Many photographers know and love the Chimani National Park Guides, and today they’ve been updated, many new features have been added, and they are all free.
The guides cover Acadia, Arches, Baxter State Park, Bryce Canyon, Cape Cod National Seashore, Cuyahoga Valley, Denali, Death Valley, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Great Smoky Mountains, Olympic, Rocky Mountain, Sequoia & Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Zion and newly added editions for Arches, Canyonlands, Denali and Death Valley National Park.
The app also has a more generalized app that covers all 409 National Parks in the U.S. Each guide includes the interactive GPS-enabled maps, audio tours, lodging information, transportation schedules, a complete list of amenities, park information and the curated, first-hand descriptions of park features for which Chimani is known.
I’ve used the Chimani guides for quite some time. The maps are excellent, things like ranger talk schedules and suggested scenic views are really invaluable.
For photographers, the apps have added computations for ‘golden time’ for each park and for different locations within the parks. That’s really handy for photographers. Shortly, the apps will add a page of photographic advice for each park, written by a photographer with local knowledge of the area.
If you’ve been to our National Parks, you know that cell service is never perfect, so this new version of the app allows you to download detailed maps before you go, so you’ll have them when cell service isn’t available. Of course your GPS doesn’t need a cellular connection to function, so the map will always show your location.
The app is filled with excellent photographs to show you locations in advance. Sadly, those photos don’t link to the maps, which would be nice feature for Chimani to add. Some of the photos display coordinates however.
The app works in both landscape and portrait mode (hooray!) and it’s pretty quick as a lot of the data resides in the app. Things like changing transport schedules, ranger talks, park events are updated when you have a data connection.
Yes, you can take a printed guidebook into the National Parks, but it’s not a living document the way the Chimani guides are. These apps are indispensable for photographers, and it looks like the company is going to go even deeper with helpful information for people like us.
The reality is I hardly see anyone at a National Parks without a camera or a smartphone these days, but you can spend a couple days in a National Park and not get good advice of the best places to take pictures.
Chimani has solved that with their free guides. The overall guide is in the app store at this link, the other guides can be easily found by typing the word ‘Chimani’ in the app store. All the apps requires iOS 8.1 our later, and they are universal, so any iOS device will run them.
Highly recommended.
Download National Parks by Chimani
App Store link: National Parks by Chimani – Chimani, LLC
