Destin
Been spending a lot of time on here!
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2010
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- 3,864
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- Location
- Western New York
- Can others edit my Photos
- Photos OK to edit
Hey guys, @SquarePeg asked me in another of my threads how I go about predicting good sunrise/sunset conditions for my landscape photography. Rather than reply in that thread where it would get lost and not help many people, I decided to create a new thread for it.
This thread is an open forum. I'll share how I personally go about doing this, but I would absolutely love to learn how other people are doing it as well. I'm far from an expert. Let's all gain some knowledge here!
I have two ways of doing this, and I'll detail both of them below:
1.) MySunset App. This is the lazy way, but the one I use most often because it takes less effort. I have the pro version of this ($9.99/year) and it gives you it's calculated odds of a colorful/beautiful sunrise/sunset for your current locations as well as whatever locations you've saved. It rates the odds on a perfect basis, with 0% being no chance and 100% being certainty. You can even set limits for each location and get notified when the odds are high, which is helpful but gets annoying fast if you have a lot of saved locations.
My experience with this is that when it gives you a high percentage, it's nearly always accurate and you get some color in the sky. However, there are frequently colorful skies that it misses, so I never use it to rule out a colorful sunrise/set, only to rule one in. This is important, because otherwise you'll miss opportunities. In scientific terms, it has a high sensitivit but a poor specificity.
2.) Windy Cloud Forecast. This way requires a little more manual effort, but I still check it a few times per week when I remember to. I find this method to be a little more accurate, but it suffers from the same problem as the previous method to some degree. It's taken me a while to learn how to use it, and I'm absolutely still a novice at it. Rather than try to explain it myself, I'll link you to an article by Sean O'Riordan where I first heard about it. He explains it much better than I ever could.
Ultimately, while these tools are great and have helped me to avoid wasting as much of my time as I used to when I first got started, they are far from perfect. Relying on them alone will lead to missed opportunities, so I still go out sometimes when conditions are less than favorable and sometimes I end up getting lucky.
I'm honestly excited to hear how other people go about this, so please share your methods!
This thread is an open forum. I'll share how I personally go about doing this, but I would absolutely love to learn how other people are doing it as well. I'm far from an expert. Let's all gain some knowledge here!
I have two ways of doing this, and I'll detail both of them below:
1.) MySunset App. This is the lazy way, but the one I use most often because it takes less effort. I have the pro version of this ($9.99/year) and it gives you it's calculated odds of a colorful/beautiful sunrise/sunset for your current locations as well as whatever locations you've saved. It rates the odds on a perfect basis, with 0% being no chance and 100% being certainty. You can even set limits for each location and get notified when the odds are high, which is helpful but gets annoying fast if you have a lot of saved locations.
My experience with this is that when it gives you a high percentage, it's nearly always accurate and you get some color in the sky. However, there are frequently colorful skies that it misses, so I never use it to rule out a colorful sunrise/set, only to rule one in. This is important, because otherwise you'll miss opportunities. In scientific terms, it has a high sensitivit but a poor specificity.
2.) Windy Cloud Forecast. This way requires a little more manual effort, but I still check it a few times per week when I remember to. I find this method to be a little more accurate, but it suffers from the same problem as the previous method to some degree. It's taken me a while to learn how to use it, and I'm absolutely still a novice at it. Rather than try to explain it myself, I'll link you to an article by Sean O'Riordan where I first heard about it. He explains it much better than I ever could.
Ultimately, while these tools are great and have helped me to avoid wasting as much of my time as I used to when I first got started, they are far from perfect. Relying on them alone will lead to missed opportunities, so I still go out sometimes when conditions are less than favorable and sometimes I end up getting lucky.
I'm honestly excited to hear how other people go about this, so please share your methods!