Heavenly-Opportunity: Must Have Software for Landscape PhotographersWriten by Patty Hankins
As landscape photographers, one of the great challenges is
knowing when to be at a location for either sunrise, sunset,
moonrise or moonset. We recently purchased a software
program Heavenly-Opportunity that makes this task much
easier for photographers in the United States.
Heavenly-Opportunity accurately predicts the time and
location for each of these events, as well as the phase of
the moon for over 30,000 locations in the US. The program
includes information for much more than just about every
city or town in the country. It also includes information on
500 National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, and
recreation areas and 2500 names lakes, mountains or other
named geographic feature In the past we had to find
information for the nearest major city, now we can have
information about the exact location we're planning on
shooting at. On my recent trip to Cape Cod, I knew exactly
when I had to be on the beach in the Cape Cod National
Seashore to get the sunrise photos I wanted.
In addition, the software allows you to enter a latitude and
longitude and get information for a specific place. This is
a great feature if you are GPS to determine your location.
Another wonderful feature is the ability to search for
specific criteria for a location - and determine what dates
you should plan on shooting. For example, we've been wanting
to get a photo of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument
and U.S. Capitol Building with a full moon over the Capitol.
We know where to take the photo from (the US Marine Corps
Memorial in Arlington, VA), that if the moon comes up
between roughly 80 - 100 degrees and if moonrise after
sunset - we should be able to get the image we want. With
Heavenly-Opportunities, I know that my opportunities for
taking the photo in the next year will be on either
September 8, 2006, October 7, 2006, February 2, 2007 or
March 4, 2007. Needless to say, all of these dates are
already in our calendar.
In a previous newsletter, we have already reviewed another
program, Ephemeris, which gives the times for sunrise and
sunset and positions of the sun and moon. Ephemeris has
three main advantages over Heavenly Opportunity: 1) the
interface is a little easier to use, 2) it has a version
available for the Pocket PC, so that we can carry it into
the field with us more easily, and 3) it's free. If we're
going out into the field and want to know when tonight's
sunset or moonrise is, then we tend to use Ephemeris. The
two main advantages of Heavenly Opportunity over Ephemeris
are the much larger number of locations included in the
program and the search function. The search function alone
is well worth the cost of the software. If we're planning
trips, we use this program to plan where and when to be. We
wouldn't mind if future versions of Heavenly-Opportunity
addressed the first two issues; we certainly won't begrudge
paying a reasonable fee for valuable software.
Heavenly-Opportunity is distributed as shareware by Fossil
Creek Software of Fort Collins, CO. You can use an
unlicensed version for 30 days. After than, you really
should purchase the license. The cost for a licensed version
is $ 24.95. The license allows you to install as many copies
of the program as you need - we have it installed on both
our desktop machines and our laptop.
As far as we are concerned, Heavenly-Opportunity is must-
have software for landscape photographers. We really
encourage everyone to go to the Fossil Creek site and
download the trial version. Be sure to buy your copy before
the 30 day trial period is up. Once you start using
Heavenly-Opportunity - you will wonder how you ever got
along without it.
Patty Hankins & Bill Lawrence are the co-owners of Hankins-Lawrence Images, LLC, a photography company based in Maryland. HLI Photonotes, their ezine, provides information and tips for photographers. To subscribe email
hlimages@earthlink.net with subscribe in the subject
or visit http://www.hankinslawrenceimages.com.