Think back to those days when you were just learning to cast a fly.
If your experience was anything like mine, the seeming complexity of learning to cast, managing lines and tippets, learning to wade and even trying to pick out a damned fly to throw appeared overwhelming.
Most of us had a friend or family member who shepherded us through the maze of getting started, picking up gear along the way and demonstrating those tips, tricks and behaviors that are so difficult to glean from a book or video.
Photography is a lot like fishing in that regard. Just about every cell phone on the planet has a digital camera these days and you can buy a 7+ Mp point and shoot digicam for less than the price of burgers and beers for two.
But just as buying that big box $30 fly rod combo at WalBobs won’t make you a fly fisherman, putting any type of camera in the hands of the average idiot doesn’t make him a photographer.
To wit: I scrimped, sweated and saved to buy my first film SLR way back in 1973 as a middle schooler and commenced to burn roll after roll of Kodachrome, reading everything I could afford about photography, which wasn’t much. By sheer dumb luck and the law of high volume shooting, there was a fine image or two every hundred or so slides that flowed past.
It wasn’t until beginning to hang out with some ‘real photographers’ several decades later that the principles related to using natural light in outdoor imagery began to seep into my photographic psyche. The difference was like ‘night and day’.
Photographic life would have been far different back in the day, and is in fact far different now, using a nifty app all photographers should have at hand – LightTrac.
Here’s what the app’s developer, Rivolu, has to say about it –
LightTrac is a must have tool for all outdoor photographers. Quickly determine at what time and location the light conditions are perfect to shoot your subjects outdoors. The elevation and angle of Sun changes throughout the year depending on the location, date as well as the time of day. LightTrac calculates both the elevation and angle of Sun and Moon for any date & time, for any place on earth and plots it on top of a satellite map. Armed with this information and with an extremely easy to use interface, you can now plan your photo shoot even several months ahead of time and position yourself at the right spot at the right time for that perfect shot. ??Whether you are a nature or landscape photographer, a real-estate or architecture photographer, a wedding or sports photographer you will simply love what LightTrac has to offer. ??LightTrac is an invaluable not just useful to photographers, but also to architects, real-estate buyers, solar panel owners/installers, gardeners, travelers or for any outdoor person interested in knowing any info about the Sun or the Moon.
To give you an idea of what the app can do for you, I snapped these iPad screen shots yesterday morning with the app’s target location set on Old Faithful in Yellowstone. There’s a bit more data displayed on the iPad screen view than the phone view though they’re very similar.
The standard view provides a resizable and relocated map; on the map are three lines. The yellow line is the position of the sun at sunrise, the blue at sunset and the red line moves as the position of the sun changes. You can in fact alter the position of the sun’s angle on the map using the scrub bar at the bottom of the GUI.
Up top are a host of useful data: sunrise and set, twilight dawn and dusk, moonrise and set as well as moon phases. You may set and save locations for future photographic expeditions, change the date, as well as toggle the map between sun / moon and map / satellite map view settings.
A simple swipe of the data bar at the top of the GUI brings up a compass azimuth to show another perspective of the sun’s ray direction, as well as an interesting elevation chart showing the height of the sun above the horizon (assuming a level horizon).
Another swipe of the data bar at the top of the GUI brings up a most interesting graphic, that being a representation of the length of shadows cast by an object; you can even alter the height of the ‘object’ at will.
The photographic gurus I’ve chatted with about the app agree on one thing – this app has the ability to revolutionize your planning and scouting process, particularly given the detail the app provides on the map view. Thinking about and using that great light optimally is of course up to you. They also agree that the app really shines on the iPad / tablet and is good on a smaller phone view screen.
Bottom line, in our book LightTrac is a steal at $4.99 and if used for nothing else than to plan your location scouting and shooting excursions it’s worth every penny and minute using it. Available both for Android and iOS devices, find it on the App Store here.
