### Tuesday Jul 28, 2009 at 23:51

# Using TPE, Part 1: the basics

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:

1. The elevation above sea level and latitude/longitude of the current location is shown above the map
2. The most important thing of all: the primary position marker. You can drag this freely to exactly the point you need
3. The time zone of the current location and difference from UTC (universal coordinated time – effectively the same as GMT)
4. The current selected date is displayed along with times and directions of sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset (where they occur)
5. You can change the selected date using the previous and next day buttons
6. 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.

You might also enjoy “Understanding Light with The Photographer’s Ephemeris” co-authored with renowned landscape photographer Bruce Percy. It’s available through Bruce’s web-site

Posted in TPE Technique

Stephen · Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 23:51 · Permalink

## 36 comments on this post

1

05:10 21 Aug 2009

Tim Parkin said:

Hi Stephen,
Firstly, what you’ve done is absolutely stunning.. I’ve been wanting to develop something like this for some time but I wouldn’t have been able to build something this useful (and pretty!).. If you don’t mind me making a suggestion (I’m going to anyway so apologies if you do ).

It would be really nice for the sun line to continue moving after sunset. Very often I want to capture the twilight glow centered behind a feature (in my particular case I’m visiting the isle of Eigg and was wondering how centered a glow I would get on the island at civil twilight). Also, it might be nice to show a couple of photographic demonstrations of what the different twilight conventions look like – i.e. make people aware of what they mean in photographic terms for the general ‘clear sky’ case.

Finally, I’m a software developer and was thinking about using heywhatsthat.com apis to do something similar… any thoughts?

http://www.heywhatsthat.com/techfaq.html

2

06:23 22 Aug 2009

Stephen said:

Hi Tim

Thanks for your note. I think the suggestion for continuing the lines pre-sunrise/post-sunset is a good one – I’ll look to add this in an update, it’s certainly easy enough to do, and your use case makes good sense.

I just heard about heywatsthat.com a few days ago so am taking a better look at it. Cetainly looks like a cleverly done implementation.

Best,

Stephen

3

13:03 8 Sep 2009

Roy Duffee said:

Excellent tool and very nice look and feel. May I suggest the option of a triangle rather than a line showing the extent of pre and post SR light for e.g. though using the detail and changing the time is a good way of doing this at the moment.
Roy

4

22:14 8 Sep 2009

Stephen said:

Roy – thanks for stopping by. Not sure I’m quite following your suggestion – where should the corners of the triangle be positioned? Also, I’m guessing SR means sunrise?

5

07:17 16 Sep 2009

The other Stephen said:

Now this looks very useful, and well made. I’m looking forward to getting into it. Thankyou.

One suggestion. Incorporating tide charts as well……

Cheers
Stephen

6

22:52 22 Sep 2009

Stephen said:

Hi Other Stephen: tide charts – yes, that plus local weather. The list goes on… Looks like there are some tide algorithms out there on the web that I could look at. However, not sure when I’ll get to it, although I agree it would be nice.

7

21:30 1 Oct 2009

The other Stephen said:

Well I’m impressed, this is indeed a very useful tool. I’ve used it a bit so far and it’s doing very well.
Thank you Stephen for putting the effort into this, it’s well worthwhile.

Cheers
The other Stephen

8

19:33 6 Oct 2009

stephen said:

Thanks! Glad you’re finding it useful.

9

04:11 15 Oct 2009

Blas Reynoso said:

Stephen,

Well done.

it’s very useful tool.

thank you so very much

Blas

10

06:44 15 Oct 2009

Corinna said:

Hello Stephen
Thank you so much for your effort with developing the programme. As I plan and conduct photography tours in London, I’m finding it really useful to have advance information with the click of a few buttons. A donation is on the way!.
regards
Corinna

11

15:36 5 Nov 2009

Manuel said:

Hi Stephen,

This is a great great tool! Not only useful, but very beautiful as well. I’ve benn doing this by hand for a long time using naval oceanographic tables (http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/AltAz.php) and google earth. Now I can save a lot of time.

Thanks for sharing it!

12

16:49 8 Nov 2009

Stephen said:

Blas, Corinna, Manuel – thanks for stopping by and for your comments. Hope you’re continuing to find TPE useful!

13

01:48 22 Nov 2009

Mike said:

Stephen, great tool! A quick idea that I just had — is it possible to “bookmark” a place and time? I just found a great location and time for 1 May 2010, but it would be neat to be able to find it again. It would be even cooler if you could push it to iCal (Google Calendar even better) so that I could get a reminder to wake up at 4:30 on May Day!

14

21:30 22 Nov 2009

Stephen said:

Hi Mike – good ideas. I expect to add Event dates to a future version for sure. You can currently bookmark the place (see Locations) and for each saved location you can add free text Notes – just select the desired location from the list and click Notes at the bottom of the screen. Hope that helps for now!

15

15:53 6 Jan 2010

John said:

Stephen,
Thank you for creating this marvelous, elegant tool and making it available.

16

20:23 12 Jan 2010

villeda said:

thank you for the great work

17

21:44 18 Jan 2010

Stephen said:

@John, @villeda – thanks for stopping by! Hope you enjoy the program.

18

21:23 2 Mar 2010

Dan Hedgpeth said:

Fantastic implementation and visually pleasing program. I find it extraordinarily useful. If you would be able to port it over as a iPhone app, I certainly would pay to have in on my iPhone. That would make it very useful in the field.

19

05:27 5 Mar 2010

Paul George said:

Just saw TPE mentioned in amateur photographer and it looks awesome, Im waiting for my first dslr to arrive ( a second hand eos 400d) and cant wait to use this. I second the idea of porting this to iphone/ipod touch but its great as is for planning shots. Thanks for your time and effort!

20

07:12 7 Mar 2010

Brendan Mullins said:

I used to keep diaries of when was the best time to shoot landscapes around my area, the North East of England.
This is like having a global version.
Congrats sir on your contribution to the imaging community of the world

21

08:47 7 Mar 2010

louis said:

Fantastic program!!
What would make this doubly useful is to have a win mobile port of this. I can’t take a laptop with me but I’ve always got my trusty HTC TNT2 which allows me to refer to google maps, O/S maps, satnav etc.

A lot of work I know but perhaps there are some programmers itching to do the convert with your blessing? :-)

22

13:05 7 Mar 2010

David Byford said:

Like a number of others, I’ve come here, via Amateur Photographer magazine and am amazed at the power, simplicity and overall usefulness of your program. I’m sending the link to all the members of our camera club. In the West coast of Scotland where we live, resources are few, but landscape photography is a pleasure, delight, and plentiful and your programme is a huge help in allowing our aspirations to become fact. Many thanks. david

23

08:00 25 Jun 2010

Ray said:

I’m what you’d call a wannabe Photographer. Been that way for years. Just like catching memorable moments for my own sake. I work high~rise as a glass installer, and I come across some beautiful scenery when up 20 plus stories, especial during early sunrise, when the city is just waking up, & sun set when reflecting off other glass glazed buildings.

I just stumbled across this site last night.
As I go over it today I believe it’ll come in useful. My challenge is to figure in the height of the building I’m working on. Once that is established I think this program will be very useful. Thanks for your time and effort, it’s well appreciated… Ray, West Central Fl.

24

13:16 26 Jun 2010

Peter de Villiers said:

This is wonderful – I was discussing this very aspect with a mate of mine not a week back. We wanted to do an early morning session along the north side of the Firth of the Forth and were not 100 percent sure where the sun would rise. This wonderful app will now help us to no end.
Thank you for your time and effort.
Peter

25

18:04 31 Jul 2010

Wil said:

Cool app
Really need maps to be available in remote locations..
Look at iPhone app ‘Topo Maps’ by Philip Endecott

In that app one can (before trip) download USGS maps to the iPhone … therefore no cell/internet service necessary to use it.
Also, if you did this it would be nice if once maps are downloaded both your app and his could use the same map data to save memory.

Look at his shading effect as to what can be seen from one’s location (Mountains in the way) .. not the same as your implementation for “will light be in this spot when viewed from where I am at a certain time”, but similar. Don’t know if yours could be made to work this way.

26

01:58 8 Oct 2010

Jim said:

Stephen,
I’ve been forced by circumstance to rely upon my own notes, diaries and amended tables for timing the capture of Durham’s Maiden Castle as it’s lit by the sun on the 1st of each month. The errors are plain to see. But not any more.

What a wonderful, beautiful tool. Thank you.

27

04:58 29 Oct 2010

Annette said:

Hi Stephen,
Thank you thank you thank you ! I’ve spent hours calculating dates for good full-moon rises and sets at my favourite locations, then travelled for hours to get there only to find I was out by a day. No more! This is a very functional and elegant tool – thanks for putting the effort into it.

28

12:49 12 Nov 2010

vassilis triantafyllidis said:

hello stephen and congrats for this awesome app also for ihpones !
I found the site searching for sunset calculators and i am excited as i never seen such easy to use piece of s/w.

Would be nice to sort all tutorials in PDF files to easy find all chapters and be able to read them on an iphone without internet connection if needed.

I am totally unfamiliar with finding angles/ degrees, reading maps, GPS devices etc. and it would be nice to post a video showing how to use a compass to find the exact angle the lines point to when in the field. Maybe by using this sort of compass tool ? (see link) http://www.photographyattic.com/product-815 and http://www.flight-logistics.com/Photorapher_Compass_page.html

In the last 2 years, i am trying to take a photo of clouds above a city. Altitude maybe 500 metres. I try to shot a little city with the clouds above it (i.e. as seen by an airoplane).

I know it is possible to do so, but i cannot predict how low clouds are in the sky (i.e. if i am 500m above land level and clouds are 200m in the sky)

i was thinking if you could possibly put your genious forces to implement a procedure that can read worldwide weather, especially possible prediction of cloud altitude (how high in sky) in real time and show it on your map using the same google earth mapping please.

This way, using i.e. the gray marker or a ‘cloud marker’, i can point on a peak and know if i am above or below clouds @ a specific weather time.

I hope one day to go out using your s/w and get some shots as well. Best wishes for the new month :D

PS. Keep creating (inc. programming !)

29

11:08 20 Feb 2011

Tom Schwab said:

Hello Stephen,
Thank you so much for this amazing application. I used it yesterday to photograph the (nearly) full moon setting behind Pike’s Peak from a location on the east side of Colorado Springs, and the location TPE indicated was exactly right.

30

06:20 18 Mar 2011

Dale Mead said:

I just installed PE, and no Date info shows in the right window. How do I make it show, so I can choose the desired date for planning?

31

03:09 20 Apr 2011

Kelly Bellis said:

Hi Stephen,
First off; THANK YOU !!! What a totally marvelous gift and good job. Top marks!

I’m a vocational photographer and a professional land surveyor and I haven’t stopped smiling since finding this site nearly an hour ago… :)

And in case you’re interested, I found this great site of yours from this lovely 1st place winner by gyaban in the dpchallenge http://www.dpchallenge.com/image.php?IMAGE_ID=945725 where he gives TPE a nice plug.

Kind regards,

Kelly

32

13:29 24 Jul 2011

Pieter van Dijk said:

Hello Stephen,
First: A big thank you !! for this beautiful and simple app which will help in making better pics. A suggestion: ability to import gps waypoints into the locations ‘tab’.
regards, Pieter

33

18:55 1 Nov 2011

Earl said:

I have been looking for a tool like this for a while. This looks to be exactly what i am looking for. Thanks for the good work

34

10:42 9 Nov 2011

Gary said:

HI
As a photographer I’ve long wanted something like this, so I was excited when I friend gave me a link to look at it.
I have 2 questions though if you don’t mind.
1 If all you have to go by is a thin orange line, it is really just a guess as to when the sun comes over a mountain and illuminates the land below? Or does it show you somehow where light will fall? Depending on weather conditions of course.

2 Why does the app need to be able to record what number you might be calling? I don’t understand how that fits into it’s functions?

Cheers and I look forward to a reply soon.

Gary

35

12:25 9 Nov 2011

Stephen said:

Hi Gary

Guess you’re talking about the Android App?

1) The answer to question 1 applies to all versions of TPE, in fact: you can use the Geodetics screen to estimate when the sun will appear or disappear relative to a hill or ridge. Check out the Tutorial Part 3 linked at the top of this page: the function works the same way on TPE for Android

2) The doesn’t need to know anything about your phone calls. However, we do use the device IMEI or MEID number to authenticate our beta test users, and that happens to be part of the same permission.

Hope that helps – if you’d like to follow up, please drop a line to support@photoephemeris.com.

Cheers,

Stephen

36

20:36 24 Mar 2012

Salvador Abarca said:

Wow talk about elegantly filling a niche

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