Capturing silhouettes is a great way to add contrast in a photo. To do so, you must place your light source in front of you and your subject in a matter in which your subject blocks the light similar to the manner in which the moon does the sun during an eclipse. When coupled with a beautiful landscape or background, silhouettes help to add balance and depth and strengthens a photo’s composition.
Sunlight Tracker from InvisibleBits is on sale for $0.99 USD for this week only. It’s a useful utility for photographers to help determine many aspects of sunlight, including sunrise and sunset times to help figure the Blue and Golden Hours, the direction of sunlight at any given time or location, and even the azimuth of the sun in the sky.
Sunlight Tracker is the daylight utility that I use. While I didn’t review the app here, photographer Micheal Zelbel did recently on his Smoking Strobes blog. Click here to see his excellent video review.
Not everyone needs a daylight tracker, but if you want more information about the sun’s light to help plan your shoots, I highly recommend you purchase Sunlight Tracker during this sale.
[UPDATE 11.01.10 11:00: For whatever reason, it looks like this app is not available in the App Store at this time and I'm unable to contact the developer. There are a couple of other sunlight trackers, including LightTrac for iPhone, LightTrac for iPad, Golden Hour and The Photographer's Ephemeris. There's a free version of Light Finder to try out, but to me, neither version looks particularly helpful. We'll keep you updated on the status of Sunlight Tracker. =M=]
We just ran across this in the U.S. App Store. Sunlight Tracker by RLSP is a new app which displays a whole bunch of information about the sun, allowing you to plan your photo shoot around your light. This is similar to what BlueHour and CityTime do, except Sunlight Tracker seems to provide a lot more information geared specifically towards photographers.
Sunlight Tracker is free in the U.S. App Store for a limited time.
It features sunrise and sunset times, twilight times which are good for shooting in the Blue hours, angle and elevation of the sun and other information. Although we just grabbed it and haven’t tested it yet, it looks really comprehensive and if you find yourself planning around the good light, this is an excellent opportunity to grab this utility while it’s free!
Detailed information on the app’s features and functions can be found on the RLSP website.
Update Saturday, March 13, 2010. Well, that didn’t last long…. Looks like the limited time has passed. The app is now available for its regular price of $1.99 USD. Still, give it a look if you think you might need a sunlight tracker. For the extra dollar, this app does a lot more than give sunrise/sunset times.
Bottom Line: A good utility to help plan twilight photography.
BlueHour
There are two special types of twilight called blue hour and golden hour. Both create awesome light for photographers. Blue hour occurs before sunrise and after sunset. The sky turns deep blue during this period of time. The Golden hour occurs right after sunrise and just before sunset when everything has an golden-orange tint (In Texas, the Golden hour is really more like the Golden twelve minutes….).
Of course, these times change daily. Knowing when these times are gives you the opportunity to shoot in some great light. BlueHour by Baum Computer & Graphics is a simple utility that tells you the approximate times of the Golden hours and the Blue hours for the current day.
