Tuesday, August 10, 2010

The Photographer's Ephemeris: Not Just for Camera Bugs

Okay, so before all you painters turn to some other site, this is not about photography, or rather it's for anyone who paints or photographs outside.

Part of the magic of getting just the right light for that composition is finding out when it's going to happen. That's right it's outside and you can't just twist a switch and add another light. This app, free app, did you hear that free will help you find the right lighting for that prize winning project.

Photographers are handicapped in ways which painters never have to deal with. In a photograph if it isn't there you can't add it. okay, with Adobe lurking in the studio you can add just about anything, but with this FREE app, you won't have to.

Photographers know that the most dramatic lighting happens at sunrise and sunset, but when and can you trust the beauty contestant who went to meteorological school and now reads the National Weather Service predictions like she had a direct line to the Almighty.

Not really, fortunately there are some things which you can trust. The earth is round. Okay so you heard that before, but because the Earth is round we get the advantage of fading light passing through most of the colors of the spectrum. Yeah, like the prism you played with in sixth grade science. So as the sunsets, passing around the curve of the Earth the colors change from white light, the kind we use to drive and go to the store and hike and surf, to the good kind for making dramatic images, the reds and purples and oranges. And if you know when it is going to happen you can be there with your Brownie to immortalize the moment for posterity. Or maybe for some future project when winter comes and you are locked in the house for fear of getting wet and cold and mucky.

Yes, I hear the painters shuffling and talking to their neighbors so here's what you should know before you start slipping out the back door, that prefect moment can be captured by a camera and filed away for some future project. Of course I know you can use a camera. Just because you claim you can't doesn't make it a big, fat fact. So get out the camera and take a picture, (You are doing digital, aren't you? Those wonderful little pixels come in cameras the size of a cigarette pack. Cigarettes? We used to smoke them to keep from strangling the kids or other annoying distractors like bosses and spouses.) Get back to the studio and download it and save it with a name and place you can remember. Then when winter comes and you wouldn't go outside to rescue a wet cat you can pull the little darling up on the computer and see how it can be used to make a better composition for the newest masterwork. You're a painter you can even use more than one and make something which never existed come into life.

Oh yes, all of those nasty little problem areas like perspective and scale can be answered because you have the actual, visual thingy as a reference.

And what about three dimensional artists? Having a picture for reference makes getting the image right. But I pot. And you don't use images on your pots? What about those clever Native Americans, central American Indians or tribal Afro/Caribbean influences you spotted when you were in New Orleans/Jamaica/Haiti on vacation? No picture, no design. Are you kidding if you've slept since then you won't remember it. Take a picture it last longer.

So now you know how it can help, give it a try, remember its free, so if it doesn't do anything for you you can just delete it.

http://www.downloadplex.com/Linux/Adobe-AIR-Apps/Graphic-Apps/the-photographers-ephemeris_228388.html

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