Introduction
I've been a photographer for over 12 years now and landscape photography is a great love of mine. For many years I used a camera on a tripod, but then a couple of years ago I got into fly drones for the purpose of doing landscape photography from a totally different composition from the air, and like all my work, I let the images speak for themselves.
Elements to the sun
With the sunset you have what is commonly called the golden hour before the sun actually sets, the times each year can vary, but it is still called the golden hour. This is the point the sun is redder and larger in some months than it is during the midday. The colours can vary and give this glow effect and the landscape shadows can bring things like the trees with long shadows and colour not seen at midday. As the sun touches the horizon the colours change yet again and can produce magenta colours. But then after the sun has disappeared from the horizon it can take on another form and reflect the bottom of the cloud formations.
The sunrise is similar to a golden hour but kind of in reverse of the sunset, but either when photographing can mean you need to adjust your shutter speed or aperture to let in more light as it begins to get darker or ends darker.
Timing
We all know that at different seasons of the year the sun rises and falls either later or earlier, and knowing when the golden hour is about to begin is so important to you as the photographer to be onsite before this all happens, and that's where some really handy apps which can be useful so that your not late and miss these great views of the sun but also let you know where the sun will set on the location you have chosen to visit, or to help you work out where best to set up.
Here are some the best apps to try out
Taking a shot of a sunset with a clear sky can only work once, so having some cloud cover or mist to make the image more appealing, means you need to know what the weather is going to be like that evening or tomorrow morning.
Dark Sky App
This app offers what they call hyperlocal information, with down to the minute forecast and notifications.
On the day it offers the following information plus a seven day forecast:
Temperature
Feel-Like
Precip Prob
Precip Rate
Wind
Wind Gust
Humidity
Dew Point
UV Index
Cloud Cover
Pressure
Now some of the information might not be relevant but a lot of it is to help you decide whether to go out or not.
The App is available in iOS and Android and a paid version without adverts can be got.
PhotoPills App
This is a real photographer app with a lot of useful tools that maybe some of you might find useful. But to make a point that this app can tell you what time the sun is to rise and set and from what direction. It also uses AR so you can hold your phone up to see the direction and change of position during the period so you can decide if you want to change location to get another image from a different point.
It's available on iOS and Android but costs £9.99, but you do get a lot of useful stuff that you will find useful.
TPE (The Photographer’s Ephemeris)
This app has been around for a long time and one I started out with. Like PhotoPills, it shows you the information on the sun rise and set and use AR and you can also save points of interest or add a date with a reminder.
It's available on iOS and Android but a little bit more pricey on iOS but only £2.69 on Android.
Having the tools to research sites of interest like Google Earth, can give you a birds eye view of a location, and then the app NAT’s to research if there are any flight restrictions, and record your flight with them. The other apps help you decide on a date to go with and allows you to work out your journey time to get to the location before the events begin.
This image wouldn't of been possible without the research and apps to give me the times of the event and the weather conditions to be able to capture this with bags of time to set up and be ready and relaxed at the same time, and theses are my choice of apps to use, there might be others like them, but only you can work out what works for you.