a scene to ideal linear perspective. Let’s look again at the Berckheyde Haarlem image:

In trying to identify the vanishing point for the Grote Kerk and the house on the far left of the frame, it appears that they converge separately. Nonetheless, the image ‘feels’ like it is executed in one-point perspective. Why might that be? Perhaps Berckheyde was not strictly following the rules of single-point linear perspective, either deliberately or unknowingly. Or perhaps it is simply that the two buildings are not laid out strictly opposite one another - and in fact, we can use TPE (The Photographer’s Ephemeris) to demonstrate that this is indeed the likely explanation:

In other cases it has been shown that artists have chosen not to follow strict linear perspective. Repeating elements, such as windows, colonnades, or the arches of a bridge, recede into the distance as expected, but occupy greater width in the image than they would if drawn strictly according to the rules.

The effect is such that the final drawing or painting is a synthesis of multiple viewpoints, carefully chosen to make a better impact on the viewer. Both Piranesi and Canaletto have been shown to do this.

Bruno Postle’s piece Piranesi’s Perspective Trick shows convincingly how this was accomplished, explained in simple terms. A rigorous analysis of the same phenomenon has been published by Joanna Rapp: A geometrical analysis of multiple viewpoint perspective in the work of Giovanni Battista Piranesi: an application of geometric restitution of perspective.

As photographers, we cannot achieve exactly what Piranesi and Canaletto did in a single image; we can’t fully replicate their look, even when the buildings they drew or painted remain standing today. I haven’t quite worked out whether it is possible to accomplish this by compositing multiple images - an intriguing possibility.

But there are some things we can and should do.

Perspective for Photographers

Be Intentional

Successful architectural photography starts with planning and intentionality. Know what it is that you’re photographing. What is the function of the building? What impression was the architect seeking to make? What references to preceding styles or buildings can you identify? What is the context of the building, its surroundings and situation?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help you decide how best to employ perspective in your photographs.

Single Point Simplicity

Well-executed single-point perspective will often give high-impact results. You’ll still need to think about focal length, precise viewpoint selection, camera alignment, lighting and much more, but it’s a great starting point.

Restraint in Three Point Perspective

Three-point perspective should be used only sparingly and never unintentionally. Employ it only for suitable subjects. Be extremely careful not to overdo the vertical convergence - Howard Cook shows us how it can be incorporated into your images successfully.

Avoid (or Fix) Converging Verticals

The most common ‘tell’ of naive architectural photography is unintentional converging verticals. They are a natural consequence of needing to tilt the camera (almost always) upward in order to accommodate the building within the frame, but generally they should be corrected, unless you were actually intending to use three-point perspective.

How? We’ll cover that in Architectural Photography, Part 2: Equipment.

Introducing Photo WX™ – Weather for Photographers

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 17:03:45 GMT

We’re delighted to introduce Photo WX, our new weather service designed especially for photographers. You can now access weather maps designed especially for photographers, directly from the site.

Weather for Photographers

We all check the weather – it governs so much of our lives and outdoor pursuits. But outdoor photographers have a unique relationship to its effects on natural light and our personal safety and comfort.

We’ve spent the past year thinking through exactly what we’d want to see in a specialist photography weather service. The result is Photo WX. Here are a few things we think make it stand out:

Sun, Moon and Weather: weather and natural light all in one place
Clouds matter: multiple sources of multi-level cloud forecasts
Smoke and Visibility: a critical concern for photographers, especially in recent years
Night and Astro Photography: transparency, seeing and Dew Point Depression forecasts
Wind: photographers have a love/hate relationship with wind, trading off dynamic light with sharp images

Clouds and Light

It’s one thing knowing the path of the Sun and Moon over the landscape, but it’s another to know how they will be affected by clouds. To that end, Photo WX includes multi-level cloud maps that allow you to see through layers of high cloud to understand what lies beneath.

Together with the altitude and azimuth of the Sun and Moon, you can read the forecast to predict natural light conditions or the effective visibility of the Moon.

We were featured this week in an article on Redfin: How to Create the Perfect Home Video Studio in 5 Steps | Redfin.

Uneven or shifting sunlight from the moving Sun or passing clouds can distract viewers and create an inconsistent look. Use The Photographer’s Ephemeris to check sunlight angles and our Photo WX service for cloud conditions. If lighting is unpredictable, use diffusing blinds and add fill light. Sidelighting or three-quarter lighting on the presenter adds depth, and keeping the light at a similar height avoids awkward shadows or an uplit look.

Forecasts for Night and Astro Photography

We’ve included the Canadian Meteorological Centre’s astronomical forecasts of seeing and transparency, which cover the majority of North America. These, together with the smoke and visibility forecasts provided by HRRR and other models, give great insight into observing conditions across the continent.

Additionally, the Dew Point Depression forecast, which gives the difference between air temperature and dew point temperature, is a reliable indicator of the potential for lens fogging when shooting at night.

Coverage and Availability

Photo WX includes a mix of global, regional and country-focused models, so you’re guaranteed to find at least a couple of weather models that cover your location. If you’re in North America or Europe, the choice is wider. We offer HRRR, NAM, RAP and GEM Astro for North America, and the UK Met Office 2km model, plus Méteo France Arome HD and Arpege for Europe.

Selected weather variables are available without subscription for a subset of models. A Supporter subscription will unlock access to high-resolution forecasts and individual cloud layer data. PRO subscribers have an all-access pass included with their current subscription – it’s a tonne of additional functionality and data at no extra cost.

We’ll be working to further expand the offering during 2025, adding more weather models and forecast layers, and fine-tuning the capacity and performance of the new platform.

If there’s something you’d particularly like to see, let us know. We hope you enjoy using Photo WX – try it out today!

Fall Photography Lighting Tips

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 02:17:33 GMT

And all of sudden, it’s September, the beginning of climatological autumn here in the northern hemisphere.

It’s perhaps the most exciting time of all for outdoor photography - changing colors, unpredictable weather, and all-too-brief moments of perfect conditions to shoot the changing foliage.

You’re probably already thinking about where and when to go photographing in the next couple of months, let’s review some basic tips for how to be in the right place at the right time for ideal lighting conditions.

Tip #1 : Avoid Front-lit Foliage

Maybe the most important tip of all: avoid front-light on foliage.

Front lighting is a mood killer for leaves. Typically, they appear flat and opaque, without any of the beautiful glow that sets the best fall foliage photography apart. This photo was taken near Wolf Creek Pass last October. If you’re unfamiliar with Colorado, the trees are the typical mix of aspen and pine. The aspen leaves turn to a mix of golden yellows, orange and sometimes reds in a good year.

Taken later in the afternoon, the Sun is at the right of the shot, slightly behind the camera:

Even without being fully front-lit, this image is at best only ok - the leaves don’t really pop. A polariser may help, but its never going to look great.

What we really need is backlighting.

Tip #2: Backlighting is magical

Here’s another shot - it was taken at a location close to the photo above. A slight twist in the course of the road down the west side of the path placed the afternoon sun behind this small group of trees. The difference in effect is huge:

Again, the trees aren’t even fully backlit here: the Sun is still off to the right of the shot, but the angle is such that the light just squeaks in from behind the leaves instead of in front. Gone is the flat, opaque look, replaced by a glowing translucency and rich colors, with the added bonus of some deep shadows behind the bright yellow aspen.

When planning your times and locations, think about when particular stands of trees are likely to be backlit and aim for those. Often, it can simply be a matter of how you position the camera relative to the subject:

For a photographer located at the red pin on a mid-October afternoon at Wolf Creek, your orientation determines backlighting vs front-lighting. Of course, not all directions will have the best stands of trees!

In other locations, such as shooting Chimney Rock to the south along Owl Creek Pass, CO, the Sun sweeps past behind the trees through the arc of the day. This photo was taken mid-morning well after the best light of sunrise. The Sun, to the left of the shot, was at a perfect angle to backlight this attractive aspen grove:

This photo illustrates another tip: it’s sometimes necessary to tilt the camera upwards to frame up a shot. The result can be that the trees appear to converge vertically. In architectural photography, this would be an absolute “ no-no ”. But even in landscape work, converging tree-tops leaning into the center of your shot can look a little odd. A small adjustment using the vertical transform tool in Lightroom can straighten things up nicely, as shown above.

Tip #3: Clouds

Overcast conditions without direct sun generally help the photographer by bouncing light around the leaves, softening front glare and providing increased ambient lighting behind foliage. If you can get in amongst the trees, clouds help you capture rich, detailed images that draw the viewer’s eye. Here’s Last Dollar Road in southwest Colorado, in early October:

The glow is not so pronounced but it’s still there, more gentle and with less contrast providing huge scope for refinement in post.

And even if you can’t get up close to the trees, clouds in the sky will often bring additional visual interest to a scene. Here’s McClure Pass (yes - also in Colorado!) again, in early October:

Tip #4: Twilight

Does this photo show sunset or twilight? Well, both. The photographer is standing in a location at which sunset has already passed. But the summit of Mount Sneffels, at over 14,000 feet raised high above its surroundings, remains lit by the setting Sun due to its elevation above the horizon.

The aspen trees are photographed in twilight, with no direct light reaching them. Although the skies are largely clear, the ambient twilight has an effect similar to cloud cover, providing even, soft light that allows the leaves to glow.

Remember, breezy or gusty conditions will make shooting during twilight difficult - exposures are necessarily longer and so any gusts that shake the trees may result in soft looking foliage.

Even if you find yourself cursed by clear skies, the soft twilight glow can allow a pleasing photograph to be made. Here are the famous Maroon Bells on one such morning before sunrise:

In Summary

Identify your locations in advance
What directions can you shoot in?
At what times of day will the trees be backlit? (hint: use TPE)
Check the weather forecast - look for clouds, wind (and early snow can be magical!)
Stay flexible
Have fun!

Orange Aspen in the snow, Utah

Extreme Moon

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 19:57:08 GMT

The photo above shows a rather unusual combination of subjects for southern Wyoming. This was taken during last month’s famous G5 solar storm, where the Aurora Borealis was visible much farther south than usual. At the same time, the young moon was setting noticeably farther north than usual, due to its near extreme northerly declination.

The combination depends on the near coincidence of the solar maximum and the major lunar standstill. Both reach their peaks in 2025, but, like the 2024 cicadas, they run on different cycles and only coincide very occasionally.

Tomorrow’s Full Moon

Tomorrow night’s Full Moon, 21 June 2024, is an interesting one.

Occuring one day after the solstice, due to the clock of our celestial mechanics, the Moon also rises at its own standstill: its extreme southerly declination.

If you compare the direction of tomorrow’s Moonrise vs other dates, you’ll quickly spot that it is farther to the the south than pretty much any other you’ll find. This is because the Moon is at its minimum declination, and also near the time of its extreme of the cyclical variation which occurs over a ~18.6 year period: we’re close to the “ major lunar standstill ”.

For photographers, this means a couple of things:

Alignments which may not be possible at times other than the major lunar standstill: the Moon will rise and set farther north or farther south than at any other time in the cycle
Juxtapositions which may not otherwise be possible: the Moon will be observed at its extremes of altitude (highest and lowest) as it transits to the South or North

For example, in London, you’ll be able to see the full moon low in the sky hanging above the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, a little above General Wolfe’s head! A rising full moon this far south is an uncommon thing for most latitudes:

Here in Colorado, you’ll be able to juxtapose the Full Moon with the spectacular Lone Eagle Peak, which is best photographed from the north looking south. At most times, the Moon would be far too high in the sky to get it anywhere close to the peak whilst maintaining a reasonable composition, but not tomorrow night:

There will be further “ Extreme Moon ” moments over the next year or so, as we enter the major lunar standstill season. Just as the Sun rises and sets nearly in the same place each day around the solstices, the Moon ‘hangs around’ its extreme declinations for a year and a bit. This spring marked the start of that season.

If you’d like to know more about lunar declination and the major lunar standstill, you can watch a replay our recent webinar “ Extreme Moon ”:

Additionally, we have a help article where you can read about it in more detail.

April 8 Eclipse In Review

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 19:30:00 GMT

So, it finally happened. After months of prep and work to add solar eclipse features in Photo Ephemeris, we finally got to see the April 8 total eclipse!

We traveled on a no-frills tour to a location near Torreón in northern Mexico. The actual observation site was a football field on a university campus near the town of Bermejillo, a 45 minute coach drive north of Torreón, and just north of the central line. As we drove farther north, things began to look rather worse in terms of clouds. Having set up on the field, I took a short video a few minutes before first contact:

Things continued in this manner for almost the entire time until C2. Occasionally there’d be a glimpse of the partially eclipsed Sun and a cheer would go up from the crowd, the volume rising and falling as the clouds thinned and then regrouped:

From comments around me, a number of photographers were having trouble acquiring focus, given the thickness of the clouds and the fleeting glimpses we were afforded. I was happy to have set up back button focus on my camera: rather than the camera trying to focus every time you half-press the shutter, it only focusses on pressing the separate AF-ON button on the back of the camera.

There’s no faster way to lose focus than attempting to re-focus every shot - particularly for a subject behind moving clouds. Even without clouds present, as the Sun and Moon move through the frame, they can easily drift away from your selected focus point, leaving your camera with nothing to focus on. Instead, with back button focus, you can seize a moment of clarity, press AF-ON, and then leave it well alone.

Manual focus would work too, but I just can’t trust my eyesight to get it right (this was the case even when my vision was very good). Focus peaking certainly helps, but I find the AF system in the Nikon Z8 to be excellent, so I don’t need to rely on manual.

In what felt like a miracle at the time, around 10 minutes before C2, the clouds started to thin out. Looking to the southwest, from where the shadow would be arriving, some small stretches of clear sky began to appear. It was tantalising. Even before the shadow reached us, the sky started to clear - you can see it easily at the start of this iPhone video:

I was photographing the eclipse with a 100-400mm lens with a 1.4× teleconverter at f/8, giving 560mm equivalent focal length. Bracketing with the camera set to 20fps resulted in a LOT of exposures to review - you can hear the artificial shutter sounds in the soundtrack to the video above.

I used the event countdown and notifications in Photo Ephemeris on a spare iPhone - you can hear the polite British voice making calm sounding announcements from time-to-time in the video too. The spare iPhone was mounted on my tripod leg using a ‘gorilla pod’. It was a huge help in keeping track of things photographically and meant I was able to capture everything I wanted, particularly in the moments leading up to second contact, which I’ve found hard to judge timing-wise during previous eclipses.

Short of doing full camera automation, I wouldn’t want to be without timing announcements while photographing an eclipse in future.

The clouds injected an extra degree of uncertainty into exposure settings. I made a last minute decision to remove my solar filter earlier than planned, on the basis that the clouds were for sure providing a degree of extra light reduction. It came off a full 70 seconds before C2 - yes, it was a slightly risky judgement call, but no ill effects to report for my camera. It allowed me to get a series of shots like this, at C2 minus 40 seconds, which shows Baily’s beads already forming at the cusps:

I assembled some of the best frames into the composite you see at the top of the page - the clouds backlit by Baily’s Beads give a great atmospheric look to it, and something very different to the clear skies of 2017.

Here are a few more shots:

Corona and Clouds

This is a stacked blend of 9 exposures to try and bring out some of the structure of the corona. The moving clouds made it tricky, as you can see, but there’s still some nice detail present.

Chromosphere and Prominences

This shows the first moments of the contiguous chromosphere appearing at around 4 o’clock before C3. The large prominences were visible for a long time from around maximum eclipse, by virtue of their size.

Baily’s Beads and Clouds

Here’s a single exposure (seen in the composite above) showing Baily’s Beads at C3. As soon as any of the Sun’s photosphere was exposed again, the back-lighting of the clouds made them much more visible.

It all worked out nicely in the end - although next time, I’d try to reduce my bracketing sequences from 9 frames to maybe 3 or 5 and try to dial the exposure a little more precisely, in order to acquire more data around the critical times of C2 and C3.

It was a wonderful eclipse to see and to photograph - a very different experience from my first in 2017, but just as memorable, and made much more dramatic thanks to the unpredictable weather! In the end, I was very happy to have seen it.

What if it's cloudy?

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 15:58:08 GMT

A lot of eclipse chasers are rightly concerned by the weather forecast for April 8. It’s looking to be cloudy or partially cloudy over fairly large areas of the path.

You’ll likely to fall into one of two groups: you’re either mobile or you’re not. If you are mobile, then by now, you’ve probably already adapted your plans to try to head for areas with a reliable forecast of clear skies - although that is still subject to change with 4/5 days to go.

If you’re not mobile, then this post is for you!

We’re currently in Mexico City, heading up to Torreón on Saturday with a tour group. There’s a planned observation site north of there to which we’re heading. Right now, the forecast for that area is rather mixed. I don’t know whether or not there’s a plan ‘B’. I suppose I could have spent the week bugging the company to share their thinking, but we’re going to try to be relaxed about it and assume that the prospect of a large group of disappointed customers will provide sufficient incentive for them to stay flexible. We’ll see!

Even if we were able to move a little - it wouldn’t be that far, I imagine - there’s still the prospect of cloudy skies. What to do? We’re certainly not abandoning our photography plans, but some adjustment will likely be required.

Cloud Levels

One thing you’ll want to get a handle on for your location is the predicted cloud levels. Many sites, such as windy.com give low, medium and high level cloud forecasts.

If you’re prepared to dig into the data a little deeper, and look at the raw weather data (available via many weather APIs) you can get more granular cloud level forecasts derived from relative humidity levels. Here’s the current forecast for our site in Mexico for Monday:

A few things to consider:

Low cloud might dissipate during the eclipse if it was formed due to convection - as the Sun is progressively obscured, the heat driving the convection is reduced. However, it’s also possible that cooling may cause some clouds to condense out as relative humidity increases.
High clouds may be thin and should not fully block the Sun - you might well be able to photograph through them
Mid level clouds are likely to be the most problematic - they won’t dissipate and are likely thick enough to block the Sun
100% thin, high clouds is probably better than 70% thick, mid-level clouds

Unfortunately, our forecast is showing 100% upper mid-level cloud right around the time of totality.

What to do?

High level cloud

You may well be able to stick to your original plan. If you were going to shoot telephoto, then still plan on that.

You shouldn’t change your solar filter or eclipse glasses handling though - even through cloud, the Sun can be bright enough to damage eyes and cameras.

You may need to increase your exposure a couple of stops to account for the filtering effect of the cloud. The best approach remains to use auto-exposure bracketing. This section from our recent webinar, “ Countdown to the April 8 Total Eclipse ”, shows you how to set that up.

If there are high clouds, consider increasing your base exposure by a stop or two - it will require some discretion as cloud thickness will vary from location to location.

Scattered Mid and Low level cloud

In these conditions, you’re a hostage to fortune, hoping for a gap at the right time.

You could make the most of the drama and capture video of the moments ahead of totality. Recording sound would capture the hopes and fears of those around you - particularly if things are on a knife edge in terms of visibility!

Wide angle shots may likely work better than a tight telephoto framing that captures mostly clouds. Also, if you’re not already targeted on the Sun, it may be harder to predict where it might emerge from the clouds - again, shorter focal lengths may help.

100% thick cloud cover

The worst case, for sure. I’m thinking a very different photographic approach might be best.

I’m only traveling with a 100-400mm zoom and a 1.4x teleconverter. In these circumstances, my plan is to remove the teleconverter, zoom out and start trying to take candid shots of the people around us - the human element of the situation is likely to be the most compelling aspect of totality. If I look around and see someone taking a candid shot of me, I’ll know you’ve read this post!

It will still get pretty dark, and wide angle shots would be best for capturing that.

We’ll all have to make the best of it - oh, for those sunny days of August 2017 in Nebraska! Good luck, whatever your plans.

Staying in focus on April 8th

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 20:27:17 GMT

Photographers of the upcoming April 8 total eclipse have a lot at stake.

I was trying to think of an analogy for people who haven’t photographed a total eclipse before. The best I found was to imagine you’re charged with shooting the 1500m Olympic final.

It only lasts a few minutes. There’ll be many excited people around. You have to capture the build-up to the start and all the key moments of the race. And of course, you must catch the finish! Miss any of it, and the exact moment will never be repeated. The next similar race is years away.

That’s pretty close to what photographing a total eclipse is like.

It’s critical for photographers to remain focused both mentally and photographically, free of unwanted distractions.

Just like the start of a race, the moments before totality are crucial - everything happens in mere seconds. The last thing you want is an unexpected interruption from your mobile phone.

At the same time, you may be relying on your phone to provide time sensitive notifications of the approaching totality - as The Photographer’s Ephemeris app on iOS does - to ensure you catch magical eclipse phenomena such as Baily’s Beads or the Diamond Ring.

Staying in Focus

It’s easy to ensure you’re set up for the moment: configure a custom Eclipse Focus Mode on your phone.

Here’s how.

In the phone’s system Settings, choose Focus, then tap + at the top right to add a new focus mode. When asked “ What do you want to focus on? ”, choose Custom so we can set up exactly what we need.

I named my new focus mode ‘Eclipse’ and gave it a ‘chromospheric’ pink outline icon:

I allowed notifications from Alice and other Favorite contacts to ensure the most important people in my life can reach me. Then, under Apps, I chose to Allow Notifications From only FaceTime, Messages, Weather, and Photo Ephemeris (TPE) itself, which I’ll be using to receive eclipse timing announcements:

Next, I scrolled down the page to Focus Filters. I set my display to Always On and enabled Dark Mode to avoid anything too bright in my eyes near the camera during totality.

If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or an iPad, you can also choose to disable Silent Mode - this is a critical step to ensure you can hear the eclipse announcements. On other iPhones you’ll need to do this manually by moving the Silent Mode switch on the side of your device to Off.

There are also options to customize Screens and to set a Schedule when the focus mode should switch on - be sure to check those out and see what might work best for you.

Finally, you’ll want to enable your new Eclipse Focus Mode and test it out. The user interface for this can be a little confusing at first - you can have either no focus mode enabled (left), or one focus mode enabled (right). Only one mode can be toggled on at a time:

With Eclipse Focus enabled, you can now schedule a test notification in Photo Ephemeris to confirm that you hear the announcement as expected. You can also run a rehearsal and familiarize yourself with the exact timings of the eclipse at your planned location:

Photo Ephemeris iOS includes a detailed notifications status page that shows if you have notifications set up optimally for the day. Apple provides a very rich set of notification options that can be complicated to puzzle out. The app gives you guidance on what will work best.

Help yourself on eclipse day by setting up your ideal focus mode - and testing it out - well in advance.

Read more about the new event countdown and notifications features here.

App Store artwork for our dedicated Solar Eclipse page can be downloaded from here.

A Solar Eclipse Glossary of Terms

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 18:38:39 GMT

With April 8 fast approaching, levels of interest in the last total solar eclipse to cross North America in the next 20 years are skyrocketing.

There’s a lot of terminology that gets bandied around relating to eclipses, so here’s our guide to some of the main terms you’ll likely encounter.

Entries marked ‡ are phenomena or data that you will find supported in the Photo Ephemeris, either in our maps, the local circumstances display, or the eclipse simulator.

You can explore many of these solar eclipse phenomena in either Photo Ephemeris Web or Photo Ephemeris iOS.

Annular Eclipse ‡

During an annular eclipse, magnitude is less than 1.00 at all times, and obscuration never reaches 100%, but the Moon moves entirely within the limb of the Sun for observers on the central path, producing the so-called ‘ring of fire’ effect.

Baily’s Beads ‡

The moments around C2 and C3 where, in certain circumstances, multiple ‘beads’ or ‘pearls’ of photosphere remain or become visible. Named after Francis Baily, who described the phenomenon in Scotland in 1836. Baily’s beads typically last no more than a few seconds for observers located well within the central path. But for observers located near the path edges, or during eclipses where the maximum magnitude is close to 1.00, they may remain visible for the entirety of the time between C2 and C3.

Central Path ‡

The path across the Earth’s surface within which an annular or total eclipse can be observed. Path location, width, and length vary for each eclipse. In some circumstances where an eclipse occurs in polar regions, a northern (ɣ ~+1) or southern (ɣ ~-1) limit may not be defined as the Moon’s shadow cone ‘misses’ the Earth.

Central Line (or Centerline) ‡

The Central Line is the locus of points during an eclipse at which the Moon’s disk is observed passing directly over the center of the Sun’s disk. Magnitude is greatest for a given longitude when on the Central Line. Additionally, eclipse duration is longest and C2 and C3 are observed to occur at opposite points on the Moon’s disk.

Corona ‡

The outer atmosphere of the Sun, consisting of plasma that extends millions of miles above the Sun’s surface. This is one of the most visually striking elements of a total solar eclipse. Its appearance can be predicted in advance to a limited degree, but only by a few days. During solar minimums, when the Sun’s activity is near a low point during the 11-year cycle, the corona is typically seen to extend farthest from the Sun’s poles. Near the time of solar maximum, the corona’s extent around the solar limb is often more even.

Chromosphere ‡

The Sun’s chromosphere is visible as a very thin pale pink line. The chromosphere is another striking visual effect seen during totality and is easily captured by cameras (no filters required). Don’t mistake it for chromatic aberration in your lens - it’s the Sun’s inner atmosphere. The pink color arises from H-alpha emissions.

Chromospheric Beading ‡

Breaks in the chromosphere observed during totality, arising due to lunar mountains. They have the same underlying cause as Baily’s beads, but the irregular lunar limb affects the chromosphere rather than the photosphere.

Chromospheric Beading before C3, April 20 2023, Exmouth, Australia

Delta-T ‡

Measured in seconds, ΔT is the difference between ‘terrestrial time’ (TT) and universal time (UT). This difference is determined by variation in the speed of Earth’s rotation on its own axis. It cannot be determined analytically, but must be measured and predicted. It is of importance to eclipse chasers because a change in ΔT results in an eastward or westward shift in the path of the eclipse. Generally, ΔT predictions are reliable in the near term and the magnitude of any expected changes is of significance only to those planning to be located very close to the edge of the Central Path.

Diamond Ring ‡

The moments just before C2 and just after C3 when the last or first glimpse of the Sun’s photosphere is visible.

Double Diamond Ring ‡

The moments just before C2 and just after C3 when the photosphere converges or emerges into two prominent Baily’s Beads. Due to the geometry of eclipses, the two beads are necessarily located near to one another on the lunar limb, although the exact distance varies by circumstances. Double diamond rings (and even triples and more!) are visible in the Photo Ephemeris eclipse simulator.

First Contact, C1 ‡

The moment when the Moon starts to obscure the Sun, i.e. the start of the partial phase of the eclipse. Magnitude is 0.00 and obscuration is 0.00% at this moment.

Fourth Contact ‡

The end of the partial eclipse, when the Moon no longer covers any portion of the Sun’s disk. Magnitude is 0.00 and obscuration is 0.00% at this moment.

Gamma, ɣ

Formally, gamma is the “ minimum distance from the axis of the lunar shadow cone to the center of the Earth, in units of the equatorial radius of the Earth. ” (Meeus, Elements of Solar Eclipses, 1951-2200). If ɣ=0, the center of the Moon’s shadow is at the equator at greatest eclipse. If ɣ=+1, it is at the North Pole. If ɣ=-1, it lies at the South Pole. (In fact, the values are ±0.997 rather than ±1, due to the flattening of the Earth at the poles.)

Greatest Eclipse

The time and location where the greatest magnitude of an eclipse is observed. Local circumstances can be calculated for any location on Earth, including the point of greatest eclipse, but there is only one location where greatest eclipse occurs.

Hybrid Eclipse ‡

A hybrid eclipse is one which is annular on some points along the central path but total at others. Hybrid eclipses may be annular-total (starting annular, typically in the west, then becoming total), total-annular, or annular-total-annular. The next hybrid eclipse will occur on Nov 14, 2031 and is of type a-t-a, beginning annular in the northwest Pacific, becoming total in the mid-Pacific, then annular once again as it approaches Panama. For an observer at any point along the Central Path, a hybrid eclipse is either annular or total.

Lunar Limb ‡

The visible edge of the Moon as seen by an observer. The lunar limb appears uneven, due to prominent mountains and deep valleys on the Moon’s surface. This gives rise to Baily’s Beads and chromospheric beading. The exact profile of the lunar limb varies by time and observer location due to lunar libration. To predict Baily’s Beads, it is necessary to know the lunar libration for a given time and observer location and then the corresponding lunar limb profile.

Lunar Libration

Lunar libration refers to periodic variation of the Moon’s position as observed from Earth. It is made up of multiple components: libration in lunar longitude and latitude, up to 7.9° and 6.7° respectively (although libration in latitude experienced during an eclipse is more constrained due to geometry), and parallax libration arising from differences in the observer’s location on Earth.

Magnitude ‡

The fraction of the Sun’s angular diameter covered by the Moon. Values range from 0.00 to ~1.12. In general discussion of an eclipse, magnitude typically refers to the highest magnitude observed for the event at maximum eclipse (either globally or at a specific location), but it can be calculated for any instant of time during the eclipse. In The Photographer’s Ephemeris, we display the magnitude at the time of maximum eclipse in the timeline and the instantaneous magnitude in the eclipse simulator.

Maximum Eclipse ‡

The moment of greatest magnitude for the eclipse at the selected location. This typically applies to the local circumstances, and is distinct from Greatest Eclipse, which is the time and location where the largest magnitude of an eclipse is observed.

Obscuration ‡

The percentage of the Sun’s disk (photosphere) that is obscured by the Moon, between 0% and 100%. Like magnitude, the term may refer to obscuration at the time of maximum eclipse, or to instantaneous obscuration.

Partial Eclipse ‡

In a partial eclipse, magnitude is less than 1.00 at all times, and obscuration never reaches 100%. Unlike annular eclipses, in a partial eclipse the Moon never moves entirely within the limb of the Sun’s photosphere. During any Total, Annular or Hybrid eclipse, only a partial eclipse or no eclipse is visible to observers outside the central path.

Photosphere

The outer boundary of the Sun or a star, from which light is emitted. Do not look directly at the photosphere without certified eye protection. Use a solar filter to protect cameras and telescopes. It is safe to observe totality without eye protection because, by definition, the photosphere is fully obscured by the Moon.

Second Contact, C2 ‡

The moment in a total eclipse when the Moon completely obscures the Sun — this is the start of totality. In the case of an annular eclipse, this is when the Moon moves completely within the bounds of the Sun’s disc.

Third Contact ‡

The end of totality or annularity. The Moon no longer completely obscures the Sun (total) or its limb moves outside the bounds of the Sun’s disk (annular).

Total Eclipse ‡

A solar eclipse where the magnitude exceeds 1.00 and obscuration reaches 100% - i.e., the Sun’s photosphere is fully obscured by the Moon for some period of time for observers located along a contiguous path on the Earth’s surface, and where the eclipse is not annular at any point (see Hybrid eclipse). For other locations a partial or no eclipse will be visible.

Sightline Analysis comes to TPE (The Photographer’s Ephemeris) Web

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 20:49:07 GMT

We’ll be launching a new PRO feature in TPE Web later this week: Sightline analysis.

Sightline analysis starts by giving you an elevation profile between two points, but then goes much further to offer an invaluable tool for landscape and night photography planning.

We derive the detailed effective sightline from the red map pin to the grey pin, calculating the apparent elevation angle, corrected for the Earth’s curvature and for the effects of atmospheric refraction. Areas that are visible are clearly marked in more vivid colours, while those that are out of sight are shown with a dotted line and a paler colour.

You can spot-check distance, elevation and altitude angles along the sightline. As you move the mouse, the corresponding location on the map is highlighted by a moving map marker, making it simple to compare key points on the sightline to the corresponding feature on the map itself.

When the Sun, Moon or Galactic Centre is close to the same bearing as the line from the red pin to the grey pin, it is shown in the sightline chart too, so you can see whether it is visible at any given moment.

Going further, sightline visibility is calculated accounting for any elevation offset applied to the map pins. For example, if you’re a drone photographer planning a drone landscape shot and want to confirm the sightline to a mountain summit when flying at 107 m (350 ft) above ground level, you can do exactly that.

Sightline adjusted for elevation above ground level (+107 m / +350 ft)

The same applies to the grey pin – an elevation offset applied to the secondary pin is included in the visibility calculation, so you can check whether the top of a building is visible.

The new tool is invaluable for quickly evaluating alignment possibilities for a given date and site. If you want to find an angle on the next full Moon that aligns with a landmark, sightline analysis makes it easy.

Sightline analysis will be available in TPE Web 3.11, coming later this week.

If you’d like to learn more, join our free webinar on Saturday 10 February at 10:30am Mountain Time.

Where can I see Baily's Beads on 8 April 2024?

Sat, 30 Dec 2023 19:05:44 GMT

Baily’s Beads as seen during the 2017 total eclipse (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

One solar eclipse phenomenon prized by photographers is Baily’s Beads – the “ string of pearls ” that can appear in certain circumstances around the times of second or third contact.

The appearance of the beads requires the Sun and Moon to perform a very particular dance whereby the Moon obscures the Sun at a point on its edge (or ‘limb’) where the surface is particularly uneven. Although it appears essentially smooth to the naked eye, the lunar surface is in fact very uneven, with various large valleys and mountains.

During an annular eclipse, the mountains of the Moon break through the edge of the Sun’s bright photosphere as the Moon moves in and out of the solar limb.

During a total eclipse, the light of the Sun lingers on, shining through the lunar valleys – but only if the circumstances are right!

How can we know? Is it a matter of luck?

The Lunar Limb

Astronomers have for many years sought to improve their maps of the Moon. Observations from Earth using telescopes, and later, cameras, provided the earliest maps. In recent years, space‑based mapping has been the go‑to method. The Japanese SELENE mission, popularly known as Kaguya, provided a detailed map of the lunar surface in 2009. More recently, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has also mapped the Moon.

Happily for eclipse chasers, both missions have yielded data that allows us to predict and simulate exactly where and when Baily’s beads will appear for any solar eclipse.

Traversing the path through Texas

The upcoming 8 April 2024 total eclipse passes over Mexico and Texas, and sweeps north‑east towards Canada’s Atlantic provinces. If you want to see Baily’s Beads, where should you go? We can use the eclipse simulator in TPE to find out.

Let’s look at some potential locations in Texas. We’ll start near the northern limit of the eclipse and work our way south, traversing the centre line:

Our locations are:

What should we be looking for? To get an idea of that, let’s start by taking a look at the lunar limb profile:

Lunar limb at max eclipse in Gatesville, TX

The orange line shows an exaggerated relief profile of the lunar limb. The blue circle is the default ‘smooth limb’: you can compare the two to identify lunar peaks and valleys. Two things to note:

The roughness varies: you can see some areas are significantly more varied than others
The profile you see depends on the time and place: the Moon’s libration and the observer’s location change the profile you see

That said, here’s an insider tip for searching for Baily’s beads locations: the limb profile only varies a little during the eclipse from the northern limit of the path to the southern in a given geographic area.

Three more tips. Generally speaking:

the more varied the limb profile, the more interesting the beads will appear
the deeper the valley, the longer a bead at that point on the limb will last
the closer to the path limits you are, the longer beads may last (but totality will be shorter)

Looking at the limb profile above, the ‘interesting’ areas are at 2 o’clock, 4 o’clock, and from 6 to 9 o’clock. Locations where the eclipse contacts occur in those areas should give the most appealing Baily’s beads. Let’s see what we find.

The image below shows how Baily’s beads will appear right at second contact (left) and at third contact (right) at each of our five locations:

Baily’s Beads at standard contact times, 8 April 2024

These are the standard ‘spherical Moon’ contact times – i.e., not adjusted for the effects of the lunar limb. These are the times you’ll typically see quoted online. Look closely at each image – in particular, the area underneath the yellow line. The yellow line shows the areas where beads are possible. Underneath you’ll see some bright white areas – those are the actual beads visible at this time and at each location.

What does it tell us? A few observations:

There’s nothing going on at C2 (start of totality), except near Comanche, TX, near the northern limit
C3 (end of totality) is generally more interesting: every location except Temple, TX, shows some beads at C3
You can be on the centre line at Gatesville and see Baily’s beads – however, they’re not going to last terribly long
At Hamilton, the beads are already prominent and joined together at C3: this means that totality is shorter than advertised using the standard times. Why? Because the contact occurs at a point where the lunar limb is depressed below the average radius (the blue line)

Next, the image below shows how Baily’s beads will appear at 5 seconds before second contact (left) and 5 seconds after third contact (right) at each of our five locations:

Baily’s beads at 5s before C2 and 5s after C3, 8 Apr 2024

It looks like we have the potential for beads in all locations. However – what still images from the simulator cannot capture is how the beads evolve over time and how long they last. It’s important to play back the contact times in the simulator to get a real sense of what can be observed.

Also, beware: just because locations near the central path appear to show more ‘bright’ areas doesn’t mean you’ll perceive them as beads. The Sun’s photosphere is so bright that if too much of it remains visible, you cannot discern the individual beads anymore. They need to be small and separated in order to be seen clearly (or you need a solar filter on your lens).

Nonetheless, an interesting pattern emerges. If we play ‘join‑the‑dots’ with the apparent positions of the beads between C2 and C3 for each location, you can see how your position in the path determines where the contacts will occur:

Contact angles (approximate) by location

If you’ve visually identified where the ‘interesting’ beads might appear from the limb profile on the centre line, you can work out whether you need to head north or south in order to ‘place’ the contacts over your target limb area.

The conventional wisdom among Baily’s beads hunters is to head toward the southern limit for total eclipses. The rationale is clear from the diagrams above: near the southern limit, the contacts occur in the 6 to 9 o’clock region of the limb. Indeed, around C3 in particular, the beads appear to last around 20 seconds, with some attractive patterns emerging.

Click to watch the simulation play out at 5× speed. We start around 20 seconds before C2 and continue until ~30s after C3. You’ll notice that the beads around C3 last nearly 40 seconds:

Perhaps Caffi was not so fanciful after all.

“ E Voi, Voi avete coraggio di dimandarmi quale impressione m’ha prodotto sull’animo l’Eclissi! io sentii così fortemente per l’effetto di quella cosa che steti (?) tre quattro giorni senza potermi tranquillizarme senza potermi occupare nell’arte. ” Letter from Ippolito Caffi to Antonio Tessari, 29 July 1842, Comune di Belluno, source. ↩
Celestial Shadows: Eclipses, Transits, and Occultations by John Westfall, William Sheehan, Springer Verlag New York 2015; p. 122 ↩
Westfall 2015; p. 119 ↩
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 4, Issue 2, 9 December 1836, Pages 15–19, source ↩
Source ↩
Some Remarks on the Total Eclipse of the Sun, on July 8th, 1842. By Francis Baily, Esq. Vice-President of this Society. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 5, p.208 ↩
Relazione dei principali fenomeni osservati nel totale eclisse solare dell’ 8 luglio 1842 dell’abbate Giovanni Capelli (source) ↩
“ The 1842 eclipse saw the first-ever attempts at solar eclipse photography, utilizing the new Daguerrotype method: one by Francesco Malacarne (1778–1855) in Venice, the other by Giovanni Allesandro Majocchi (1795–1854) in Milan. None of their photographs seem to have survived, but we do know that Majocchi succeeded in obtaining a 2-minute exposure of the partial phase but was unable to record any trace of totality (Hannavy 2008: I, 88; de Vaucouleurs 1961: 19) ”; Westfall, 2015, p. 123. ↩
Encyclopaedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, Volume 1, John Hannavy, Editor, p.88, Routledge 2008. ↩
Source ↩
La Luce di Ippolito Caffi, scheda a cura di Annalisa Scarpa, Alessandra di Castro, Roma, 2014 ↩
The Lure of Italy and the Orient, Ippolito Caffi, 1.2.–27.5.2018, Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Chronology of the artist’s life. ↩
Source ↩
Source ↩
Source ↩
A waning gibbous moon viewed from the northern hemisphere appears illuminated on the left side and shaded on the right. The waning gibbous moon, occurring in the days following full moon, rises after sunset to the east. The precise azimuth varies from north to south, dependent on the date. See Waxing and waning. ↩
The Solar Eclipse Mural Series by Howard Russell Butler, Jay M. Pasachoff and Roberta J. M. Olsen, Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Conference Series, Volume 501 ↩
“ A handful of subsequent eclipse ‘portraits’ stand out, such as Ippolito Caffi’s oil painting View of Venice with the Eclipse of 8 July 1842, which depicts the moment just before or after totality. Caffi shows one-quarter of the sky brightly lit and three-quarters of it dark, which is highly inaccurate; yet he does show an eclipse as a process involving dynamic changes in light. ” Art of the Eclipse, Jay M. Pasachoff and Roberta J. M. Olsen, Nature Vol 308 17 April 2014 ↩
“ Subsequent appearances of the eclipse in Italian art are also interpretive, such as landscape painter Ippolito Caffi’s oil painting View of Venice with the Eclipse of 8 July 1842, which depicts one-quarter of the sky brightly lit and three-quarters of it dark, a scientific and observational inaccuracy that nonetheless does show an eclipse as a process involving dynamic changes in light. ” Source ↩
“ Il pittore Ippolito Caffi (1809–1866), nel suo dipinto ‘Eclissi Veneziana’ tentò di restituire allo spettatore i dinamici cambiamenti nella luce del cielo causati dall’eclissi, sullo sfondo di una Venezia magica. Ma sarebbero dovuti trascorrere ancora parecchi anni prima che la raffigurazione di una eclissi raggiungesse una maggiore fedeltà. ” Source ↩
“ Io mi stava spettatore sulla Fondamenta nuove ore vedeva un orrizonte infinito, e (d)a mezzogiorno a nord la scena m’era tutta scoperta come su quelli due [di]segni potete vedere. ” Letter from Ippolito Caffi to Antonio Tessari, 29 July1842, Comune di Belluno, source. ↩
See Google StreetView ↩
The building is visible in Google StreetView. Other potential viewpoint locations, such as by the Gesuiti church to the northwest, show buildings which do not match that depicted in the painting. ↩
Source ↩
Source ↩
Such re-projection techniques are well-established in view painting of this type. Canaletto uses similar techniques (see, for example, the left-hand side of Campo di Rialto, 1758–1763, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin). ↩
Europe/Rome time zone follows Central European Summer Time in July, two hours ahead of GMT. ↩
As of Dec 2023, the time zone database shows an offset of 11 minutes from the hour (00:49 LMT) for July 8 1842, i.e. in modern time this would be ~06:40 to 06:41 at the moment of greatest eclipse Photo Ephemeris Web ↩
The origin of time zones, Gianluigi Parmeggiani, Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, source ↩
Kingdom of Lombardy - Venetia. Caffi himself played a role in the effort to free Venice from Austrian rule, suffering exile and imprisonment on account of his activities, and ultimately drowning on board the ship King of Italy during the Battle of Lissa in 1866 (see Ippolito Caffi). ↩
Regio Decreto n° 3224 del 22 Settembre 1866, Gazzetta Ufficiale n° 278 del 9 ottobre 1866, source ↩
Source ↩
Regio Decreto n. 490 del 10 agosto 1893, source ↩
I have not been able to find evidence for or against this at the time of writing. ↩
Adalbert Stifter (1805–1868), Die Sonnenfinsternis am 8. Juli 1842, source ↩
There are certainly fewer visual reference points to recall the altitude of the sun and moon above the horizon than there are for its azimuth. Alternatively, the higher placement above the horizon achieves a stronger compositional triangle formed by sun/moon and the two groups of buildings in the distance to the left and right. ↩
“ L’assunto dell’Eclissi per dipingere un quadro mi parve oltremodo difficile e sublime perciò stetti vari giorni incerto dell’impresa ma poscia incoraggiato da tutta Venezia che sanno ch’io tratto questi effetti, ho incominciato un quadro largo cinque piedi alto tre che credo di poter terminare spero la p[rossima] esposizione. ” Letter from Ippolito Caffi to Antonio Tessari, 29 July1842, Comune di Belluno, source. ↩
“ …ho scelto io il momento quando esce la prima scintilla del disco solare onde dar un raggio di speranza e di vita all’osservatore e variare così tutta la scena. ” Letter from Ippolito Caffi to Antonio Tessari, 29 July 1842, Comune di Belluno, source. ↩
Source ↩
This phrase translates approximately to “ nice flattering ray ” and is the title of an aria from Rossini’s opera Semiramide, first performed in Venice at the Teatro la Fenice in 1823, and revived there in April 1840. Perhaps Caffi saw the production: he certainly attended opera performances, writing to Tessari of seeing Meyerbeer’s Roberto il diavolo in 1842. ↩
Source ↩
Relazione Dei Principali Fenomeni Osservati Nel Totale Eclisse Solare Dell 8 Luglio 1842, Giovanni Cappelli, p.22 ↩
Wide angle photographs of eclipses sometimes capture the edges of the shadow cone. Seehttp://twanight.org/newTWAN/photos.asp?ID=3003828,https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100804.html, https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap030106.html, https://www.openviews.org.uk/eclipse.htm#images ↩
See https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121121.html for a good example of this phenomenon. ↩
“ The bands result from the illumination of the atmosphere by the thin solar crescent a minute or so before and after totality. ” Barrie Jones, source ↩
“ Baily’s Beads are prolonged at the eclipse limits. ”, source ↩
Also: “ During totality, sunlight peeks through valleys and around mountains, creating jagged edges on the moon’s inner shadow, the umbra. These edges warp even more as they pass over Earth’s own mountain ranges. ” source ↩
Where a shadow cone is clearly visible, it is the darkened area that forms an acute or obtuse angle, rather than the illuminated area. This is consistent with how the shadow of a sphere could be projected onto a flat surface. ↩
“ An umbral view to eclipse all others is shown in this 170 degree wide image (composite of photos and a drawing) with east-southeast in the center. The small white objects in the sky just left of centre are sunlit clouds which were visible through the moon’s shadow. I watched this scene for some time (until over 40 seconds after 2nd contact), but was so taken in by it that I did not shoot a picture! The experience impressed me so much that I started this drawing in the car while on the way back from the eclipse. A few weeks later, the drawing was merged with photos I had taken of the horizon ”. Rendering of Lunar Umbra During 26 Feb 1979 Total Solar Eclipse, Jeffery Charles, Images of the Corona and Lunar Umbra, source. ↩
See Total Eclipse, from The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New by Annie Dillard. This evocative essay is essential reading for any reader with an interest in eclipses (or good writing). ↩
“ Consolatevi meco che l’ultimo mio quadro dell’Eclissi esposto all’Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia piace in un modo straordinario ed ha messo un gran entusiasmo in tutti quelli che l’hanno veduto. Tutti gli artisti? e forastieri che mi conoscono, si consolano? sull’esito del mio lavoro, e ormai ho venduto il primo e n’ebbi la commissione di quattro repliche. ” Letter from Ippolito Caffi to Antonio Tessari, 13 August 1842, Comune di Belluno, source. My thanks to Giulia Bernardini and Federica Frasca for their assistance with checking and correcting my transcriptions and translations of Caffi’s letters. ↩

View the upcoming eclipses in The Photographer's Ephemeris

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 17:27:31 GMT

The annular eclipse is coming up this weekend, on Saturday Oct 14, in fact. We know many of you are planning to photograph it. And if not this eclipse, then definitely the next total eclipse on April 8 2024.

Last minute eclipse planning

If you’re looking for guidance on how execute your eclipse shot, our webinar replay “ 14 Oct 2023 Annular Eclipse: Last Minute Planning for Photographers ” gives you everything you need - it’s not too late to make a plan to shoot this rare opportunity. The next annular eclispe over this part of the world doesn’t come around until the 2040s!

With six days to go, the weather forecasts are starting firm up. Checking the various weather models and comparing their predictions should be part of your morning routing this week - ECMWF and GFS are both forecasting out until eclipse day: it’s a mixed picture in terms of clouds, so keep track of how things develop! Windy.com is a great source.

If you end up needing to modify your location plans, it’s important to stay aware of exactly how the eclipse timings and circumstances will change: if you need to move from the central line towards the limits, then you’ll lose the symmetrical ‘ring of fire’, and some duration, but you may gain the opportunity to view Baily’s Beads for longer.

On the Central Path

On the central path, you’ll enjoy the longest duration of annularity - nearly five whole minutes in some locations - plus a nice symmetrical ‘ring of fire’:

Near the limits

If you move farther north, you’re trading off symmetry and duration for ‘edge phenomena’, in particular Baily’s Beads:

The duration of annularity decreases rapidly as you approach the limits, falling quickly to zero at the limit lines. You shoudl plan to stay a few miles within the path to be sure of seeing annularity - you’ll still have a good chance of seeing Baily’s Beads too

At the southern limit, it’s a similar story, but the view is slightly different:

Eclipse info on your phone or tablet

Be sure to update your version of TPE for iOS this week. The latest update includes maps for both upcoming eclipses, showing not only the central paths, but also the partial magnitude lines and limits.

In addition, you can view our detailed eclipse simulator to understand exactly what you’ll see and when you’ll see it from any given location:

Play back the eclipse in real time or sped up, or manually control the selected time using the slider
Single tap to navigate to key moments, such as contact times, the ‘diamond ring’, or maximum eclipse
Moment by moment display of magnitude and obscuration

The same information is also available in our web app, giving you all the tools you need to plan your eclipse shot location!

Explore eclipses past, present, and future

Photo Ephemeris Web PRO users can explore any eclipse from the years 1500-2500. Perhaps you want to explore the May 1836 annular eclipse, where Francis Baily first documented ‘Baily’s Beads’:

This annular eclipse has an almost identical ‘obscuration’ percentage as the upcoming 14 Oct event, making for a fascinating comparison between Baily’s own experience nearly 200 hundred years ago and our own.

If you’re not able to travel to the 2023 or 2024 eclipses, perhaps you’re looking forward to the long duration total eclipse of Aug 2027 that passes over north Africa, and directly over Luxor, Egypt:

With long durations come high Sun altitudes, so you need to plan your shots and equipment accordingly.

There’s much to explore for eclipse lovers in The Photographer’s Ephemeris - and we have more planned. Drop us a line with your eclipse questions and suggestions.

Photo Ephemeris Web 3.7 - some updates

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 16:58:02 GMT

We’ve released an update to Photo Ephemeris Web today with some notable changes. Let’s walk through them in turn.

Sign in is now optional

Our web app has been available for nearly 10 years now. Until 2020, you could access it without needing to create an account and sign in. That changed in 2020 with v2, when we had to restrict access to signed in users to get operating costs under control.

Happily, we’re now once again able to allow free access to basic functionality on the site without the need to sign in.

That said, we encourage you to create a free account and to use it: you’ll be able to access additional free functionality (such as Geodetics, Horizon adjustments, and Visual Search) and, even more importantly, your settings and saved locations will be safely stored on our server!

Site Tour

For new users, there’s a now a brief site tour available that walks you through the basics of the home page - click Start Tour to view it.

Start Page

There’s now a much simplified Start page available. If you try to access the site on a smartphone, this is the page you’ll end up on (as the main desktop site is not designed for small screens). Additionally, if you click the Share button and copy the link that is displayed, this now directs users to the Start page, from where they can click ‘Start Planning Now’ to jump into the site proper.

The intention is to provide a less overwhelming user interface with just the essential Sun and Moon information displayed on the map, with the color coding made very clear. And now, with no need to sign in, if you want to share a plan with your friends, workshop group, or photo club members, you can do so easily knowing that they can view it without the overhead of needing to sign up for an account.

2023 and 2024 Solar Eclipses

With two much anticipated solar eclispes coming up in the Americas - the annular solar eclipse of Oct 14 2023 and the total solar eclispe of Apr 8 2024 - we’ve decided to make these events free to all users.

There are many sites out there that provide free solar eclipse information, so it seems appropriate that Photo Ephemeris should do the same, allowing you to plan head for these major photographic events.

As you can see in the screenshot at the top of this post the solar eclipse simulator and eclipse path is displayed on the new, simplified Start page. We hope this will prove useful to anyone looking to develop their eclispe viewing plans in the coming months.

If you’re interested in other eclipses, past or future, such as the 2026 eclipse over Iceland and Spain, or the 2027 eclispe over North Africa (it passes right over Luxor in Egypt), you can access details of all events for the years 1500-2500 with a PRO subscription.

Remembering childhood sunsets

Sun, 12 Mar 2023 23:10:42 GMT

Our friends at Rocky Nook kindly offered the opportunity to write a short article about The Photographer’s Ephemeris to be published in conjunction with a webinar they offered last week, presented by Glenn Randall.

I wanted to say a few words about the origins of Photo Ephemeris and its links to Glenn’s expertise and the skills he taught on a workshop back in 2008. In thinking about that, I recalled how, during my childhood in the north of England, the movement of the sun across the year was very apparent to me.

We lived on the western outskirts of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and my bedroom looked out over the fields of Northumberland, due west towards the subject of the photograph above (Sunset at Steel Rigg).

The photo is looking back towards Newcastle, more or less due East, but the city is not visible. The photo was taken in late March a few years ago. It was one of those peculiarly cold periods where the winds blow from the east (not that common in those parts), bringing cold continental air to the UK. The temperature barely rose above 2C for the two weeks I was there, and most days remained entirely overcast, with the dryest, unfluffiest snow you can imagine falling sparsely and slowly.

I was frozen. Nonetheless, I wanted to get out to try some photography and, finally, one afternoon towards the end of the trip the weather was looking marginally better. I drove out west half an hour or so and parked at Steel Rigg, then set off along Hadrian’s Wall to see what views I could get.

The sun emerged for only two minutes - so-called ‘gap light’ just before sunset, which you see captured in the photograph. Until that burst of warmth, it had been a rather drab scene. Happily, the sun picked out the path of Hadrian’s Wall leading into the shot, the remarkable geology of Northumberland, and the dusting of snow on the landscape.

If you’ve ever asked yourself questions such as “ Why does the light turn golden towards sunset? ”, or “ How can you know if the north-facing slope will receive direct sunlight? ”, then I would highly recommend Glenn Randall’s books:

The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography, 2nd Edition

Dusk to Dawn: A Guide to Landscape Photography at Night

And of course, you can explore the direction of the light in this location using Photo Ephemeris itself. This link shows the light hitting the mid-ground rock formation in the shot: March 28 2023 Last Light at Steel Rigg.

Thanks once again to Glenn and Rocky Nook for covering Photo Ephemeris in last week’s webinar, and for the opportunity to contribute a post to their site.

Disclosure: some of the links on this site are affiliate links. We may receive compensation if you purchase an item after clicking on an affiliate link.

Photo Ephemeris Web 3.3: new maps, Skyfire forecasts

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:56:23 GMT

We just released an update to Photo Ephemeris Web, version 3.3, which includes many new features and improvements for both free, Pro subscribers, and Skyfire customers.

New Map Controls

We’ve reworked the map controls to provide a sleep new unifed map type selector at the left of the map. This eliminates the old clunky switch that was used to select between ‘default’ and Google maps - instead, you can go to one place to choose your preferred map style.

The same controls also allow you to select Skyfire forecasts or light pollution.

While we were at it, we took the opportunity to expand the map space slightly by trimming the fat on some margins and padding. As a result, the map is now ‘full bleed’ to the edges of the browser window, and also enjoys a few pixels more vertical space.

As a bonus, for Pro subscribers, we’ve added USGS Topo and USGS Imagery Topo maps for North America.

Expanded Skyfire Coverage

Alaska, Hawaii and Australia all now enjoy Skyfire coverage. Originally released on the beta site in December, these forecasts are now available in the production release. We’re also working on adding this coverage to the Photo Ephemeris iOS app - we hope to have more news on that next month.

A free trial of Skyfire is available directly within the web app if you’d like to try it out. Click to view options.

We recommend reading the release notes for full details of what’s changed: Release Notes.

As always, please get in touch with your feedback and suggestions!

New Field of View Tool

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 19:52:28 GMT

We’ve added a new free tool to our website - think of it as a slightly delayed holiday gift!

The new Field of View tool allows you to visualize the effective field of view of different camera and lens combinations. It’s a little like The Photographer’s Transit, but for the web.

There are many field of view tools out there already, so why add another?

We’ve tried to tweak the usual formula a little to make it more relevant for Photo Ephemeris users:

There’s a 3D visualization, which makes things much more intuitive than looking at pages of numbers or labelled diagrams
You can relate the field of view to a range of azimuths or altitudes - particularly useful if you want to check quickly whether a given lens will accommodate the full moon at a certain altitude, while still allowing you to compose your shot with the horizon in view (to give just one example)

The tool is free to use and works on both desktop and mobile devices. It’ll automatically save your settings in your local browser. In addition, there’s a useful guide available showing you how to use it.

We’ll be expanding this in the future and also incorporating some of this capability directly into Photo Ephemeris Web. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know.

In the meantime, Happy New Year!

Skyfire: new forecasts available (and new coverage in beta)

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 21:08:42 GMT

The Skyfire team has been on a roll these past few months and we’re happy to be able to share some of the fruits of all that hard work.

Today, Photo Ephemeris Web has been updated to version 3.1 with a number of additions for Skyfire Plus subscribers:

Global Forecast System (GFS): we’ve added the GFS model to our mix, with coverage for both Europe and North America.
Global Environmental Multiscale Model (GEM): this model also now powers a North America Skyfire forecast
Rapid Refresh (RAP): the RAP model covers North America providing hourly updates for today and tomorrow
Europe Confidence Map: the EU global ensemble forecast now includes both GFS and GEM (formerly it was only GEM), and the confidence map represents the level of agreement between the two models

With the additional data sources now available, we’ve been able to fine tune which forecast models contribute to which sunrise and sunset global ensemble models. Each source weather model has its own schedule for updates, its own interval pattern (e.g. hourly vs 3 hourly vs. 6 hourly), and its own time coverage window (e.g. the next 48 hours, the next 5 days, etc.).

As a result, for today and tomorrow forecasts (Days 0 and 1, as we refer to them internally) we’re now using HRRR and RAP in North America, due to their hourly update frequency, plus a small weighted contribution from NAM.

For the subsequent days (2-4), we’re using GFS for North America and a blend of GFS and GEM for Europe.

You can find the new forecasts in Photo Ephemeris Web from today.

Expanded Coverage: Alaska, Hawaii, Australia/NZ

Also available on our beta site today, new regional coverage areas. This is an exciting and long overdue development, made possible only by the new “ cloud ” (ho ho) platform architecture the team has been working on for the past couple of years. Here are some samples of the new regions:

Hawaii coverage - GFS, GEM, NAM

Alaska Coverage - All Models

Australia/NZ Coverage - GFS, GEM

We’d love to get your feedback on these beta products - let us know how you find the new forecasts! All being well, these will go live in the new year.

The Selenelion Challenge

Fri, 04 Nov 2022 21:48:35 GMT

You’ve probably read: there’s a lunar eclipse coming up next week on Nov 7/8 (depending on your location). It will be visible in the Americas, across the Pacific, and in east Asia, Australia, NZ. Sorry Europe, Africa…

It’s also the last in the current ‘batch’ - the next doesn’t come around until March 14, 2025, so you may want to make an extra effort to see it if you can.

Perhaps you’ve come across the term Selenelion? Or not - it’s not one of those everyday terms, for sure. According to Wikipedia, a selenelion is:

A selenelion or selenehelion, also called a horizontal eclipse, occurs where and when both the Sun and an eclipsed Moon can be observed at the same time. The event can only be observed just before sunset or just after sunrise, when both bodies will appear just above opposite horizons at nearly opposite points in the sky. A selenelion occurs during every total lunar eclipse— it is an experience of the observer, not a planetary event separate from the lunar eclipse itself.

If you try to search for photographs of this phenomenon, there are very few. Many don’t show the actual phenomenon at all, or are photo art. However, the image included in the Wikipedia Article is the genuine thing:

Really?

You may be wondering: how can the Moon lie in the Earth’s shadow (the definition of a lunar eclipse) and yet we can see both sun and moon simultaneously? Good question. Here’s the simplistic view of the setup (forgive the Friday morning sketch made in a cafe):

Right: not to scale. It’s not like the average photographer is tall enough to see ‘around’ the earth’s surface, like Eve observing both Alice and Bob from a street corner, while Alice and Bob cannot see one another.

The reason a selenelion can be seen at ground level is atmospheric refraction. Just as a drinking straw in a glass appears bent at the interface of air and water, light entering Earth’s atmosphere (e.g. from the sun, or reflected from the full Moon) bends around the Earth’s surface. Effectively, we can ‘see’ around corners thanks to air:

That makes this sequence of events possible, if you’re in the right spot:

The eclipse begins, the Sun rises, then the Moon sets. Of course, if you’re at sea level, the sky is naturally bright after sunrise, and so it can be very difficult to make out the eclipsed moon at all, even with the help of atmospheric refraction.

Improving your chances

There’s one thing you can do to improve your chances of getting a compelling shot of the selenelion: go higher. You’ve probably seen the wonderful photos taken by astronauts on the International Space Station. Well, you don’t need to go that high, but it’s a reminder that the higher you are, the farther you can see. The formal name for the effect is the ‘Dip of the Horizon’, illustrated in simple form here:

The angle of dip is marked (and it’s larger than shown due to refraction too!). This means that the observer, standing on top of a mountain, for example, when looking at the terrestrial horizon, is actually looking down. A high prominence summit with a view of the ocean might have a dip of 1-2 degrees, i.e. the horizon is at minus 1-2 degrees.

In Photo Ephemeris, you can compensate for elevation of the observer above the horizon, as described in Using Photo Ephemeris Web, Part 4: Horizon. When you enable the adjustment, you’ll see that sunrise and moonrise happen earlier, and sunset and moonset later - it’s not uncommon to see a change of up to 10 minutes.

When you increase your height above the horizon, the air is thinner, clearer, often cleaner, and you’ll typically see darker higher contrast skies, all of which can make an eclipsed moon after sunrise easier to see.

Off to Peru

Here’s the challenge - no, not to go to Peru, but instead to capture a truly compelling shot of a selenelion. In my mind, I imagine the photographer stood atop a mountain looking out towards the eclipsed moon setting over the ocean, the rising sun bathing the foreground in orange light, with the blood orange moon setting into an azure sea. Poetic, right?

You’ll need to find a high elevation location with a clear view to the ocean, where the timing of the eclipse is just right. As it happens, South America has plenty of such locations for the Nov 7/8 eclipse. Here’s one potential setup:

The red pin shows the camera location. The grey pin is there to highlight a nearby high point that could block the sun (but doesn’t quite!). You can see the rising sun illuminating the land (including the red pin location), and off in the distance to the left, the eclipsed moon setting over the ocean. (This screenshot uses the 3D Sphere in Photo Ephemeris Web PRO). A map view may help you get your bearing more easily:

And zoomed in tighter on the shooting location:

Now, I’ve no idea whether this location is safely reachable in spring in Peru (there is a trail marked from a nearby road, but it’s at nearly 16,000 feet above sea level). Nonetheless, it illustrates what’s needed to achieve what should be an ideal selenelion shot setup.

We’d love to see any and all of your lunar eclipse shots, but if you manage to grab that rarest of things, a great selenelion shot, be sure to let us know!

Photo Ephemeris Web 3.0 released

Fri, 30 Sep 2022 20:48:52 GMT

Photo Ephemeris Web 3.0 is released today!

The major change is that Skyfire is now available in the web app. Here are the key points:

If you are already a Skyfire subscriber via TPE for iOS or Skyfire for Android, you can now view Skyfire forecasts in Photo Ephemeris Web as well (no additional subscription or payment required)
If you’re not a Skyfire subscriber, you can now sign up in Photo Ephemeris Web (and access Skyfire in TPE for iOS or Skyfire for Android too)
We’ve added four new forecasts for North America: High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR), North America Mesoscale (NAM), National Blend of Models (NBM), and finally, a confidence map showing the extent to which the three individual models are in agreement with each other
There’s a much improved display for favorite location forecasts: instead of a only single point color showing overhead conditions, we show the local area, which includes the area of sky you’re likely to be able to see
You can activate a 7-day free trial of Skyfire in Photo Ephemeris Web to try it out

Read more about subscription and trial options here: Skyfire Subscription Options

We also have a comprehensive guide on how to use Skyfire in Photo Ephemeris Web

And if you want the gory details, see the Release Notes, as always.

Farewell Timbuktu

We know much you loved starting out in Timbuktu when using Photo Ephemeris Web 😬 - but, no more.

With the 3.0 release, the app will determine your approximate location using your IP address and position the map accordingly. As always, if you have a ‘last used’ location stored in your browser, a default location preset in Settings, or the URL you use to open the site includes a specific latitude and longitude, those will take precedence.

But otherwise, generally speaking, you should see the app start out in your general vicinity. (If you’re one of those clever folks using a proxy or VPN, then you likely already know that YMMV.)

We’d love to hear your feedback on the 3.0 release - please get in touch and let us know how you get on!

I just upgraded to PRO. What's next?

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 00:01:32 GMT

Congratulations! You’ve just upgraded to Photo Ephemeris Web PRO.

What next? You have a wealth of new features at hand.

This post makes a few suggestions on what you might like to check out first.

New Maps - Lots of New Maps!

With your new subscription, you now have access to 12 new map styles, including Google Satellite, Google Terrain, Mapbox Satellite, 3 additional Topographic maps, and more. Read this article to learn all about what’s available.

3D Terrain

Visit the 3D Sphere page, enable the 3D terrain option, and start exploring the world’s best landscapes:

Learn more in the tutorial.

Plan your next Lunar Eclipse

Your PRO subscription provides full details of all lunar eclipses. The information is integrated into the timeline so you can plan shots in context using the map or 3D terrain. Find out more by watching our webinar replay.

Night Photography

Want to shoot the Milky Way? The 3D visualization gives you everything you need to make a plan:

High Precision Moon Planning

Need to plan a full moon against a city skyline? Photo Ephemeris Web PRO provides full access to Visual Search, including the ability to set building heights. The app will find all potential dates for your shot over a five year period in an instant, leaving you, the photographer, to put your energy into the creative concept:

Check out the dedicated tutorial for planning cityscape alignment shots.

Meteor Showers

PRO subscribers can view the major meteor showers in 3D. The app shows the radiant point of each major event for the days in which it is typically active. For longer lived events (over multiple days), the app accounts for the ‘radiant drift’ - that is the movement of the apparent radiant point in the sky over time:

And much more

Your subscription includes numerous other PRO features, including:

Search results as you type
Find places near coordinates (reverse geocoding)
Choice of SRTM3, SRTM1, AsterGDEM, GTOPO30 and Google Elevation data
Show azimuth relative to magnetic north

Explore everything that’s available by reading one of our tutorials, videos, or webinars.

We hope you enjoy Photo Ephemeris Web PRO!

Updates to status.photoephemeris.com

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 22:35:41 GMT

We’ve made a few improvements to our status page at status.photoephemeris.com. Here are the key changes:

Improved names and descriptions
Additional services added
Link to status page added to footer of Photo Ephemeris Web

Improved Names and Descriptions

We’ve renamed “ Elevation Data ” to “ 3D Terrain (TPE 3D for iOS) ” to make it clear how the data is used and which apps are affected by any outage.

For 3rd party services which we monitor but don’t control - typically map tile providers - we’ve included “ External ” in the name to make that clearer.

Additional Services

We’ve added four new monitors to the status page:

3D Terrain (Web PRO): if you’re using the 3D Sphere page, this is required to view 3D topography
OpenTopoMap (external): topographic map style available to Photo Ephemeris Web Pro subscribers (it’s a really nice map, but the server is a little temperamental…)
Thunderforest Maps (external): many of our map styles come from the wonderful Thunderforest
TopPlusOpen map (de, external): this is a very nice black and white street map style from the BKG (the German Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy), available in Photo Ephemeris Web

If you have any trouble viewing map styles, be sure to check the status page using the new link in the footer of the web app, or in TPE for iOS. (But remember: status monitors don’t catch every problem that can occur, but will give you a hint of any wider issues that might be going on).

Skyfire available in Photo Ephemeris Web

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 18:56:40 GMT

We’re excited to announce that Skyfire, the weather forecasting service for photographers, is now available in beta in Photo Ephemeris Web.

The Skyfire team has worked hard over the past 18 months, completely rebuilding the back end platform (the new ‘v3’ platform) to support a whole host of improvements, including:

Better performance: forecast map tiles now load more quickly than ever before
More frequent forecast updates: our forecasts now update as quickly as the underlying source weather models
New forecast types: individual forecast models (HRRR, NAM, NBM) are now available for North America, with more in the pipeline
New confidence map: we generate a ‘confidence’ map showing the level of agreement (or disagreement) between the individual forecast models, so you can make a better assessment of the forecast conditions

The new platform is so much more scalable than before: we’re able to run as many forecasts in parallel as we want, and Skyfire’s forecast delivery system combines multiple regions transparently, so that further geographic expansion is now finally back on the agenda.

In Photo Ephemeris Web, you can now subscribe to Skyfire/Skyfire Plus or combine it with PRO for an all acccess subscription. Plus, we’re offering discounted launch pricing for Skyfire subscriptions via Photo Ephemeris Web. You can read all about the available subscription options here.

Quick Access Favorite Locations

We recently updated Photo Ephemeris Web to add support for favorite locations. You can ‘star’ any location to mark it as a favorite, and then filter to just show favorites with one click (read more).

And now, Skyfire subscribers can view forecasts for their favorite locations at a glance. The new favorite location forecast design shows an area ~20 miles / ~30km around the precise coordinate, so you can see what’s expected in the general area, rather than just the exact overhead conditions as before. After all, you don’t usually point your camera straight up!

Even better: one click on a favorite forecast will take you to the correct date, time and place on the map, the appropriate forecast shown, making it super easy to explore further.

Confidence Map

For North American users, we now include a confidence map that shows whether the individual underlying weather models that make up the North American portion of the Global Ensemble forecast are in good agreement (white) or not (grey):

You can use this to help with your photography decision making: should I get up super early for sunrise? should I drive 100 miles for that sunset? Sometimes the weather is simply hard to predict and the models don’t agree on what might happen. We now make it more transparent when that’s the case, so you can make your own assessment on what to do.

And what’s more, Skyfire now offers access to individual sunrise and sunset forecast models for HRRR, NAM, and NBM. You can explore the differences and see which works best for your part of the country.

What about Europe? We’re actively working on adding new source models for Europe too and hope to have more news to share later this year.

You can start exploring Skyfire in Photo Ephemeris Web today. There’s a tutorial available to help you get started exploring the new features.

Events list now included in Photo Ephemeris Web 2.8

Mon, 07 Mar 2022 18:58:30 GMT

Photo Ephemeris Web 2.8 was just released today.

We’ve added a new UI component to list out the key celestial events for the year. Previously, you could move from one event to the next using the buttons to the right of the date selection, or by clicking an event for the selected date in the timeline.

With the new Events list, you can get a better sense of timing and frequency of events, plus see what’s included at a glance. The list will scroll automatically to the nearest event when it is opened. You’ll find the following events included there:

Moon Phases (new, 1st quarter, full, 3rd quarter)
Lunar Perigee and Apogee (i.e. when the moon makes its closest approach to Earth and when it is at its most distant)
Lunar Eclipses (penumbral, partial, total, moment of greatest eclipse - the next eclipse is coming up in May 2022)
Equinoxes and Solstices

You can access the events list using the new button to the right of the date controls.

Cityscapes, Skylines, and Tall Buildings

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 20:56:48 GMT

We’ve recently added some capabilities to Photo Ephemeris Web Pro to make it much easier to plan shots which align the Sun, Moon or Galactic Center with a man-made object - typically a tall building. If you’re lucky enough to live near a city with a photogenic skyline, it’s possible to capture some very striking images if you align the Moon, for example, with particular buildings.

With Photo Ephemeris Web Pro, there are now three ways you can plan shots aligned with buildings of known height:

In the Altitude Chart, toggle the chart legend to display the apparent height and size of the Sun/Moon/GC at the secondary map pin
With Geodetics enabled, you can now specify an elevation offset and building footprint size for the primary and/or the secondary map pins
In Visual Search, you can enter a target height parameter which will calculate the required altitude in degrees

What does all that mean? You can find out all the details by reading our new tutorial:

Using Photo Ephemeris Web, Part 10: Shooting Buildings and Other Objects

If you have any questions or suggestions on the new features, be sure to get in touch!

PS. If you’re using TPE for iOS, remember you can enter building and object heights on the shadows page to plan these shots

November Updates: Skyfire v3 for Europe, Web App polishing

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 18:50:26 GMT

A couple of updates for November.

By the way - did you know? This blog now has an RSS feed. You can use an RSS reader to keep up with new posts from your favorite sites.

Skyfire Europe is coming to v3 Platform

The new Skyfire v3 platform was launched earlier this autumn, bringing improved forecasts to North America. We’re happy to report that the new architecture has been performing very well, with more frequent, reliable forecast updates and much faster map tile loading speeds for all users.

North America forecasts have been available in TPE for iOS 4.10 for a few weeks now. Next up, we’re adding Europe to v3. This will be available in a forthcoming app update (4.11) which is currently in beta testing. While the final v3 EU coverage map is still in the process of being locked down during testing, you can expect to see further expansion.

Looking forward, the Skyfire team is excited to be able to add further product enhancements which we look forward to bringing to you in the coming months.

Photo Ephemeris Web

Photo Ephemeris Web was updated to v2.6.10.

This minor release takes care of a number of UI oddities that were affecting Google Maps for Pro users. It took a while to get to bottom of the problem, but an update to the Google Maps library made in early September meant that some of the map UI ‘furniture’ (buttons, controls and the like) were not appearing quite correctly. Most obviously, the new Keyboard shortcuts button was hanging slightly off the map and the StreetView ‘Pegman’ had disappeared altogether.

We’ve now managed to get to the bottom of the problem and have fixed these issues. While we were at it, we took the opportunity to do a little pixel polishing and fine-tuned the appearance and positioning of the rest of the Google Maps UI and the subscription page.

Additionally, we’re now back on the ‘weekly channel’ for Google Maps, meaning you’ll see any new functionality that Google adds sooner rather than later.

We’ve got plenty going on behind the scenes with lots of new stuff to come as we move in 2022!

Got ideas or feedback? Please do get in touch - you can contact us directly via the help widget on this page.

Skyfire v3 Platform Coming Soon

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 17:45:13 GMT

Hourly updates for today’s events

The team at our sister company Skyfire Services LLC has been hard at work building an all new v3 backend platform this year. We’re pleased to share that it’s going to be launching soon.

The predecessor v2 architecture was not very scalable: fixing that was the primary objective for v3. With more scalability, both vertical (bigger servers) and horizontal (and more of them), we’re able to increase both the frequency of forecast updates and (down the road) the variety of different forecasts that we make available.

The first release of the new v3 platform addresses North America forecast update frequency. Previously, forecasts were updated every 4 hours or so. At times that meant that the underlying weather forecast could change significantly without the Skyfire forecasts also being updated to reflect that. No more. With v3, forecasts for today’s sunrise and sunset, and tomorrow’s sunrise are updated every hour. Beyond that, for tomorrow’s sunset and the following sunrise, we’re updating every 2 hours. And so forth.

Of course, this doesn’t guarantee that things still won’t change: the underlying weather forecast may prove incorrect, but you can be assured that we’re working with the most current information available to provide the Skyfire forecasts.

Right now, Skyfire v3 is in beta testing in The Photographer’s Ephemeris for iOS and also in Skyfire’s own Android app (you can opt in to try it over on Google Play).

We hope to be releasing final versions in September.

Next steps will include bringing our Europe forecasts onto the v3 platform, and then we hope to release some new forecast products to supplement the core Skyfire map.

Lunar Eclipses in Photo Ephemeris Web Pro 2.6

Fri, 14 May 2021 22:06:11 GMT

New in Photo Ephemeris Web PRO, support for lunar eclipses. With a total lunar eclipse due later this month, we wanted to ensure you’re able to plan for this significant night photography event!

If we were writing a headline for a newspaper we’d say something like:

Blood supermoon to haunt the night sky!!!

but we’re not, so instead, we’ll simply look forward to a perigee full moon occurring at the time of a total lunar eclipse 😬.

We’ve posted a video walkthrough of the new functionality, which also includes some cosmetic updates to the timeline, and an extra bonus for Pro subscribers, a new total darkness hours indicator:

Lunar Eclipses in Photo Ephemeris Web Pro 2.6 from Crookneck Apps on Vimeo.

You can read more about the latest changes in the Release Notes

3D Maps come to Photo Ephemeris Web PRO

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 23:32:37 GMT

We’re delighted to announce the availability of 3D maps in Photo Ephemeris Web PRO.

Rather than use an off-the-shelf 3D mapping solution, we’ve built our 3D functionality into the existing 3D Celestial Sphere page. The primary reason is that, excellent as they are, many of the 3rd party 3D mapping solution limit how the maps can be annotated and lit, and heavy customisation becomes complicated and likely to break in the future.

We also wanted to implement a few lessons learned along the way from TPE 3D, our iOS app. Users have asked for:

Better performance
Higher map zoom levels
Satellite maps
Much easier navigation

We’ve been able to deliver on all three of those in Photo Ephemeris Web by fundamentally changing our implementation approach.

Performance has been improved by limiting the amount of terrain we attempt to load at once and taking a much more performant approach to processing and rendering it on the screen - basically, things now mostly hit your computer’s GPU rather than CPU. As a result, on a 5-year old laptop (my development system), the 3D scene renders consistently at 60 frames per second - that’s the standard you want to be hitting.

The amount of data downloaded per ‘scene’ is reduced, as are the number of network requests. Things don’t appear instantly - there’s around 2-3MB of terrain data to download each time - but they’re generally pretty zippy on a reasonable broadband connection.

The max Map Zoom Level in the 3D scene is a couple of levels higher than in TPE 3D (at the expense of loading additional terrain) - these things are all trade-offs.

Additionally, for PRO subscribers, there is a satellite map now available in the default map types list, so you can view that in the 3D Sphere page. (Google Maps requires us to use its own mapping library which does not allow for “ painting ” a custom 3D terrain with their map data.) That said, I’ll hold to my view that satellite maps are a poor choice for an application that simulates real world lighting. As photographers, you’re generally interested in light at each end of the day, or at night (Moon, Milky Way). At those times, satellite maps, particularly in areas with lots of green vegetation, suck up ‘golden hour’ light to make a dark, muddy mess. Additionally, they have baked in shadows that almost certainly conflict with what you want to see, resulting in visual confusion. And at night they can be so dark as to be illegible. However, if you want them, they’re there - any in mid-day light in attractive places, they can look great!

Navigation: in TPE 3D, all navigation is done in a 3D environment, which means you need to know ‘how to fly’ - many people find this tricky, especially on smaller screens. In Photo Ephemeris Web, you do your navigation - finding a location, setting the pin positions - on the 2D Map page and then optionally view the 3D Sphere to understand the interaction of the light. The camera orbits the primary red map pin, so it’s much harder to get lost, or fly off in an unintended direction.

One rule-of-thumb to remember: shadows are only cast from terrain within the 3D Sphere. If you’re looking at sunrise over the plains of eastern Colorado hitting the Rockies, you need to be well zoomed out in order to get the timing of ‘alpenglow’ correct. We’re looking at some better solutions for this particular case, but for now, stay aware.

If you’d like to know more, be sure to head over to read the comprehensive new tutorial and video:

Using Photo Ephemeris Web, Part 9: Maps and Terrain in the 3D Celestial Sphere

We’d love to hear your feedback on the new functionality - we have plans for some nifty enhancements that should make life for moon photographers in particular even better!

East of the Sun: the Equinox

Sat, 13 Mar 2021 22:35:40 GMT

Image courtesy of WikiMedia, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The Vernal Equinox is coming. As I sit here in chilly Colorado awaiting up to two feet of snow, it seems like spring has made a run for the hills. But celestial mechanics say otherwise!

To help you plan your start of spring shoot (or start of autumn, for those down under), we’ve just added both equinox and solstice events to Photo Ephemeris Web. You’ll see these events pop up in the timeline below the map. Additionally, when you click next or previous event using the date controls towards the top left, the list of events includes solstices and equinoxes in addition to the moon phase events we had previously:

One question that often comes up goes along these lines: “ I thought that the sun rises exactly due east on the equinoxes - but that’s not what your app shows. Why? ”. Indeed, if you look at the screenshot above, you’ll see that sunrise occurs at an azimuth of 89.29° rather than 90.00°.

So, yes the sun does rise more or less due east, and this indeed applies in most places, but it’s a case of “ sort of ” rather than “ exactly ”.

There are few reasons why it’s a case of “ sort of ”. Here are a few that I’m aware of - although I’m sure there are more!

Firstly, Earth isn’t a perfect sphere: rather it’s an ellipsoid. It’s as if Atlas grew tired, set the Earth down and sat on it, squashing it slightly from from top to bottom. The farther north or south you go from the equator, the farther the azimuth of sunrise varies from 90° on the equinox.

In fact, the earth isn’t even a perfect ellipsoid - it’s a unique shape known as the “ Geoid ”. Here’s an exaggerated view:

Image Credit: By International Centre for Global Earth Models (ICGEM) - http://icgem.gfz-potsdam.de/vis3d/longtime / Ince, E. S., Barthelmes, F., Reißland, S., Elger, K., Förste, C., Flechtner, F., Schuh, H. (2019): ICGEM – 15 years of successful collection and distribution of global gravitational models, associated services and future plans. - Earth System Science Data, 11, pp. 647-674,DOI: http://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-647-2019., CC BY 4.0

Secondly, in the vast majority of places, sunrise doesn’t happen at the moment of the equinox. The equinox is an instant in time when the apparent geocentric longitude of the Sun is 0° or 180° exactly. If sunrise happens some hours distant from the moment of equinox - which it does for most of us - then some small variation in azimuth from 90 degrees naturally follows.

You can see this in the screenshot from Photo Ephemeris Web - here in Colorado, sunrise is not until several hours after equinox has occurred.

Finally, sunrise has a specific, often misunderstood definition. The timing depends in part on the effect of atmospheric refraction.

This is the ‘bent-straw-in-water’ effect you’re probably familiar with from schooldays. Light is bent when it passes through media of differing density - such as from the vacuum of space into Earth’s atmosphere. The net effect is to “ lift ” the sun higher above the horizon than it would otherwise appear, i.e. sunrise happens slightly sooner than it otherwise would. The effect of refraction on sunrise varies with elevation above sea level - when the air is thinner, refraction is reduced. You can read all about this and its impact on sunrise azimuth on the equinox in this paper: Astronomical Refraction and the Equinox Sunrise

Once conclusion of the paper is that the ideal 90.00° azimuth equinox sunrise is only to be seen at the Equator, due to the effects of refraction. If we try to eliminate some of the effects mentioned above by choosing our location carefully, we indeed find exactly 90.00°:

At this spot in the remote Amazon jungle, right on the equator, we’re also at a longitude that brings sunrise very close to the moment of equinox.

If you’re interested in exploring these effects more, you can try experimenting by dragging the map pin directly north (e.g. to Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada) or directly east, (e.g. to equatorial Indonesia). Check out what happens to the azimuth of sunrise on the day of the equinox - you’ll see that it’s due east. Sort of!

New Status Page

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 18:31:27 GMT

We’ve just switched over to a shiny new status page, available at status.photoephemeris.com.

Status pages show whether services on which apps or websites depend are running correctly or not. They’re not perfect - they can’t capture the whole universe of ways in which things can malfunction, but they do give a quick and convenient check on whether a service is available or not.

With the new version, there are a few nice benefits, principle among them being that you can now subscribe to receive notifications in case of planned maintenance or for updates on any outages that may occur - just click the ‘bell’ icon at the top right to sign up. (And remember, this email subscription is separate from any others you may have with us, e.g. to our mailing list, or for your account.)

So, if you want to stay updated on how things are running, please go ahead and subscribe for updates! You’ll also find the new page linked on our Support page.

Nature First Photography

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 17:30:51 GMT

We’re delighted to announce that The Photographer’s Ephemeris is now an official partner of Nature First Photography.

I first became interested in landscape photography on moving to Boulder, Colorado from London in 2007. The spectacular landscapes of the Colorado Rockies and the desert southwest were immediately enchanting and I set about researching and reading as much as I could to find out which locations to go and see and photograph.

I’ve been lucky enough to get to many of them. But some simply don’t exist any more or have been closed to visitors. Others are frequently overcrowded. The photo below shows photographers gathered at Maroon Lake in September 2008 - back in the days when it was, you know, a quiet, unknown backwater 🙃.

Photographers at Maroon Lake, Sep 2008

So, what is the mission of Nature First? It’s not to wag a finger at those wanting to photograph beautiful or well-known landscapes - not at all. Rather, it is to encourage photographers to pause and think before stepping into nature and to consider a few key points, the ‘Nature First’ principles:

Prioritize the well-being of nature over photography.
Educate yourself about the places you photograph.
Reflect on the possible impact of your actions.
Use discretion if sharing locations.
Know and follow rules and regulations.
Always follow Leave No Trace principles and strive to leave places better than you found them.
Actively promote and educate others about these principles.

There really shouldn’t be much controversial about that. If we can encourage more visitors to follow these principles, then hopefully there’ll be fewer locations that end up damaged, closed or overrun.

Photo Ephemeris has a large number of users around the world. Having seen firsthand some of the issues mentioned above, we wanted to partner with Nature First to help spread the word and promote this effort through our website, initially, and through our apps in the future. Plus, it’s run by some great people (who happen also to be great photographers!).

If you’d like to support this mission, you can join too: just visit https://www.naturefirstphotography.org/en/join. We hope you will!

A new website for 2021

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 02:20:20 GMT

As you might have noticed if you’ve visited previously, we’ve overhauled the website.

It’s a ground-up rewrite - probably the fifth such since the first version launched in 2010. What started out as a hand-coded single-page html site with some minimal styling and images has progressed by way of Drupal 😣 , Textpattern 😘, (but I think it’s had its day), and Squarespace 😕 .

Squarespace is fine for throwing something up quickly and efficiently that looks smart, and the pricing is perfectly reasonable. They do a decent job with SEO too. Site performance on mobile is poor though and if you’re looking to up your game in terms of the level of technical integrations you can achieve, things become increasingly tricky.

But the biggest issue is maintainability, I found. Maybe there’s a way to test out new pages/styles/content without pushing to your live production site, but if there is, I never discovered it. Making changes gets scary and there’s no easy way to revert to an earlier version (or to version the site at all), as far as I can tell.

So instead, the new site is built using the same core technology (React) as the recent 2.0 version of Photo Ephemeris Web. Moreover, we’re using some exciting new(ish) technology to power it all (Next.js hosted on Vercel, Tailwind CSS, Strapi ‘headless’ CMS) all with static site generation for super fast performance and rendering.

I don’t care - I’m a photographer

That’s fair enough! However, we hope you’ll enjoy the faster loading, more responsive site and appreciate the visual overhaul.

We’ll also have multiple language support in the near future - all the <British English On>under-the-bonnet</British English Off> work is done; the translations will be coming soon.

I’m particularly fond of the new serif font we’re using, Cormorant Garamond, designed by Christian Thalmann of Catharsis Fonts. Be sure to check out this site to learn about the incredibly thoughtful work that went into making it: Cormorant by Catharsis Fonts.

Meteors, Milky Way, and more in Photo Ephemeris Web Pro

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 00:55:30 GMT

Today we’re releasing the 2.1 update to Photo Ephemeris Web. It includes a bunch of new features and refinements for both free and Pro users.

Most prominent amongst the changes: a new 3D Celestial Sphere available for Pro subscribers. Inspired by the 2,000 year old Armillary Sphere, the Sphere page shows a visualization of Sun, Moon, Milky Way, and especially for this week, the radiant point of the Perseid Meteor shower.

The sphere also shows the geodetics secondary pin at the calculated azimuth and altitude, making it super convenient for visualizing alignments. There’s quite a lot going on in this simple looking model, so be sure to read our new detailed tutorial on how to get the most from it: Using Photo Ephemeris Web, Part 7: 3D Celestial Sphere.

The rise, transit and set of the galactic centre is now included on the map to supplement the visualisation in the 3D Celestial Sphere page.

We’ve also revamped the link Sharing capability, with a dedicated Share button top right above the map. You can use this to generate a link to your shot plans to share with friends or colleagues or to save wherever you need it:

You can read all about the changes in 2.1 over on the Release Notes page.

Shooting stars (and comets)

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 22:10:56 GMT

I headed out to Rocky Mountain National Park on Monday evening for a long overdue photography shoot, in the hopes of catching a good view of comet Neowise.

I’ll admit I couldn’t face the prospect of a 3am start for the days when Neowise was appearing in the pre-dawn skies, and had instead decided to hold out until it was viewable in the evening. As soon as that milestone arrived, Colorado’s skies decided to cloud up for a uncharacteristically long spell (around a week). We were finally able to get a first glimpse of Neowise last Sunday out the back of our house, over the rooftops of Boulder.

The weather continued to cooperate for Monday, so we headed off to the darker skies of Rocky Mountain National Park at around 7:30pm. After a diversion for roadworks, we arrived up on Trail Ridge Road around 9pm. Trail Ridge Road is the highest elevation paved through road in North America - more than 12,000 feet above sea level - and is well worth a visit if you’re in Colorado.

We pulled up at the west end at the overlook just before the Alpine Visitor Center. There were plenty of other cars and around another half dozen photographers, but things grew quieter as darkness descended. The overlook has clear views to the north west - perfect for Neowise. Here’s the location and direction of view:

Our shooting location and direction of view towards the Never Summer Mountains, Link to Photo Ephemeris

You can get a sense of the view ahead of time using TPE 3D:

View from the overlook as seen in The Photographer’s Ephemeris 3D on iPad.

I took a quick refresher in night photography and comet shooting technique by reading Mathew Browne’s great tutorial on PetaPixel. Here’s what I came back with from the shoot (click to view large):

Nikon D800, 50mm, f/2.8, 5s, ISO 1600, 6 exposures stacked using Starry Landscape Stacker

Nikon D800, 105mm macro, f/2.8, 5s, ISO 3200, 7 exposures stacked using Starry Landscape Stacker

Nikon D800, 17-35mm @ 19mm, f/2.8, 15s, ISO 1600, 4 exposures stacked using Starry Landscape Stacker

As you can see from the shot details, it’s a four way dance between focal length, exposure time, aperture and ISO. Focal length dictates shutter speed limits (to avoid streaking the stars). Aperture is typically limited by equipment - a faster lens is better (although I tend to avoid shooting wide open at f/1.4 on the 50mm). You’re then left with ISO to play with - keep it as low as you can allowing for the preceding factors, to minimize noise.

I think the wide angle shot is the most successful - this was taken after 11pm when the skies were about as dark as they get (you can still see some airglow and possibly a little light pollution). Thinking back to the total eclipse in 2017, the most memorable shots I saw were ones that included elements of the landscape that situated the event somewhere unique. Telephoto shots are great for seeing details, but they are necessarily more anonymous.

Having Lulu and Thunder Mountains just visible on the horizon brings something extra to this shot. It’s also nice to see the Plough (Big Dipper) so clearly above Neowise.

Head out soon, if you’d still like to shoot Neowise. It made its closest approach to Earth yesterday, and is now heading off back to the outer reaches of the Solar System, fading as it goes.

Oh - and if you do plan to stack your images, you may want to take a few more exposures than I did - I only checked the detailed documentation after the event, and it seems it’s a case of the more, the merrier, typically 10+ per final shot for best results.

Early access to the upcoming 2.0 web app

Fri, 22 May 2020 21:36:34 GMT

If you like to stay ahead of the curve, you might be interested in checking out the upcoming 2.0 version of the TPE Web App, which we’re calling Photo Ephemeris Web.

The web app is still free to use, as before, but a few things have changed. Please do check out the About page for details. You’ll need to sign in - use your existing account or a create one for free.

If you’d like to try the new PRO version, we’re offering an exclusive discount to early access users through the end of May 2020. Interested?

what3words

Tue, 04 Feb 2020 21:12:40 GMT

Landscape and outdoor photographers love to get off the well-trodden path and explore the more remote corners of the world.

Often, these places don’t have well-defined names. Or the named area covers many thousands of acres, such as a national park or wilderness area. Sometimes moving 10 feet to the left makes the difference between a haphazard snap and a great photograph. Having an easy way to communicate the right spot is a real benefit.

That’s why we’re delighted to add support for what3words to both IOS and Android versions of The Photographer’s Ephemeris in new updates rolling out today.

what3words provides a unique three word address for any location on earth. what3words has divided the entire world into 3m x 3m squares, assigning three random words to each square, that helps users define their location with an accuracy of just 10 feet.

It’s an easy and natural way to recall and record that perfect viewpoint you just scouted out for your next photography excursion. Typing in coordinates to six decimal places is hard work, but typing or speaking three words is a breeze. (And if you haven’t tried voice input (hit the speaker icon near the keyboard), that can make it even easier.)

TPE 4.9 (iOS) and 1.7.6 (Android) now include support for what3words. Enter a three word address to set the map pin to the corresponding coordinates. Or enter a latitude/longitude coordinate to view its unique three word address.

what3words supports 40 different languages (with more on the way). If your preferred language is in the list, TPE will display what3words results in that language.

Use of what3words in TPE is optional - we think it helps take friction out of dealing with otherwise hard-to-specify, unnamed places. But, if you prefer to use coordinates, or name your own saved locations, of course that’s no problem!

We hope you’ll find what3words super helpful in your photo planning!

A Refreshed Search Page

While we were in the middle of adding support for what3words, we took the opportunity to overhaul the location search pages in TPE for iOS. TPE for Android had a similar overhaul late last year with the 1.7.5 update, where we dropped in a new search UI and new backend search engines, and it was the turn of the iOS app this time around.

I’ve long had the nagging feeling that the Locations page in TPE had become a little too clever for its own good. From version 3.0 to 4.8, the Locations page had become something of a no go area: the code was getting too scary to want to meddle with lightly. This was a result of combining search and saved locations into one screen.

The original rationale was that it would be efficient for the user to be able to go to one place to search for new places and/or to filter their list of saved locations. However, the downsides were (i) functionality was harder to surface in the app - i.e. the app could do things that many users might never realise it could do because they were too compressed into a single UI and (ii) the support code was complex and had become rather inflexible.

So, with the 4.9 update, things have changed. Search is now separate from Saved Locations. And in turn, search is broken down into Address/Place Name Search and Coordinate Search. Some features might now be one more tap away than they were, but they’re much more obvious and the underlying code is much cleaner and more flexible. One of the benefits of this is that we’ve been able to add support for ‘reverse geocoding’ - finding addresses/places that correspond to a latitude/longitude coordinate - and to do that against multiple back-end geocoding services (including what3words, discussed above).

The new location search capabilities are discussed in depth in this new Help Center article.

We’ve also added reverse geocoding support to TPE for Android in the 1.7.6 update, also including what3words - this was an easy addition due to the updated search screens we put in place in 1.7.5. And for the geeks out there: it’s all written in Kotlin - so far proving to be an enjoyable developer experience. Infinitely more so than ghastly old Java ;)

Let us know how you find the refreshed location search capabilities.

Degrees, Minutes, Seconds and More

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 20:34:00 GMT

We’ve made some improvements to the options for direct coordinate (latitude/longitude) entry in both TPE 4.8 for iOS and TPE 1.7.5 for Android.

Previously, in the iOS app you could enter coordinates directly by adding a new location and then editing the latitude/longitude fields. That option remains, as does the ability to use a URL to open the app at any lat/lon via a URL or link (see here), available in iOS, Android and web apps.

Now though, you can paste coordinates directly into the search fields of our mobile apps and the app will parse the coordinates for you. Multiple formats are supported including decimal degrees (e.g. 46.2234° N, 6.1467° E), degrees/minutes/seconds (e.g. 46° 13’ 24.24 ”, 6° 8’ 48.12 ”), and degrees plus decimal minutes (e.g. N46° 13.404’, E6° 8.802’).

When sourcing coordinates from the web, you’ll encounter endless varieties of format, with some very peculiar choices of character to indicate degrees, minutes and seconds (e.g. here). We’ve tested our coordinate parsing with a wide variety of input, so you should find that things are recognised just fine. However, if you find a reasonably formatted example that you think we should recognize, let us know.

If you want to enter degrees/minutes/seconds, many apps will present you with a complex form with six numerical fields and two multiple choice fields for north/south and east/west. We think it’s much easier to just paste what you need into the search field and be done. And if you’re typing coordinates from a paper source such as a guide book, better not to have to look up to work out where to tap to the next field after every number.

The app updates are rolling out this week. We hope you find the changes speed up your photo planning when using latitude/longitude data!

TPE for iOS 4.7 Update

Mon, 28 Oct 2019 20:31:36 GMT

TPE for iOS was updated to version 4.7 last month, in readiness for the release of iOS 13. Here’s a quick run down of what’s new.

Dark Mode

First off, we added Dark Mode support. Dark map styles are displayed for both Apple and Google maps when the “ normal ” default map type is selected (other map types do not change appearance). Other UI elements and screens are altered for Dark Mode when it is selected.

Remember, TPE’s Night Mode is not the same thing as iOS 13’s Dark Mode. Night Mode displays information relevant to night photography. Dark Mode alters the user interface to appear with dark styling.

Offline Time Zone Detection

Previously, the app required an internet connection to determine the time zone for the selected location - no more! Now, an offline time zone database is bundled with the app. We still check with the online web service to obtain the most accurate available time zone - time zone boundaries sometimes change and the online source is the best choice when online. All this happens transparently - no user action required.

Faster Skyfire Map Tiles

The Skyfire team deployed an on-demand map tile generator to the servers. We hope to be able to increase the forecast update frequency in the coming weeks by eliminating the slow, expensive manual tile generation job.

In the meantime, there are already some benefits from the new tile server: we’re using a “ content delivery network ” (CDN) to get the tiles to your device as quickly as possible. A CDN will cache a copy of the requested map tiles so that if another user wants the same tiles, they may be able to get them from a local cache instead of going all the way back to the server. In testing, we’ve found that tile delivery from the CDN cache is on average at least 10x faster than the old method. Even if the CDN doesn’t have the tile, and the request has to be routed back to the Skyfire server, the tile is still served in half the time.

Reset to Today’s Date

In the 4.6 update, we changed the behaviour of TPE to make it always reopen at the last used date and time. This is how the web app has always worked (and its predecessor Adobe AIR Desktop app going back all the way to 2008).

However, it became clear that this was causing confusion for some users who were accustomed to the old behaviour and as a result did not realise that the app was no longer necessarily showing today’s date on starting up.

Why change it at all? TPE has always been intended as a planning tool. Photographers can use it to check out what will happen in the future (or in the past), rather than what’s happening right now (just look out the window!). If you are planning a trip for a date a few months in the future, then TPE’s old behaviour (reset to now at startup) was irritating, hence the change.

However, Skyfire users in particular want to check the current day’s sunset forecast (usually - it’s odd, but many of you prefer staying out for sunset than getting up early for sunrise - I can’t imagine why), and so restoring yesterday’s date at startup (as the last date used) was not helpful to them.

With 4.7, hopefully we’ve found the sweet spot: the app will prompt to reset to today if needed. If you choose ‘Yes’, then the date is changed, but not the selected time, e.g. if you have Sun Oct 27 6:45am selected, then resetting to today would change the app too Mon Oct 28 6:45am. Keeping the same time of day works well for the Skyfire use case - sunset various only slightly day to day. If you never want to be prompted to reset the date, then choose “ Don’t ask again ” (you can re-enable the prompt in Settings).

18th Century Venetian Full Moons

We were able to fix a rare but longstanding crash in Visual Search. The trick was finally happening upon a scenario where the bug was triggered.

It arose when searching for occurrences of a full moon low in the sky due west of Venice in the years 1750-1755. What on earth would anyone want to know about that for, you may ask? Reasonable question - more to come on that.

Anyway, the rare bug - related to edge cases of the full moon rise, set and transit times - is finally fixed.

Improved AR 3D Performance

We spent some time digging into performance engineering for TPE 3D and some of the improvements were ported back to TPE. You’re unlikely to notice anything fundamentally different, but we were able to halve the execution time of a number of frequent operations used in the AR screen. The benefit comes in reduced power consumption from the app.

Hope you enjoy the 4.7 update.

Magical Gold and Blue: Confusion in the Twilight Zone

Mon, 16 May 2016 02:09:46 GMT

I’m always keen to see new developments in photography apps, keeping a close eye on updates. This excerpt from the latest release notes of a sun‑tracking app caught my eye:

Details view now shows Magic Hours for photography — Golden Hour and Blue Hour

It sums up one of the biggest hang‑ups I have with the terms ‘magic’, ‘golden’ and ‘blue’: what do they actually mean? It’s almost certainly not what’s implied in the quotation — that ‘magic hours’ comprise ‘golden’ and ‘blue’ hours — but the problem runs deeper than that.

To paraphrase Louis Armstrong, it’s likely a case of you’ll know it when you see it. However, it’s impossible to pin down any precise, generally accepted definition of the terms.

The Photographer’s Ephemeris has always included the three twilight types that have generally accepted precise definitions: civil, nautical and astronomical. These correspond to when the sun is between 0° and -6°, -6° and -12° and -12° and -18° respectively. It’s the elevation angle of the sun (termed altitude by astronomers) that determines how much light remains in the sky (other factors, such as cloud cover, being equal).

A useful qualitative distinction between nautical and astronomical twilight is that during the former, the sky remains bright enough to see an object in silhouette on the horizon. During astronomical twilight, while still not completely dark, the sky is too dim to do so.

The twilight zone: where confusion reigns

So what about the terms ‘magic’, ‘golden’ and ‘blue’? Sure, they’re popular among photographers, but if you were to look up the definition of ‘blue hour’, what would you be told?

Wikipedia describes ‘blue hour’ as:

The blue hour is the period of twilight during dawn each morning and dusk each evening when the sun is a significant distance below the horizon and the residual, indirect sunlight takes on a predominantly blue hue.

But of course, that doesn’t really help. If you check the meaning of dawn, you’ll read:

Dawn (from an Old English verb dagian “ to become day ”) is the time that marks, depending on the specific usage, the beginning of the twilight before sunrise, [1] [2] the period of the pre-sunrise twilight [3] or the time of sunrise.

i.e. dawn doesn’t have a precise definition either…

The same issue arises with ‘golden hour’. Wikipedia’s disambiguation page states:

Golden hour (photography), the first hour after dawn and the last hour before dusk

What do photography apps say?

Here’s a quick survey of the various definitions that a sample of five different apps (A, B, C, D, E) use for ‘blue’ and ‘golden’ hours:

‘Blue hour’ -6° to -4° (A, B) -8° to -4° (C) -10° to -3° (D) (E does not use ‘blue hour’ but unilaterally redefines the term twilight to be -12° to -4°)

‘golden hour’ -4° to +6° (A, B, E) +0° to +6° (C) +0° to +10° (D)

Viewed graphically, relative to the horizon (+0°), we have:

Clearly there are no agreed definitions of ‘blue’ and ‘golden’ hours, although you might observe that three of the five do use the same definition of ‘golden hour’.

What about ‘magic hour’?

Notable by its absence in the above list is ‘magic hour’. I’d argue that understanding what ‘magic hour’ means gives us a clue as to why the quasi‑consensus definition of ‘golden hour’ as -4° to +6° might be viewed as incorrect.

I didn’t appreciate the fundamental difference myself until receiving some useful clarification from a professional cinematographer and commercial photographer:

“ Magic Hour ” is the only time early or late where the complete lack of direct highlights from the sun — in combination with a still extremely‑bright sky which is still lit by the sun, produces what we call “ Liquid Light ” — the only source of light reaching the metal surface of an automobile for example, is the open sky without any highlights or flare from the direct sun — because it has just set either on the actual horizon or even better, behind a local “ feature ”.

The lack of direct light in combination with a bright sky is what makes ‘Magic Hour’ — as it happens, that’s also a pretty good description of civil twilight.

‘Golden hour’ is not a term much used by cinematographers, it seems. It is viewed as something from the world of stills photography, particularly landscape work.

So, if ‘golden hour’ is something different from ‘magic hour’, then it seems wrong to use a definition which directly overlaps with ‘magic hour’. Moreover, there’s a huge difference between direct and indirect light in terms of what is photographically possible: defining ‘golden hour’ to straddle sunrise or sunset seems conceptually untidy.

Keep it MECE

MECE stands for ‘mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive’.

Applying the principle to ‘magic’, ‘blue’ and ‘golden’, and the standard twilight phases, I’d argue that ‘magic’ and ‘blue’ are pretty much redundant, as they both overlap with nautical and civil twilight (to varying degrees depending on whose definition you subscribe to).

Tweaking the ‘blue hour’ definition to altitudes between the standard twilight boundaries seems more like a tip‑of‑the‑hat to camera and film high ISO capabilities of the last twenty years or so.

As high ISO/low‑noise performance improves, why shouldn’t so‑called ‘blue hour’ extend until the end of astronomical twilight? Any night‑sky photographer already knows that a long exposure during astronomical twilight reveals a deep blue sky.

If we’re going to keep the term ‘golden hour’, then I think it should (i) serve a useful purpose (ii) have a logical, defensible definition and (iii) not arbitrarily overlap into other well‑defined periods, such as civil twilight.

Sweet light

While cinematographers and commercial photographers might typically not want direct sunlight on their subjects, landscape photographers frequently do, particularly at the ends of the day when the light softens to yellow, orange and red due to atmospheric scattering.

Scattering is a function of the sun’s altitude (elevation angle): the longer the path sunlight takes through the atmosphere, the more scattering occurs. The more scattering, the redder the remaining light that reaches the subject.

So, there is an argument in favour of having a term — let’s call it ‘golden hour’ — to indicate when the quality of direct light will be starting to show these effects: ‘sweet’ light, if you will.

The change from ‘harsh’ to ‘sweet’ light occurs on a continuum: there’s no instant that marks a switchover. If we then have to choose a moment, why not make it consistent with the existing accepted definitions for twilight, assuming that it is also consistent with the qualitative experience of starting to notice golden light?

That’s why I prefer to define ‘golden hour’ as being when the sun is between +0° and +6°. This is the definition used in TPE.

Yes, +6° is arbitrary, but it is the same altitude spacing as the twilight phases and keeps things nicely mutually exclusive.

While both ‘magic’ and ‘blue’ hours arguably extend longer as camera technology continues to improve (or when a building blocks the sun, in the former case), ‘golden hour’ so defined, like its twilight counterparts, depends only on a fixed, measurable quantity: the altitude of the sun.

This post originally appeared on Medium

The Photographer's Ephemeris

Location Lists Now in TPE Web

12 August 2026 Total Solar Eclipse in Mallorca

Using Shadow Maps

Some caveats

A Totality‑Aware Shadow Map

A Better Lunar Eclipse Map

No View Zone

Local Times for Local People

Dynamic Map Legend

Total Lunar Eclipse Coming up on 3 March

Photography Tips

What to Read Next

Playing 'what if' with the weather for the August 2026 total eclipse

What about tomorrow’s forecast?

Weather Models and Locations

Why play ‘what if’?

Read More

Key Weather Forecasts for Night Photography

The Plan: Milky Way over Bear Lake

Key Weather and Atmospheric Variables to Check

Multi-Level Clouds

Astronomical Transparency

Astronomical Seeing

Total Column Smoke

Near-Ground Smoke

Visibility

Wind Gusts

How did we do?

Conclusion

Quick Night Shoot Weather Checklist

Forecast Models Used

Read more

New Seeing and Transparency Forecasts

Why should I care about Seeing and Transparency?

What’s New?

New Colour Schemes

Combined Seeing and Transparency

Conclusion

Architectural Photography, Part 5: Natural Light

A Case Study: Durham Cathedral

The Eastern Elevation

Interior Photography

Shooting Towards the Sun

The Weather

Weather as Drama

Artificial Lighting

Black and White

North-facing Elevations

Raking Light

Planning and Patience

Architectural Photography, Part 4: Fixing Wide-angle Distortion

Avoiding Wide-angle Distortion

Correcting Wide-angle Distortion

Widening the Towers

Adjusting Local Distortions

Final Comparison

Architectural Photography, Part 3: Fixing Converging Verticals

Fixing Converging Verticals

Transform Tools in Lightroom Classic

Correcting Horizontals

Comparing the Tilt/Shift 19mm and 14-30mm Zoom Images

Architectural Photography, Part 2: Equipment

A smartphone is enough

Avoiding converging verticals

Camera support

Tripod head

Camera mount

Levelling the camera

Durham Cathedral - East Elevation

Perspective‑control lenses

Architectural Photography, Part 1: Perspective

A Brief Recap of the Development of Linear Perspective

The Renaissance

The 17th and 18th Centuries

Three Point Perspective

Visual Language of Perspective

Perspective in Practice

Some Terminology

One Point Perspective