I’m currently back in the UK, in the north of England to be more precise, visiting family and friends. I brought a camera along, of course, given that Newcastle is close to so many world-class landscapes (Northumberland National Park and Coastline, the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales, North York Moors National Park, the North Pennines – the list goes on and on; oh, and Scotland too :) ).

As you may have read, the UK has been blasted by unseasonably cold weather over the past few days, with eastern winds (“from Russia with love”) blowing snow across much of the country. Newcastle was spared the worst of the weather, although snowflakes have fallen every day since I arrived. However, I went for a drive out last Sunday along what is known locally as the military road, which tracks alongside south of the Hadrian’s Wall through some of Northumberland’s finest scenery. There was plenty of snow on the higher ground, so I decided to return for sunset the following day with the camera.

If you asked the average person in the street, they would probably say that Hadrian’s Wall runs east-west. Approximately speaking, that would be correct. However, using TPE, we can see that in fact, by late March, it is possible to get late afternoon light directly on the north side of the wall in the vicinity of Steel Rigg to Crag Lough:

At this location Hadrian’s Wall runs atop a line of spectacular crags that are oriented slightly to the southwest, allowing the late sun to reach the northern aspect from mid-March onwards.

Believe me, you don’t want to sit out on top of the wall only the light not to appear. It can be brutally cold. I tried it:

This was on Monday March 25th. While there were a few breaks in the cloud, I didn’t get lucky with the light. At least I knew in principle, the shot was possible (having checked in TPE).

Yesterday looked more promising so I set out from Newcastle mid-afternoon to drive back out to Steel Rigg car park. By the time I walked over to the wall just west of Milecastle 39, the clouds were coming back in from the northeast and things weren’t looking too hopeful. However, luck prevailed, and the handful of us who had ventured out enjoyed around three minutes of gap light around 20 minutes before sunset:

Here’s the moment when the sun was just emerging, showing a wider view that includes the Milecastle itself (and a couple of visitors from Italy):

One point to note: if you look at the ice on the water, you’ll see it is all piled up at the west end of the lake, reflecting the prevailing winds of the past week. Normally, the wind blows from the west, so these are somewhat unusual conditions.

I’ve had a couple of questions over the past month or so about using TPE to plan for the “Diamond Mt. Fuji” shot.

This is commonly described as being a photograph of the sun “setting” directly behind Mt. Fuji. That language (“setting”) is probably what causes the most confusion – in fact the sun is not setting at that time, at least not according to the conventional definition, and the one which TPE and other rise/set apps, web-sites, and tables around the world use.

Here’s a quick walk-through on how to plan your own Diamond Mt. Fuji:

Today, we’re releasing TPE for Android 1.1.

This is a significant update that adds some great new map features. We’ve made use of Google’s Android Maps API v2, which has allowed us to add a bunch of new features, including:

• Terrain maps – long awaited!
• Map rotation – twist with two fingers to rotate, tap the compass needle to return to north
• Map tilt – push up on the map with two fingers to tilt it, pull down again to restore to an overhead view

In addition, the new maps are vector-based, meaning all map captions rotate to stay aligned with the viewer – no more hard to read upside map labels.

We’ve also worked the compass function in this release. Instead of the tap on/tap off compass that was formerly shown at the top left of the map, you can now tap the current location button a second time to enable auto-rotation. With this mode enabled, the map will automatically adjust to stay aligned to true north as you rotate your device.

This makes alignment planning when you’re out and about on shoot much easier. (That said, if you want to do it like the pros, use a field compass and align using the numbers! The built-in compasses in mobile phones and tablets can’t begin to compete with the accuracy of a quality instrument.)

Google Play Services and Google Maps

Now that TPE is using the Android Map API v2, we have a couple of new dependencies in the app: Google Play Services and Google Maps.

Google Play Services is what allows the new maps API to function.

Google Maps is the trusty built-in maps app that we know and love. At the moment, it seems that you must have Maps installed in order for the Android Maps API to function properly.

If you’re running an older Android device, it’s just possible that you didn’t get updated to Google Play from the old Android Market app. In that case, and if you don’t have Google Play Services already installed on your device, you might have trouble getting it installed.

That was the case on one of my test devices – an old HTC Desire that I had upgraded from 2.2.2 to a developer build of 2.3.3. Getting this sorted out was a bit of trouble. In the end, I sucked a copy of Google Play Services off one device (an even older original Droid running 2.2) and pushed it onto the Desire manually via USB (using the Android SDK). Once that was done, all was well.

If you have any similar trouble, drop us a line (see the support page for contact details), and we’ll try to get you up and running.

New Version

We hope you like the updates in TPE for Android 1.1. The new maps are a great a improvement, we hope – especially the addition of Terrain maps, which are so useful for landscape photographers.

(A quick aside: I spent a significant chunk of time last year trying to make Open Street Map tile overlays work in the Android app, which would have allowed us to include a topographic map. Sadly, it never ended up stable enough to ship – we constantly had “out of memory” issues, which was something many people saw with OSMDroid at the time.)

This is a pretty significant update for TPE under the hood. Moreover, the Google Maps for Android API v2 is relatively new and there are a few issues with that technology still being worked out (at least one of which was discovered while doing the TPE update). However, the upside of the new API seems to far outweigh any minor problems. And our pre-release testing (for which a big thank you to our beta test group) has not revealed any major (or minor) remaining problems.

That said, the Android universe of devices is a big one and we can’t test on every device (very far from it), so, if you do run into any issues, please let us know – we’ll be straight on it.

If you have any problems, comments or questions on the new version – please do get in touch via email, Twitter, FB, G+ etc.

Happy Photographing!

Right now, TPE for iOS version 2.5 is on its way to the App Store.

We’ve added a couple of new features that have been requested in recent months. Both are available in the Settings page:

• Magnetic headings
• Optional moon azimuth lines

Use magnetic north

When enabled, all azimuths, bearings and headings are calculated relative to magnetic north instead of true north. We calculate the magnetic declination (the offset from true north) for the primary pin location and for the selected date, using the World Magnetic Model 2010. This is the best generally available model for magnetic declination and is, I believe, what iOS (and Android) both already use.

The problem with iOS is that Apple’s APIs only allow you to calculate the declination for the current date/time and actual physical device location. For that reason, we bundle our own copy of WMM with TPE, which allows us to use the app in a planning mode, giving the magnetic declination for a remote location on a different date. There are more details in the help file.

We were prompted to add support for magnetic headings after receiving some wonderfully rich and detailed emails from a professional cinematographer working in California. These emails explained how cinematographers use Suunto Tandem compasses to determine bearings while scouting or planning locations. The absence of support for magnetic headings made TPE difficult to use for this purpose, so we’re happy now to have it included.

Moon azimuth lines

A few users have requested the option to disable the moon lines from the map display in recent months. This setting likely goes nicely hand-in-hand with the new magnetic heading setting, as I suspect most cinematographers care far more about the sun than the moon.

Anyway, if you’re lunaphobic, you can now rid your map of all things moon-related :)

Up next

We’re currently working on an update to TPE for Android which we hope will go out for beta testing in the next day or so. We think you’ll like the features it adds!

Comments, questions or suggestions

We’re always keen to hear your comments on TPE. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us via photoephemeris.com/support.

I’ve had the pleasure of reading two new eBooks recently, both written by users of TPE.

The Golden Hours

Firstly, The Golden Hours: A Guide to Photographing the Light of Sunrises and Sunsets by Maine-based photographer Christopher O’Donnell.

The Golden Hours is a highly practical guide to how to achieve effective results when shooting around the times of sunrise and sunset. Artistry aside, the practical factors leading to a successful photograph can be divided into three parts: planning, execution and post-production. The Golden Hours does a great job of breaking things down along these lines, providing sound advice on how to achieve high quality results.

In addition, the eBook is lavishly illustrated with Chris’s own distinctive photography. The book includes a good number of coastal images, attractively combining beaches, lighthouses, jettys and boats with golden hour skies in a stylish way.

Chris’s book is available here.

Photographing Rocky Mountain National Park

The second book is Photographing Rocky Mountain National Park by my friend Erik Stensland.

Erik almost certainly has the finest portfolio of images from Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park that exists, and this book is the best and most comprehensive guide to photographing it yourself.

The book is organized primarily according to the geography of the park, with sections on Fall River Road, Bear Lake Road, Highway 7, Trail Ridge Road and the Grand Lake Area. Each location is illustrated with one of Erik’s own photographs. Even better, each photograph is accompanied by GPS coordinates, hiking round trip distance, best time and suggested lens focal length. (Clearly, the intention here is not that you should slavishly seek to reproduce Erik’s photographs, but rather, given that time is a constraint for many photographers, that you should maximize your chances of returning with some great results having ventured out with the right equipment at the right time.)

Photographing Rocky Mountain National Park is the first of a series The Landscape Photographer’s Guide, and of course, we approve of the use of the definite article in the series title ;)

Erik’s new eBook is available here.

I also want to thank both Chris and Erik for recommending TPE in their eBooks. It’s great to know that TPE helps in the creation of such high quality photography.