A Useful Weather Page For Outdoor Photographer

In my opinion, the most important part of photography is light.  Sure composition and a sharp technique are key elements to making a good photo, but if you follow the light you can find the composition and use your photographic skills to make a great photo.   As outdoor photographers, we are at the mercy of the weather to give us the light we want. 

I have used an App called The Photographers Ephemeris or TPE for years.  It will tell me where the sun and moon will be for any given time and place anywhere in the world.  This is more than just knowing when the sun comes up or goes down.  It will tell me the direction and angle of elevation, which will tell me how the sunlight will affect the scene.  You can use TPE for free on the web https://www.photoephemeris.com/tpe-for-desktop or buy a smartphone version for a few bucks.  Check it out.

Besides the sun, other major factors include clouds, wind, dew, and rain,  There are many weather apps and websites available.  One website I find useful is Weather Underground https://www.wunderground.com/ because of the useful information on the 10-day forecast.

Some key pieces of information available on this single page.

• General forecast - Partly Cloudy for today.
• Forecasted temperature and dew point.  When the temperature falls below the dew point you get dew on the grass, flowers, etc. making for great macro photos.
• Cloud cover - sometimes you want lots of cloud cover to give nice soft light.  Other times you want scattered clouds for photos that include the sky.  The example above shows cloudy in the morning and burning off around noon.
• Wind speed - this is important if you are wanting to minimize plant movement in the image.  In this example, the wind is forecast to pick up around noon.

Using this example I can see that the morning is best for macro photos of flowers and the afternoon might be better for big landscape shots.

As photographers, we have a wealth of information that can help us plan our outings and improve out odds of making great photos.  Now, go out and make some.

Right Place, Wrong Time of Year

The main road in Grayson Highlands State Park in Virginia has a pull off with this great overlook of the valley below.

There are some fantastic compositional elements in this scene, such as the road leading from the lower left corner, the red and white barns, the curved road in the middle, and the layers of the hills in the background.  This is an OK photo, but it lacks depth because the sun was almost directly behind me and you can't see any of the shadows that can give a two dimensional photo a feeling of 3D depth.

Close up of church in the middle showing direction of the sun

I would like to shoot this again when the sun is shining from the left or right side.   But, when will be the right time?   Using one of my favorite software tools TPE (The Photographers Ephemperis) I can compare the direction of the sun from Friday to any other day.  I picked October 17 because it might be a great time for fall colors.   These two diagrams show how the direction of the sun changes with the seasons.

June 6

October 17

The red marker shows the approximate position of the barns and the dark orange line shows the direction of the sun around sunset.  The photo was taken on Grayson Highlands Lane about where the word Highlands starts.    You can see the sun was almost directly behind me on Friday, however on October 17 it will set much further to the south and will be off to my right when taking the same shot.  If all other conditions are the same the photo taken in October will be better than the one taken Friday.   I could also take the same photo just after sunrise (yellow line) in June and get some nice shadows, however I think the hills might block the sun and keep the barns in the shade until later in the morning.

Why bother figuring out all this stuff?  Because a landscape scene never looks quite the same and knowing the right time of day and the right time of year to capture the scene is important to making the best photo.  Don't be satisfied with one shot at one time.  Visualize what the shot might look like under different conditions and plan to come back and shoot it again.  I hope to be up there mid October to see if my vision matches reality.

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