Heavenly-Opportunity: Must Have Software for Landscape Photographers

As landscape photographers, one of the great challenges is knowing when to be at a location for either sunrise, sunset, moonrise or moonset. We recently purchased a software program Heavenly-Opportunity that makes this task much easier for photographers in the United States.

Heavenly-Opportunity accurately predicts the time and location for each of these events, as well as the phase of the moon for over 30,000 locations in the US. The program includes information for much more than just about every city or town in the country. It also includes information on 500 National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, and recreation areas and 2500 names lakes, mountains or other named geographic feature In the past we had to find information for the nearest major city, now we can have information about the exact location we're planning on shooting at. On my recent trip to Cape Cod, I knew exactly when I had to be on the beach in the Cape Cod National Seashore to get the sunrise photos I wanted.
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In addition, the software allows you to enter a latitude and longitude and get information for a specific place. This is a great feature if you are GPS to determine your location.

Another wonderful feature is the ability to search for specific criteria for a location - and determine what dates you should plan on shooting. For example, we've been wanting to get a photo of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and U.S. Capitol Building with a full moon over the Capitol. We know where to take the photo from (the US Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington, VA), that if the moon comes up between roughly 80 - 100 degrees and if moonrise after sunset - we should be able to get the image we want. With Heavenly-Opportunities, I know that my opportunities for taking the photo in the next year will be on either September 8, 2006, October 7, 2006, February 2, 2007 or March 4, 2007. Needless to say, all of these dates are already in our calendar.
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In a previous newsletter, we have already reviewed another program, Ephemeris, which gives the times for sunrise and sunset and positions of the sun and moon. Ephemeris has three main advantages over Heavenly Opportunity: 1) the interface is a little easier to use, 2) it has a version available for the Pocket PC, so that we can carry it into the field with us more easily, and 3) it's free. If we're going out into the field and want to know when tonight's sunset or moonrise is, then we tend to use Ephemeris. The two main advantages of Heavenly Opportunity over Ephemeris are the much larger number of locations included in the program and the search function. The search function alone is well worth the cost of the software. If we're planning trips, we use this program to plan where and when to be. We wouldn't mind if future versions of Heavenly-Opportunity addressed the first two issues; we certainly won't begrudge paying a reasonable fee for valuable software.
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Heavenly-Opportunity is distributed as shareware by Fossil Creek Software of Fort Collins, CO. You can use an unlicensed version for 30 days. After than, you really should purchase the license. The cost for a licensed version is $ 24.95. The license allows you to install as many copies of the program as you need - we have it installed on both our desktop machines and our laptop.
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As far as we are concerned, Heavenly-Opportunity is must- have software for landscape photographers. We really encourage everyone to go to the Fossil Creek site and download the trial version. Be sure to buy your copy before the 30 day trial period is up. Once you start using Heavenly-Opportunity - you will wonder how you ever got along without it.
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Patty Hankins & Bill Lawrence are the co-owners of Hankins-Lawrence Images, LLC, a photography company based in Maryland. HLI Photonotes, their ezine, provides information and tips for photographers. To subscribe email hl_images@earthlink.net with subscribe in the subject or visit http://www.hankinslawrenceimages.com.