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Fall trip to Utah [3]

2009-11-07T20:20:17Z

The Narrows (click image for larger view)

Alice and I took a six day trip to Utah last week specifically to visit Zion and Bryce National Parks in autumn. We’d visited both before, in 2005, but that was before the camera bug had bitten.

We hit a good few of the major highlights:

Caught a good sunset at the Watchman
Hiked the Virgin River Narrows in canyoneering boots and drysuit pants (above)
Saw a spectacular sunrise at West Temple
Hiked to the Subway – exhausting, but unmissable
Missed getting stuck in line behind two coach loads of tourists at the restaurant at Ruby’s Inn (Bryce City) by seconds (this was perhaps the highlight of the trip)
Drove Scenic Byway 12 – a truly spectacular road through remote Utah
Saw the almost full moon rise over the strange landscape of Goblin Valley State Park

Bryce Sunrise (click image for larger view)

I figured this might be one of longest road trips to date, but at 1600 miles over the best part of a week, it felt pretty relaxed. (Certainly better than the 1800 miles in three days going to White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.) Must try harder!

You can see all my Utah images over at the gallery.

TPE 1.0 Released [5]

2009-10-12T04:12:58Z

Brief update to say that The Photographer’s Ephemeris is now officially out of Beta!

The new version is available for download now and current users will be prompted to auto-update.

The desktop version of TPE remains free of charge and the program will not expire.

Fall 2009 in Colorado - Part 2 [3]

2009-10-07T01:13:49Z

Dolores River Aspen (click image for larger view)

Alice and I just returned from four days down in the San Juans in southwest Colorado, again on the hunt for autumn colours. Unfortunately, a storm beat us through there last Wednesday and, as with Aspen the previous weekend, blew much of the best foliage to the ground.

However, we didn’t suffer from the incessant blue skies that plagued the trip to Aspen (remember, this is a photographic trip – blue skies = bad). Instead another low pressure system rolled in on Saturday evening, unfortunately blocking sunset, but setting up some great weather conditions for Sunday.

As you can see from the image above, there were some good spots to be found, but they took some finding. The best foliage that remained was either in sheltered corners, such as in the canyon below the turn off to the Alpine Loop off the Red Mountain Pass road, and towards the Telluride end of Last Dollar Road, or was a lower elevations, such as the Dolores River some 60 miles to the southwest.

I’ve posted a selection of images under the Colorado - Fall category. Here’s a small selection:

Sunday morning up on Dallas Divide offered some dramatic skies and there was sufficient colour in the remaining foliage to make a decent image:

Dallas Divide (click image for larger view)

Next we drove Last Dollar Road for the first time from beginning to end – wish we’d done that before, as it’s a wonderful place, and not a particularly challenging drive (as long as it’s not slick from rain, I read). This side road is rutted and gathers the falling aspen leaves creating some wonderful lead-in lines for a photograph:

Forest Road (click image for larger view)

Finally, these aspen groves on the road towards Telluride from the airport (not Last Dollar Road proper, but many will think of it as such) still retained some decent colour and the cloudy light was suitably soft:

Aspen Study 2 (click image for larger view)

I’ve read elsewhere that this was the worst fall colour in a decade. While the famous vistas weren’t really in condition to shoot, there was still much to enjoy.

Fall 2009 in Colorado - Part 1 [3]

2009-10-06T03:39:13Z

Alice and I are currently in Ridgway, at the end of Colorado’s Fall photographic season. Nothing better than having a Monday off and nothing else to do buy enjoy the scenery. I heard that my boss said at this morning’s staff meeting, from which I of course was absent, that I was “off somewhere shooting trees and leaves and shit”. Yes, that’s about it.

It’s been something of a challenging year in terms of autumn colours. The leaves haven’t generally been close to the levels of 2008, often appearing dull or affected by black leaf mould, or instead changing immediately from green to dead brown, or gone altogether.

Maroon Bells 2009 (click image for larger view)

The main lesson, of course, is that you simply have to work a little harder to find suitable subjects, i.e. beyond the Bells…

We spent the last weekend of September in Aspen. A storm had come through mid-week before causing many of the other upper stands to lose their leaves. Nonetheless, with or without perfect foliage, the view remains spectacular.

Independence Pass offered some decent opportunities on the way home:

Golden Aspen (click image for larger view)

Aspen Boles (click image for larger view)

As did Castle Creek Road:

Backlit Aspen in Castle Creek (click image for larger view)

In other circumstances, the weather for our three days in Aspen would be nothing short of perfect – crystal clear blue skies and temperatures in the eighties. Of course, for photography, it’s rather a nuisance.

Theories for the below average fall colours this year that I’ve heard include:

A wet spring – stops the leaves drying out in autumn and encourages black leaf mould
A June frost, damaging the foliage
Early autumn storms

Likely some truth in all of those.

Nikon D700 Custom Control Settings [1]

2009-09-27T14:37:31Z

I never blogged it, but a few months ago I upgraded to a Nikon D700 from my trusty D200. Excellent image quality aside, I think the singular winning quality of the Nikon SLRs is their handling and overall usability. The camera hardly ever gets in the way of what I want to do with it.

A significant part of the usability for me is the custom control settings on the camera. Here’s how I have things set currently:

FUNC Button

The FUNC button sits comfortably under the fourth finger of the right hand on the front of the camera. Custom Setting #F5 allows it to be assigned to a number of functions in two separate modes – button press and button + dials (i.e. press and hold while you move the command dials).

Given that the D700 is missing a dedicated bracketing control, you’re pretty much forced to assign FUNC Button + Dials to “Auto bracketing”. With the button held, you can move the command dials to set the number of bracketed frames plus the relative exposures you’d like to capture. I normally leave it at five frames (0, -2, -1, +1, +2) but there a number of other options.

For the Button Press setting, I use “Spot Metering”. I find this incredibly useful. The camera is left in Matrix metering mode by default, allowing initial exposure settings to be dialled in quickly (I almost always work in Manual mode). But if you have the slightest concerns about dynamic range (i.e. is it too large, such that I either need to use an ND grad filter or to bracket my exposures for subsequent blending or HDR), it’s very useful to have the spot meter at hand to determine that.

Holding the FUNC button down, I’m able quickly to check where the sky or the dark trees sit relative to dialled in exposure settings. For example, if I matrix meter the scene and dial in exposure such that the meter reads 0, I can then point at the sky (or select focus point in that region), hold the FUNC button and obtain a spot meter reading instantly. If the exposure for the spot meter reading is several stops higher, I know that I’m likely to blow the highlights in the sky area with my current selected exposure.

The great thing about this setting is just how quick it is to use – you don’t need to take your eye away from the viewfinder (which you otherwise would if you had to switch back and forth between metering modes using the selector switch on the back of the camera).

One word of warning however: you need to be disciplined not to change exposure settings with the FUNC button pressed. Why? Because you wouldn’t be changing the exposure settings, you’d be changing the bracketing settings (if you’ve followed my choices so far). Believe me, that can get very confusing…

Preview Button

The Preview button lies above the FUNC button (under the third finger of the right hand). Custom Setting #F6 allows it be assigned to a number of functions again, just like the FUNC button.

In this case, there’s only one choice really and that’s to leave it at its default assignment of DOF Preview. Depth of field preview, when activated, stops the lens down to the selected aperture so that you can evaluate… the depth of field. Invaluable for landscape photographers (assuming your eyesight is good enough to determine precisely what’s in focus and what’s not through the viewfinder – not sure mine is any more).

You can’t always combine settings for Button Press and Button + Dials, so in this case DOF Preview is the only thing this button does.

AE-L/AF-L Button

Custom Setting #F7 determines what the AE-L/AF-L Buton on the back of camera does. Given that I generally want these controls accessible while looking through the viewfinder, I tend to think of them in terms of musical instrument fingerings – in piano terms, this is like reaching from C down to A with your right hand thumb.

Despite periodically re-reading the manual on what this button was originally intended to do, I must confess I never really got it. I can only assume others didn’t either and that’s why Nikon made it assignable to other functions.

I have it set to Virtual horizon. There’s a virtual horizon that you can display on the rear LCD, but that involves moving through the menus so, for me, is a complete non-starter in the field.

The Virtual horizon you get with holding AE-L/AF-L is in the viewfinder – the metering graph turns into a virtual spirit level indicating whether the camera is perpendicular to the ground or not. Accuracy isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely better than nothing. I have a tendency to think I have the camera level when I don’t, especially for those more awkward shots close to the ground in portrait mode where you have to twist to bring your eye to the viewfinder.

Setting virtual horizon precludes you setting anything for Button + Dials, so that’s it for this one.

That’s all. AF-ON isn’t an assignable button – it’s one of the ones that prety much only does what it says.

Remember, my settings are but one combination of a wide array of choices you could make. You may not be shooting the same material as me or with the same approach, so these choices may not work for you as well as they do for me.

TPE updated to 1.0 RC1 [3]

2009-09-20T19:57:18Z

I’ve updated TPE today to version 1.0 RC1 – it’s close to done (for version 1 at least).

A couple of features of note:

Elevation

I’ve been using the SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) data set via the Geonames web service. This is a fairly mature data model and the quality is high. However, it has a couple of limitations for our purposes.

Firstly, the latitudes of the model extend only to 60° north and 56° south – not far enough for some of the locations that photographers get to nowadays.

Secondly, many mountainous peaks and slopes would return “No Data” due to measurement difficulties when the angle of incidence of the radar was too high. Again, many landscape photographers are interested in precisely these locations.

In this version we’re adding two other elevation data models to the mix: ASTER GDEM and GTOPO30.

ASTER GDEM was released only earlier this summer, but Geonames already has a web service supporting it. The coverage is much wider (83° north and 60° south) and mountainous areas are better covered.

However, there are apparently still some holes and data anomolies in the model (see the reference in the Wikipedia article linked above).

GTOPO30 is another model with even wider coverage but with lower resolution and the data is older than the other two sources.

So, in the new version of TPE, I query SRTM first and then ASTER and finally GTOPO30 if either preceding service returns “no data” (or the location is out of range).

Twilight azimuths

I had a request from Tim Parkin to display the azimuth lines for the sun both before sunrise and after sunset. This is useful if you’re looking to track the twilight glow on the horizon.

So, the program now shows this (in the Details View) up until the end (or from the start) of Astronomical Twilight.

September at Bear Lake [3]

2009-09-13T21:06:35Z

September at Bear Lake (click image for larger view)

Can’t believe it’s already September. This weekend last year Alice and I camped up at Moraine Park in Rocky Mountain National Park, and headed to Bear Lake for dawn. We were greeted by a dense bank of fog that slowly lifted as the sun rose (you can see this here).

We decided to head back this morning to see how the aspen around the lake were coming on. I had the sense that things were moving slightly faster this year in terms of colour (see image above).

Of course, the red trees in the photograph are not aspen, but rather are dead pine trees, killed mostly probably by mountain pine beetle. I’m sure some folks might say “avoid dead vegetation” in your images, but the sad fact is, that is going to be increasingly hard to do in Colorado over the coming years, due in large part to the beetle problem.

The aspen stand at the north side of the lake is developing well colour-wise, although some trees have lost their leaves already and a few have dulled colours and are showing some black mould patches – possibly due to early frost or damp conditions?

Labor Day weekend in Jackson [2]

2009-09-12T14:14:28Z

Chromatic Pool (click image for larger view)

Alice and I spent Labor Day weekend in Jackson, Wyoming. It was great to get back there eight years after our first visit, and also great to see the place at a different time of year.

Our first visit was primarily a ski trip to Jackson Hole, although we did visit Yellowstone for a day (it was 30 below) on Christmas Eve.

We took in many of the classic photographic spots of Grand Teton National Park as well as driving around to some spots in Yellowstone. Yellowstone really is huge – we covered over 300 miles in one heading up to Mammoth Hot Springs and back.

I still have some panoramas to finish processing, but there are some new images now up in the Wyoming Gallery, so please do take a look.

The hot springs in Yellowstone offer endless photographic possibilities, and they’re one of those subjects where you don’t have to be shooting at sunrise or sunset – always nice to have that extra flexibility on time.

Using TPE, Part 4: the Horizon [1]

2009-08-21T03:47:17Z

Here’s the fourth in a series of tutorials on The Photographer’s Ephemeris.

We covered the basics of using the program in Part 1. In Part 2, we covered the Twilight information and the Details View (most of it at least). In Part 3 we covered the use of the secondary map marker. You’ll need to have understood the material in those tutorials before tackling this one.

This tutorial is based on Beta 0.9.6. Click on any screenshot for a full-size expanded view.

The Horizon

Why should the photographer care about the horizon? Simply put, it’s the visible boundary above which the sun or moon rises and below which they set. Knowing where that boundary lies can be important for setting up your shots.

It’s common experience that you can see farther when stood atop a mountain, a tall building or when flying in an aircraft. The distance to the visible horizon increases in proportion to your height above the ground. If you can see farther, then you’ll see the rising sun sooner than if you were back on the ground, or the setting sun later.

So, in short, height above the horizon changes the precise times of sun/moon rise/set.

TPE can adjust for height above the horizon. In this tutorial we’ll walk through the steps to accomplish that.

It’s optional

One important note: this is all optional. You don’t have to worry about it. By default, the times for rise/set that TPE gives match those of the vast majority of other online sources. Very few of these correct for height above the horizon, and you likely won’t run into many problems as a result.

The usual advice applies: arrive at your location early and be prepared to stay late. Do that, and the differences in rise/set times due to height above the horizon most likely won’t worry you.

So when does this matter?

So when might you want to worry about it? Here are some example situations:

Shooting sunrise from a mountain peak (e.g. looking east across the San Juans from the summit of Mt. Sneffels)
Shooting last light striking a mountain peak (take your pick of summits)
Shooting a seascape from a high sea cliff at sunrise/sunset (when and where will the sun set as seen from the 601m high Slieve League in Donegal, Ireland?)
You need to know how far you might be able to see from a high point on the landscape (e.g. can I see Shiprock, New Mexico from Mesa Verde, Colorado?)

Let’s discover how.

Back to the Rockies

We’re going to return to the Dream Lake location we used in Tutorial 1.

The quickest way to get back there (assuming you didn’t already save it as a Location) is to search for “Tyndall Gorge, Colorado”
This should drop you just a little east of Dream Lake
Set the date to September 12 2009

Next, let’s position ourselves a bit better for where we’re planning to shoot from:

Drag and drop the primary map marker (red) to a point at the east end of Dream Lake, then pan and zoom to show the top of Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain to the west

It’s going to be a sunrise shot, so let’s get our time set correctly:

Click Details to switch display modes
Click Next event to move to sunrise and then drag the slider a couple of minutes later to 06:46 hrs
Drag and drop the secondary marker (grey) to a point on the eastern flank of Hallett Peak, aiming for the most tightly packed contour lines
Note that the apparent altitude from lakeshore to mountain flank is 20.4°

So far so good.

But what we are really shooting?

But let’s think about it. What are we shooting here? Where will the rising sun fall?

Hallett Peak from Dream Lake (this was taken in March rather than September, but the rising sun is at a similar azimuth)

Really, we should have our primary marker on the mountain sides: that’s where first light will strike – not the ground underneath our tripod. We need to reverse the marker positions. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to do that:

Click the Swap button next to the Geodetics label (or press the S key)
Note that the two markers swap positions

The point we’re photographing is significantly higher than the lake – some 2,110 feet higher. If you’ve ever been to Rocky Mountain National Park, you’d likely have noticed that you can see clear to the east for a rather long way. That’s because the plains lie several thousand feet lower in elevation. Let’s find out exactly how much lower:

Zoom out so you can see the plains of eastern Colorado as shown
Reposition the secondary marker along the sunrise azimuth line, dropping it somewhere beyond Interstate 25
The Geodetics panel tells us that the change is elevation is some 7,000 feet and the distance over 40 miles

Setting the Elevation at the Horizon

This is the critical step.

Knowing that the plains are just that – plains, and therefore flat – we can use our roughly positioned secondary marker to set the elevation at the horizon. TPE, knowing the elevation at both primary and secondary marker positions, can then take the difference to calculate the elevation above the horizon, which is the number we need to adjust the rise and set times:

Click Lock in the Elevation at the Horizon panel: this locks the elevation at the horizon to the secondary marker position (you can also manually type a value into the text box if you prefer – press Enter when you’re done). Note that the elevation above sea level at the secondary marker position is displayed in the text box.
Note that the time of sunrise has changed: it’s now 06:33 rather than 06:42, and the azimuth has changed also. That nine minute difference is the effect of the elevation above the horizon when up on the flank of Hallett Peak
Finally, note that the azimuth lines are now split either side of the secondary marker – although our time of day setting hasn’t changed, now that we’re accounting for height above the horizon, sunrise is sooner and occurs farther north

You may be wondering, just because we happened to drop the secondary marker just east of I25, that doesn’t mean that’s where the visible horizon is, right? Right. It’s an estimate. Remember the trial-end-error elements of Tutorial 3? This is another one of those. However, the program gives us a clue as to how close we might be:

Zoom out a little (click on the zoom control, press Ctrl-minus, use the mouse scroll wheel) to reveal…
A visual indication of the implied distance to the horizon
If you hover the mouse over the horizon indicator icon, the tooltip will indicate the calculated distance to the horizon

So, if the elevation above the horizon is the 7,000 ft implied by our marker locations, we should be able to see around 111 miles to the east (from the flank of Hallett Peak). Note that the distance is an estimate, based on theoretical (but reasonable) calculations and assumes a ‘standard’ set of atmospheric conditions. See Andrew Young’s Distance to the Horizon page for more details – there’s some interesting background material here too.

Having zoomed out and seen that the implied distance to the horizon is much farther than the location we selected to determine Elevation at the horizon, it makes sense to adjust and double check:

Drag the secondary marker to the limit of the visible horizon and release
You’ll see that elevation above sea level is slightly lower again at this location, and the distance to the visible horizon increases slightly, but not significantly

Finally, let’s test a little further away and see if we can tease the horizon even further out:

Drag the secondary marker a little further along the sunrise azimuth line
The change in elevation is minor (the plains are getting pretty flat our here) and the horizon limit doesn’t follow us. We’re beyond the visible horizon and a warning icon is displayed next to the Distance and bearing label in the Geodetics panel

This time, we’ve gone too far. The secondary marker is beyond the calculated distance to the horizon. We can move it back in and call it done.

What have we achieved with all this?

Let’s review what we’ve accomplished:

We’re shooting sunrise on some mountain peaks that lie to the west of an extensive plain at lower elevation
We know that the sun will be seen from the mountain peaks earlier than it would at a lower elevation because the distance to the horizon is greater
If we want to correct the rise and set times for this “dip of the horizon”, we need to tell TPE what the elevation above sea level is at the horizon
Adopting a simple trial and error approach, we can drop the secondary marker in a likely looking location, Lock the elevation at the horizon to the secondary marker position and let the program recalculate
By zooming out we can see the implied distance to the horizon and use that as a hint of where to try the secondary marker next
With a little trial and error, we can get a decent estimate of where the visible horizon will lie
If you were shooting from the mountain peak (as opposed to shooting the peak itself) the distance to the horizon will show you what landscape features you might see in your shot

Gotchas

The same gotchas apply as from Tutorial 3 – you need elevation above sea level for both marker positions. However, in addition:

The distance to the horizon will vary depending on which direction you look in. Therefore, it’s important to establish the horizon in the direction from which the light is coming or in which you plan to shoot. (For example, above, the distance to the horizon in the east is very different to the distance to the horizon to the west.)
You need to pay attention to the contour information contained in the topographic map in order to make educated trial and error attempts
In varied terrain, you may need to test more locations than you might in flatter terrain as used in this example
If you need to establish the elevation at the horizon, but still wish to use the secondary marker for other purposes (e.g. as per Tutorial 3), then do the following: (i) establish the elevation at the horizon first, using the Lock function; (ii) once set, Unlock from the secondary marker – this leaves the elevation at the horizon set, but you can now move the secondary marker freely without changing it
If you need to the clear the elevation at the horizon, click the X button to the right of the Elevation at the horizon text box

The next tutorial will cover some of the miscellaneous features of the program that we haven’t discussed to date.

Using TPE, Part 3: Geodesy

2009-08-12T05:23:17Z

Here’s the third in a series of tutorials on The Photographer’s Ephemeris.

We covered the basics of using the program in Part 1. In Part 2, we covered the Twilight information and the Details View (most of it at least). You’ll need to have understood the material in those tutorials before tackling this one.

This tutorial is based on Beta 0.9.6. Click on any screenshot for a full-size expanded view.

Geodesy?

Geodesy? Geodetics? What’s that all about? I’ll admit that until I started really getting into writing TPE, I didn’t have a clue. However, it turns out that there are whole class of questions a landscape photographer might legitimately ask that can only be answered accurately by use of the science of geodesy.

I’ll leave it to Wikipedia to explain the details, but in essence, geodesy deals with the measurement and mathematical representation of the earth.

The earth is round. Sort of. In fact, it’s sufficiently not round that measuring point-to-point distances on the surface of the earth is only poorly approximated by assuming a sphere. You wouldn’t want your airline pilot navigating this way.

An ellipsoid is a much better assumption to make, but the maths gets hard. So hard, in fact, that a decent solution for calculating point-to-point distances between points on the surface of an ellipsoid was only devised in 1975 by Thaddeus Vincenty.

The Geodetics panel and the accompanying Secondary Map Marker included in v0.9.5 of TPE and later use Vincenty’s algorithms to enable some new functionality that will help you plan shoots in greater detail.

Our destination for this tutorial: the Macey Lakes

Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Wilderness contains some of the most spectacular peaks in the whole of the Rockies. There are around 18 drainages within the wilderness boundaries, many with stunning alpine lakes surrounded by jagged mountainous cirques.

Type ‘Macey Lakes’ into the search box, and press Enter
The primary map marker in red will (should) be positioned over the Macey Lakes in Colorado, USA
For the purposes of this tutorial, set your date to July 5th 2009

We’re zoomed out a bit too far as is, so let’s fix that:

Drag and drop the primary marker to the north east of the lower lake, as shown
Zoom in around 3 clicks or so (you may prefer to zoom in before dragging the marker – do whatever works for you)
Click the Details button to show the details view for July 5th
Notice that we now have a Secondary Map Marker in light grey

Using that secondary marker is what this tutorial is all about.

A few things about it:

It’s optional – you don’t have to use at all if you don’t want to
By default, it will always appear to eastern side of the map
If you don’t drag and drop it, it stays light grey
Moving it won’t (by default – check back for the next tutorial) change your sun/moon rise/set/phase or twilight times

However, we won’t learn much by leaving it alone, so let’s see what useful information this could provide us.

When will I lose direct sunlight on Lower Macey Lake?

Looking at the map, you can see that the sun will set to the north west at this time of year. It’s also easy to make out the high ridge-line in the same direction, with the summit of Little Baldy Mountain clearly marked. Just eyeballing the contour lines, it seems likely that the sun will disappear behind the ridge well before it actually sets below the true horizon. But when?

We can use the secondary marker to find out.

Start by dragging and dropping the secondary marker on the summit of Little Baldy. You’ll notice that when you do, the colour changes to a darker grey, indicating that you have activated the geodetics information
In the Geodetics panel, you’ll now see three numbers displayed. The most significant for our purposes is the apparent altitude of 18.5°

What do they tell us? Firstly, notice the icon to the left. It shows an arrow from primary to secondary marker. This indicates that all the data displayed in the panel is referenced in terms of travel from the primary location to the secondary. Let’s look at the three data items in reverse order from the bottom up:

Distance and bearing: distance is the point-to-point as-the-crow-flies distance from primary to secondary marker; bearing is the map bearing from primary to secondary in degrees (note: this is map bearing, not compass bearing – the same comment applies to all azimuths and bearings in v0.9.6, although I will likely add a compass bearing option in a later version)
Change in elevation: elevation refers to height above mean sea level. The change in elevation is measured from primary to secondary. In this case, it’s 1,391ft from the lower lake to the summit of Little Baldy
Apparent altitude: the units of degrees give away that this is altitude in the astronomical sense. If you had a sextant and took a sighting to the peak, this is angle you would measure. ‘Apparent’ means that this measurement is adjusted for refraction, the bending of light caused by passage through the atmosphere.

(Note that the apparent altitude is not exactly what you’d get by dividing the elevation change by the distance and calculating the inverse tangent: the calculation accounts for the curvature of the earth’s surface and adjusts the result for refraction.)

OK, now we know what we’re looking at, let’s find out the altitude of the sun when it passes through the same bearing:

Use the time of day slider to drag forward to around 18:15.
You’ll see the azimuth line for the sun move around during the course of the day and line up with the grey line to the secondary marker. We already have learned something: the sun will pass through the line of the peak of Little Baldy at 18:16 on July 5th 2009. But will it be visible?
Looking at the sun’s altitude in the Details panel, you can see that it lies at 23.4° some 5° above the peak of Little Baldy

So, the sun should still be visible at 18:15. We need to look a little further:

Drag the time of day slider a little later in the day until the time is around 18:40. The sun is setting in the sky, so the altitude decreases to 18.8°
Drag the secondary marker a little farther to the north-east along the ridge line to match the azimuth line to the setting sun.
Note that the apparent altitude to the ridge line is now 18.8°

With a little trial-and-error, you can establish that the sun is likely to drop out of sight around 18:40, some time before actual sunset. You’ll need to apply some judgement here and look at the contours of the topological map (don’t try this in other map views) and see where the sensible test points should be. We’ll look at this in more detail below.

As an exercise, you may wish to try to determine how high on the north west flank of Colony Baldy will you observe direct light in the moments before sunset. Hint 1: you’ll need to relocate both markers. Hint 2: you may need to move the secondary marker farther than you think. Answers at the end.

Will the rising sun strike Point 13,200’?

Let’s look at a different question. You want to make a sunrise image of Upper Macey Lake, and you’d like to take in the cirque to the south of the lake. However, the image will likely only work if the tops of the cirque catch the rising sun. You can use TPE to determine if the rising sun will be obstructed or not:

Use the skip backward button to move the timeline back to the moment of sunrise, 05:47
Move the primary marker to the top of the peak near the contour label 13,200’ on the map. Next, move the secondary marker to the first ridge line to east north east as shown
Notice the apparent altitude and change of elevation figures

So far, so good: the first ridge line lies below our peak by some margin, so we should get some direct light. However, to be sure, let’s check to see if Colony Baldy, farther to the east will cause us any problems:

Move the secondary marker out towards the direction of sunrise and drop it on the high point of the flank of Colony Baldy
Note the apparent altitude: it is still negative, indicating that the sun will clear Colony Baldy and strike our peaks

Good news. We should be able to make the shot. We can already see from the basic sun rise line that we should get good light over the lake itself at the moment of sunrise. Now that we know our rugged mountain ridge will also receive some direct light, we can hope for a good shot:

Upper Macey Lake

Can we really see the ridge line?

Let’s look once more at the ridge line visibility question. This time, let’s say we want to determine the angle of view to the ridge line to the west of the upper lake:

Move the secondary marker to the ridge line west south west of Upper Macey Lake, opposite where the sun will rise (you’ll need to reposition the primary marker too)
The apparent altitude is 23.5°

OK. But this is where some trial and error and map reading skills come in.

Move the secondary marker down the slope a little to where the contours appear a little steeper
Note the increased apparent altitude – it’s now some 3 degrees greater

It might be that we’ll be looking at a false summit from our position on the lake shore. Probably won’t impact our images significantly in this case, but it’s important to be on the look out for these details in some situations.

Why can’t the computer just work all this out for me?

Reasonable question. The main reason is that the computer would have to check out elevation data at every point along the path to the sun or moon and infer what was significant for your image and what was not. There are certainly some possibilities for taking this approach, but for now, I’ve opted for the simpler manually placed marker. That approach avoids too much second guessing by the program, avoids me having to pull too much elevation data and covers all scenarios, albeit potentially with more trial and error on occasions.

Gotchas

The Geodetics calculation can determine distance and bearing quite happily just from the map marker positions (which we always know by definition – you placed the markers). However, to do anything more, we need to know the elevation above sea level for both marker positions. Some potential gotchas:

The program may be unable to obtain an elevation for extreme latitudes (the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission only covered latitudes from around 60°N to 56°S)
Sometimes, there is no data available for very steep terrain, as you might find in mountainous areas (for example, try the summit of Longs Peak, Colorado – no data, even though it’s a famous local fourteener)
The elevation data points are spaced every 90 metres (3 arc-seconds), so relying on this for high precision, short distance work is not recommended

That said, for most landscape uses, this will work well. However, if you have a shot that requires critical planning, I highly recommend that you

Consult multiple reliable sources for sun/moon information (I highly recommend Jeff Conrad’s Sun/Moon Calculator)
Obtain a large-scale topographical map of the area from a reputable publisher of your shoot and take careful measurements of distance and elevation
Consult the online tools from the National Geodetic Survey and perform your own geodetic calculations
Maintain your sanguine disposition when, even though the clouds cooperated, the sun or moon did not appear quite where or when your expected: even if all your preparation and calculation was perfect, the vagaries of atmospheric refraction may result in an unexpected outcome

Answer to the exercise

I make it 13,350ft. The ridge line of Little Baldy isn’t the limiting factor – you need to look at the next ridge line farther north west which lies higher. Place the secondary marker there, and then adjust the primary marker up and down the north west flank of Colony Baldy until you obtain an apparent altitude of around zero. From that point upwards, you should see direct light from the setting sun. More or less.

The next tutorial will cover Elevation at the horizon. If you’re shooting in high places, this could be significant…

Using TPE, Part 2: Twilight and Details View [3]

2009-08-11T05:07:16Z

Here’s the second in a series of tutorials on The Photographer’s Ephemeris.

We covered the basics of using the program in Part 1. In Part 2, we’ll cover the Twilight information and the Details View (most of it at least).

This tutorial is based on Beta 0.9.6. Click on any screenshot for a full-size expanded view.

A visit to the Blue Lakes

First things first: we need to choose a location for the tutorial that lets us illustrate the relevant features. To get started, let’s find our location:

Click into the Search text box (below the map), type “Sneffels”, and press Enter to perform the search.
You should see the primary map marker (the red one) at the summit of Mount Sneffels, one of Colorado finest fourteeners (summits over 14,000ft)
If for some reason, you don’t end up there, try searching for “Mount Sneffels, Colorado, USA”
My date is set to August 3rd 2009 – that is significant for some of the illustrative use cases discussed below. You can set your date the same if you’d like using the date selection control.

If you’re following along, your screen should appear as follows:

The search box shows the search term you entered
The primary map marker is positioned over the closest matching location (the summit of Mount Sneffels in this case)

Let’s pan the map a little to the south west, towards the highest of the three Blue Lakes. (Why there? Why then? I was there – you can see some of the images here)

Next, click on the Twilight button towards the lower right of the screen:

Viewing twilight information

When you click Twilight, the normal sun/moon rise/set information is replaced with Twilight information. The three standard twilights are shown: astronomical, nautical and civil, as well as sunrise and sunset information.

You can click on any of the labels (e.g. “Nautical”) to display a Glossary entry for the term. In brief summary, however, astronomical twilight occurs when the sun lies between 12° and 18° below the horizon; nautical when the sun lies between 12° and 6°; and civil when the sun lies between 6° and 0°.

You can toggle the display back to the normal sun/moon display by clicking the button again. Alternatively, the display can be toggled using the ‘T’ key on the keyboard.

Getting down to the details

Next, click the Details button (or hit the ‘D’ key on the keyboard):

The details view is displayed. This includes a number of information panels.

Click the Multi-day button (or press ‘D’ again) to revert to the normal view
In Details view, the top two panels display both sun/moon rise/set/phase information, plus the twilight information discussed above, for the selected date
The central panel shows graphs of the altitude of the sun and moon over the course of the selected day, plus some time-specific data and other controls (discussed below)
Finally, there’s now an additional marker shown on the Map. This relates to the Geodetics panel, but we’ll discuss this in a later tutorial

(Note that the term ‘altitude’ is used in the astronomical sense of angle above the horizon and is displayed in degrees. Elevation is used to refer to height above mean sea level.)

Why would you want to know about Twilight?

Any number of reasons: many photographs, such as landscapes including mountain alpenglow are photographed during times of twilight.

Let’s take a very practical example from our Blue Lakes location on Aug 3 2009. Imagine you wanted to do some night photography of the Blue Lakes and surrounding mountains with a clear, starry sky overhead. When would be a suitable time to shoot that, during the night of August 3rd?

We can use the Details view and Twilight information to find out.

The skip forward and backward buttons in the central panel allow you to jump through the timeline of the selected 24 hour period from ‘celestial event’ to ‘celestial event’, e.g. from Moonset (the default starting time on this particular day in this particular location) to the start of Astronomical twilight.
If you click Skip forward (the button on the right), the label “Astronomical twilight begins” appears
You’ll see that at this point in time, the altitude of the sun is -18° (by definition)
Finally, note that the timeline indicator (and the manual slider control) have moved forward to show the altitude of the sun and moon at the corresponding time

If you’re looking to shoot a clear, starry sky, you probably want it to be truly dark. Using the information in the details panel, you can see that on this particular night, there’s only a small window of opportunity: the moon sets at 03:53 am, but astronomical twilight begins at 04:33 am. It’s likely that the best time is somewhere between 04:15 and 04:30am. (Once astronomical twilight begins, objects such as the Milky Way will become invisible in the sky.)

The path of the sun

Let’s imagine, being a glutton for punishment as most landscape photographers are, that you plan to return to the upper Blue Lake for a sunset shoot that evening. You know that you need to be there a bit before actual sunset in order to catch the sun before it drops behind the mountains to the west (there’s a good way to find out when this will be – check back for the next tutorial). But exactly what angle will the sun be at, let’s say, 45 minutes before sunset?

You can use the slider control to set your time of day manually – here I’ve dragged the control to 7:31 pm
As you move the slider, if the sun or moon lies above the horizon, an azimuth line is drawn on the map to show the bearing. (The length of the line is proportional to the altitude also – if the sun is high in the sky, the line will be short. This indication is not to any fixed scale, and is indicative only.)
If you hold down the Shift key, in Details view, it is the individual azimuth lines that are extended as opposed to the rise/set lines. This lets you gauge where the light will fall relative to the primary map marker location

Other practical uses

So, we’ve covered Twilight times and most of the Details view. Twilight information is useful for many purposes. Remember the actual length of twilight varies significantly by season and by latitude (short in the tropics, long in the polar summer).

The effects of twilight on photography are important for many landscape compositions. At temperate latitudes, such as here in Colorado (40°N) late Nautical and early Civil twilight often offer more intense sky colours than late Civil twilight. Alpenglow will typically last until 10-15 minutes before sunrise – roughly mid-way through the typical Civil twilight period.

Often, you might wish to find the time of alignment of the sun or moon with a particular object or landscape feature: the manual slider control and azimuth lines allow you determine alignment visually, for example you can experience Manhattanhenge in Toronto on October 25th 2009 at 4:18pm.

Next time we’ll explore the remaining panel in Details View, the Geodetics panel.

Blue Lakes, Mount Sneffels Wilderness

2009-08-07T22:03:25Z

From Blue Lakes Pass

Just back from a 1,000 mile road trip around Colorado with my nephew Ben. We decided to show him some of the best of the state, with an itinerary taking in Glenwood Springs (alright, maybe that’s not the best, but it is a convenient stop-over point), Ridgway, camping at the Blue Lakes, a jeep drive over Imogene Pass, and finally Mesa Verde.

We camped at Lower Blue Lake last Sunday after the 3.3 mile trek in from the trailhead at the end of CR7, the East Dallas Creek road. The plan was to head up to Blue Lakes Pass for dawn on Monday morning with Ben, so the three of us (Alice, Ben, me) decided to scout out the upper lakes Sunday evening to make sure we knew where we’d be headed in the dark that night.

Lower Blue Lake I

The steeply climbing trail offered some great views of the lower lake where we were camped (you might be just able to make out our two tents in the trees to the top right of the lake). The blue just gets more intense as you rise above the water – quite amazing.

Lower Blue Lake II

Back at camp, the lower lake was mostly in shade for the second shot above. While we were there very much towards the end of the flower season, the vegetation remained very fresh, and in places there were some nice flower specimens still around.

Ben and I set off at 2:50am that night for the pass. The trail is mostly straightforward, if somewhat steep in places. The only tricky part was the upper switchbacks beyond where the grass ends: here the trail is in need of some maintenance, suffering as it does from ‘adverse camber’ – i.e. it angles away downhill. There are plenty of loose, powdery rocks around this part, so maintaining footing can be somewhat precarious at times, and the slope is steep enough to cause trouble if you were to fall.

However, we arrived at the top well before dawn. There was a distinctly cool breeze, but nothing too unpleasant. The sunrise was far from being the most exciting I could have imagined, but still the view from up there is hard to beat, looking down on the two upper lakes (and the small tarn I didn’t even know was there until the light came up) – photo above.

We headed back down to camp getting back around 9am and crashed out for some catch-up sleep before trekking out later that afternoon.

We stopped up at Last Dollar Road for sunset also, where I captured the following image of what I think is Hayden Peak:

Lower Blue Lake I

Using TPE, Part 1: the basics [12]

2009-07-29T05:51:38Z

Welcome to the first in what’s intended to be a short series of tutorials on how to use The Photographer’s Ephemeris.

TPE was inspired by a number of events during 2008: (i) a winter weekend workshop in Rocky Mountain National Park with Glen Randall which opened my eyes to how plan landscape shoots – topographic maps, compass, protractor and calculator; (ii) going to shoot Dream Lake once again a few months later, and realizing I hadn’t planned properly and (iii) heading up to Loch Vale last November for a shoot that was a total bust. After all that, I realized that I while I wanted to improve my planning, I’d rather do it at my computer. Finding no tools that combined all the right data or which worked on a Mac, TPE was born.

This tutorial is based on Beta 0.9.5. Click on a screenshot for a full-size expanded view.

The screen layout

Let’s start by taking a look at the basics of the screen layout:

The elevation above sea level and latitude/longitude of the current location is shown above the map
The most important thing of all: the primary position marker. You can drag this freely to exactly the point you need
The time zone of the current location and difference from UTC (universal coordinated time – effectively the same as GMT)
The current selected date is displayed along with times and directions of sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset (where they occur)
You can change the selected date using the previous and next day buttons
Alternatively, select an arbitrary date (past or future) from the date control

You can see that the directions of sunrise, sunset and moonrise are shown on the map. (There is no moonrise on this date at this location.) The map legend can be toggled on or off – once you are familiar with the standard colours (which can be customized), you may wish to hide the Legend to declutter the map.

Rise/set information is shown for days before and after the selected day, allowing the optimal day for a shoot to be selected. This is particularly useful for moon images, given that the timing, azimuth and phase of the moon varies significantly from day to day.

Finding a different location

I’m guessing you’re probably not planning a shoot in Timbuktu, so let’s find somewhere else.

Click in the search text box below the map (highlighted above) and type the name of the place you are searching for. Press enter to begin the search, or click the search button adjacent to the text box (magnifying glass). Google Maps will find the closest match to the specified location and reposition the map and the primary map marker to that place.

Where possible, specify a county, state or county name in addition to the town name, in order to ensure the best match. There’s Paris, and there’s Paris, Texas.

The new location

OK. Now we’re in Estes Park, Colorado, USA near the east entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park:

Notice that the elevation and lat/long are updated reflecting the new location. The map marker lies over the town of Estes Park. Additionally, the time zone has changed to ‘America/Denver (MDT)’. TPE will automatically determine both time zone and daylight saving rule for any place and date you select.

Moving into the park

Let’s assume we’re going to shoot sunrise at Dream Lake. You can manually pan around the map, zoom in and out and drag the primary marker to a precise location.

The marker is positioned on the eastern shore of the lake, from where a photograph of Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain may be composed.

Where will the light fall?

The lighter orange sunrise line terminates at the marker location, but our subject lies to the west. Holding down the Shift key will cause the rise/set lines to extend through the marker location, showing how the light will fall:

It’s clear that in late July, the rising sun will come from the north providing imperfect illumination of Dream Lake and and the valley walls above. Perhaps this is not the perfect time of year for the image…

(Alternatively, in the above example, you could reposition the marker farther up the valley to see where the light comes from. There are other good reasons to take this approach too, which we’ll cover in a subsequent tutorial.)

A better date

Skipping a few weeks ahead to mid-September, using the date control, and holding down Shift once more, we can see that the rising sun will illuminate the drainage above Dream Lake perfectly, providing the possibility of good light conditions:

Note from the sunrise time on the right, that you can also have a slightly longer lie-in and still make the shot.

Saving the location

Once you have a location identified, you may wish to save it for future use:

Click the Locations link button on the top right, click the add button (+) and type a name for the entry. The program will automatically look-up a default name based on the nearest known place name. You can configure the default format for the placename in the configuration options page. Alternatively, press Shift + to add a new Location.

That covers the basics. The same principles apply to any location you want to scout, including cities (for example, when will the full moon rise along 42nd Street in Manhattan).

In the next tutorial, we’ll look at some of the other information available in TPE, including twilight times and the Details view.

The Photographer's Ephemeris - Beta 0.9.5 now available [2]

2009-07-28T06:23:59Z

A very quick post to say that TPE 0.9.5 is available. Here’s the updated feature list:

Beta 0.9.5

Improved Details view now includes Twilight times and Geodetics panel
Use secondary map marker to determine when sun or moon will clear an obstacle such as a mountain (Geodetics)
Correct rise and set times for the dip of the horizon (e.g. the sun is seen to rise earlier from a mountain top)
Use secondary map marker to set elevation at the horizon, or specify manually (to calculate dip of the horizon)
View the estimated distance to the horizon on the map, based on height above the horizon
Swap primary and secondary map marker positions using button or keyboard shortcut (S)
Haversine formula (for determining great circle distances) replaced with Vincenty algorithm for improved accuracy
Ctrl + and Ctrl – zooms in and out of map
Number keypad plus and minus added to keyboard shortcuts
Revised and expanded glossary
F1 key opens usage instructions in browser (requires internet connection)
Fixes bug where rise/set times were not recalculated on double-clicking map
Fixes bug where previous/next event in details view could stall on a particular event
Tooltips updated and corrected

Quite a lot in there. I’ve added some notes on how some of the newer advanced features work here.

I need to write up some proper tutorials on many of these with examples of actual shoots – keep an eye out, I’ll try to add a series of posts starting soon.

In the meantime, enjoy, and let me know of any problems you find.

This isn't Crested Butte... [4]

2009-07-20T04:52:37Z

North Clear Creek Falls

Crested Butte, “wildflower capital” of Colorado, has it’s annual flower festival in the week of July 4th. We planned a trip there a few days later, hoping to catch the flowers at their peak.

Alas – too soon. While the flowers were in decent condition around town, where we’d planned to go – north of Gothic town, in the lower reaches of Rustler’s Gulch – nothing was yet happening.

Rather than (i) camp too high and have no flowers around or (ii) camp down low where things were crowded, we decided to head a little further south towards Creede, some 132 miles from Crested Butte.

The road to Creede passes through pretty Lake City, up and over Slumgullion Pass, then Spring Creek Pass, and down towards South and North Clear Creek. North Clear Creek Falls lies very close to the main road (the 149), in the midst of flat pasture, making the drop all the more impressive.

The image above took a little setting up. There was some cloud over the falls, but the sky was bright and partly sunny. To manage the sky (nice to have some in the frame for context) and to get a reasonable length exposure to show the falls at their best, I used a Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter to slow shutter speed and 3-Stop hard Grad ND to hold back the sky.

The exposure was half a second, giving the water long enough to trace some nice arcs. The cattle give a good sense of scale.

We had one more adventure on this trip (unfortunately not very fruitful photographically) which I’ll post about later.

Backpacking to the Macey Lakes [1]

2009-07-08T04:27:26Z

Upper Macey Lake

Now what does an Englishman in the USA need more than anything else on July 4th weekend in Colorado? Yes, some solitude and peace and quiet, well away from all that overblown, misplaced celebration ;-)

So, Alice and I set off to the voluptuously named Sangre de Cristo Wilderness in south central Colorado on a backpacking trip to the Macey Lakes. The Sangres are amongst the most spectacular mountains in the Rockies – in simple terms, they look like mountains the way a child would draw them: pointy, steep and jagged.

The trailhead (Horn Creek) is easily accessed out of Westcliffe. Due to private land holdings however, you need to hike three and bit miles south on the Rainbow trail (which skirts the foothills on the east side of the Sangres) before turning right up the Macey Lakes trail.

In total the trek is 7 miles and around 2,400 feet of elevation gain up to 11,200’ at Lower Macey Lake. There are in fact three lakes in the drainage, but only two names: Lower Macey Lake and Upper Macey Lake. Which of the upper lakes anyone intends by upper remains unclear to me. Here, I mean the highest of the three which lies some 400’ feet higher to the west of the lower lake.

Unnamed 13,200’ peak

We hiked to Upper Macey lake for sunrise knowing that the sun would pour in from the north west at this time of year. The upper lake is simply spectacular with extensive views to a cirque to the south and photogenic unnamed 13,200’ peak.

Although we didn’t see it, there was definitely a bear in close vicinity around the upper lake: we found unmistakable fresh tracks on the hike back down (they weren’t there on the way up), plus other ‘evidence’.

Lower Macey Lake

Lower Macey Lake, just below treeline, looks very lush at this time of year, but doesn’t catch any good direct sunlight during either golden hour. Nonetheless, as in the shot above, there are some beautiful views to be seen.

Yellow arnica

Finally, at lower elevations on the trail, the wildflowers were in excellent form, with plenty of columbine, indian paintbrush, arnica and some lupine to be found.

During three days up at the lake, we encountered only five other people. I suspect the longer hike in puts as many people off Macey lakes as the 4WD road to South Colony Lakes attracts, so if you’re looking for your ‘own’ piece of wilderness, this seems like a good spot.

The trails, while a little muddy in places, were clear of snow (other than one small bank on the way to the upper lake) and the mosquitos were relatively polite.

A beautiful place, well worth visiting.

Pointing toward Independence

2009-06-30T03:28:06Z

Independence Monument

One from the (recent) archives: this is from my first and only visit (to date) to Colorado National Monument on the last day of 2008.

Just stumbled across it while sorting through some images and quite liked it on seeing it once more. I wish I’d hung around to catch some more frames of this composition as the sun rose and started to light Independence Monument proper.

However, if I had I guess I wouldn’t have had this shot, which on balance I think I like better.

It’s a fantastic place to visit during winter, as is pretty much any sandstone location where you can shoot fresh snow against red rock during low angled winter sun!

Roxborough State Park [3]

2009-06-28T22:04:44Z

Roxborough State Park

Roxborough State Park had one of its infrequent sunrise openings on Saturday morning. Alice and I camped out up the road at Chatfield State Park in order to be nearby and avoid too early a drive down there for 5am.

Roxborough features the same foothills sandstone seen at Garden of the Gods farther south near Colorado Springs (and also, for example near the mouth of Sunshine Canyon here in Boulder). The red of the stone (especially under the rising sun) contrasts wonderfully with the lush greens of Fountain Valley at this time of year.

Lyons Overlook

Some of the best views are seen from Lyons Overlook, a short ten-minute walk from the visitor centre. If you ignore the wooden viewing platform, there are plenty of interesting foreground rocks (in a much lighter sandstone – the three hogbacks are all of different sandstone types).

The sunrise was only partly cooperative. We enjoyed a one minute burst of red light just at sunrise, before the sun disappeared behind some clouds off to the east for the next twenty minutes (see the difference between the two shots above).

Roxborough Yarrow

I found the plant above by the trailside near Lyons Overlook on the way the back to the car. The sun had just risen over the eastern-most hogback, so this was shaded by my kneecap…

One of the best aspects of the trip – we saw our first wild black bear, a large male that has apparently been hanging around for the past couple of weeks. Despite the fact that he hung around for a good 30 minutes at no more than a hundred yards or so, I still didn’t manage to get a decent image. Never mind, next time (hopefully).

The prairie in bloom

2009-06-21T04:19:07Z

Prairie Primrose

Alice and I journeyed back to the Pawnee National Grassland in north east Colorado last weekend, to catch the flower display. I hadn’t read any flower reports in advance of arriving, but, as soon as we were east of Ault on the 14, the display became quite astonishing.

I’ve since read elsewhere that this is one of the best blooms in years. Makes me hopeful for the rest of the flower season, given the rain and storms we’ve had for the past month (not to mention the copious late spring snows).

Prairie Primrose Portrait

The primary goal of the trip was to try capture a good sunrise or sunset image of the Pawnee Buttes – somewhere we’ve been three times before, without any real photographic successes to celebrate. Fourth time unlucky… Saturday evening was heavily clouded and stormy (and we didn’t fancy hanging around for the rain to turn the dirt roads to mud, given our recent experiences).

Dawn on Sunday offered nothing but clear skies. Also, the flowers in the vicinity of the Buttes couldn’t compare to those further west in the grasslands proper.

Pawnee Buttes (accidental soft focus)

I wouldn’t normally post such an obviously flawed photograph, but to be honest, despite my temporarily forgetting the concept of depth of field, I’m still quite fond of the idea of this photograph. I haven’t identified the plants, but they’re very characteristic of the lands surrounding the buttes. Shot from down low, they look somewhat butte-like themselves. While there’s too much dead space in the mid-ground here, you can get the idea of something of a line leading through the shot towards the buttes.

After shooting dawn down by the buttes, we ventured back to the trail head and ran into photographers Larry Ditto and Joe Zinn who had been shooting from the view point. By the time we got there, fog and cloud had rolled in from the north east covering the buttes at times, and had provided some better opportunities than Alice and I had found down the trail.

We left the area more or less in convoy. Joe and Larry had spotted the very attractive paintbrush specimen shown below. Not quite sure exactly what species this is (despite looking through 10 pages of images here).

Pawnee Paintbrush

On the way home, we stopped to grab some final close-ups of the prickly pear cactus that was keeping company with the prairie primrose:

Plains Prickly Pear

I’d highly recommend visiting this part of Colorado – in comparison with the mountains, it is effectively deserted, yet has a very special atmosphere of its own. If you’re into rural decay type images, some of the ghost towns and abandoned homestead buildings offer some good photographic opportunities. There are also windfarms and nuclear missile silos to add some technological spice to the mix!

TPE 0.9.0 released [2]

2009-06-18T05:00:59Z

The Photographer’s Ephemeris v0.9.0 is now available.

Fairly minor changes, but useful ones:

You can finally resize the window: those of you with large monitors can now make the most of them to really dig into the details of the map area. Thanks for your patience on this one. So long you don’t go larger than 1200px high, you’ll reveal a selection of additional eclectic graphics down the right hand side, courtesy of my wife, Alice.
If you’re in the Details view and you change the date, the program doesn’t revert back to the multi-day view as it previously did. You can now scroll from day to day and see how the timing of the moon shifts by watching the details graph.
Finally some minor changes to the About page, including proper credit for the moonrise/set algorithm that is used (thanks to Jeff Conrad for the pointer on this)

I had hoped to have a couple of other features incorporated into this version: (i) correction for height above the local horizon and (ii) altitude (i.e. angle in the astronomical sense) of obstructions above the horizon, such as the mountain between you and the glorious sunset.

While all the maths is working (for the first of these at least), getting the UI right is proving tricky. One of the nice things about the current program is that it requires only two user inputs: a place and a date.

Once you introduce corrections for height above horizon and alitude of objects on the map, the number of inputs, and therefore the complexity for the user immediately increases.

So, I try to ask myself (not, in all honesty, having much of a clue as to the answer): what would Steve do? Haven’t worked it out yet.

As ever, your comments and feedback much appreciated.

Some recent quotations

To end, a handful of recent quotations about TPE:

My all-time favourite(!) from Steev Selby

This is the holy grail of sunrise/set programs

From Wasabi Photo

I am frankly gobsmacked by what this nifty software can do … it is rare that I am in awe by what you can find on the internet for free .. but this is one of those times when I am really blown away.

From Alex Wise down in one of my favourite places, Australia

I’ve seen similar things done in the past but find this much better and think its a must for any landscape photographer.

On EOS-Network

Just occasionally, you find something really useful. If you only found this blog today, then today is your lucky day because this’ll be the second really useful thing you’ve found!

Hola! Witaj! Szervusz!

Finally, hello to visitors from Spain, Poland, Hungary. Looks like TPE has been picked up via a number of sites over in Europe and indeed the majority of traffic over the past few days has been coming from those parts of the world.

I appreciate your linguistic abilities and forbearance with my anglophone application :-)