The angle of light and image impact

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What's the "translation" you applied to the altitude/azimuth sun charts, Roger? And does that differ by coast?

I just got the LightTrac app, and am psyched to apply that app to a number of my birding sites. LightTrac gives the sun elevation in degrees, so I want to figure out how I take that data to get what you did, for optimal light/phase angles.
 
What's the "translation" you applied to the altitude/azimuth sun charts, Roger? And does that differ by coast?

Allen,

I'm not sure what you mean here.

I just got the LightTrac app, and am psyched to apply that app to a number of my birding sites. LightTrac gives the sun elevation in degrees, so I want to figure out how I take that data to get what you did, for optimal light/phase angles.

Does it give azimuth too? If one has never been to a site, with google earth or a map, I suppose one could find a location and knowing the direction one would photograph, one could determine if if morning or afternoon might work best. But unless you can only stand in one spot, it seems to me that local variables, like where the subject is located, how it is facing, and what the foreground and background are determines from where and the direction one points the camera. From that I would determine if there was flexibility on position relative to the sun and thus the phase angle. Certainly a lot needs to come together to make a great image, not to forget head and body angle, and because of all those details, it seems to me that being on site trumps any pre-visit calculations of sun position beyond general directions.

Having said that, for my son's outside weddings (2009 and 2010), knowing the date, and location of the event, I computed the sun position to confirm that the time of the ceremony was OK. We did push the time of one event later because I computed a shadow would be crossing the gazebo at their initial chosen time. That shadow was cast by a hotel roof. In the end it didn't matter as it was cloudy.

Roger
 
Late to the party. I did not read the whole thread as as most of you know, I am not a scientific/technical type of guy. I am glad that many found it interesting and that many learned from it. Off to Midway soon.
 

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