Top 6 Apps For Photography
2019-05-03These are the best six apps I use for planning and executing my wildlife (and occasionally landscape) photography. Enjoy!
This app is incredible. It is the first and often only app I open when I am deciding whether to go out to take photos or stay in bed for a bit of extra sleep. It tells me the temperature, how much wind there is, the wind direction, and most importantly for me, the cloud coverage of low, mid, and high clouds. If you don’t know already, a lot of high clouds and little to no low and mid clouds make the best sunrises and sunsets. This app will also tell you sunrise/sunset and golden hour times. And the best thing is Clear Outside is free on both iOS and Android.
I shoot some stock photography. Although I am typically uploading editorial photography since I do a lot of traveling and have several tourists, brand names, or recognizable architecture in my photos, I do occasionally require a model or property release. This is in the hopes of selling the image to a wider audience at a higher price. For this I keep Easy Release on my phone. The releases from Easy Release are accepted on almost every stock image platform as official release forms, so I find it to be worth the $9.99.
TPE is an app that shows the sunrise/sunset times, moonrise/moonset times, as well as the exact direction/location of both. To be honest, I find myself using this app less since I picked up Clear Outside, however I still refer to it often when I am in a new location and want to know exactly where the sun will be rising or setting. If you are on Android as I am, you are in luck. It is only $2.99 on Android but $9.99 on iOS.
This app is pretty straightforward. It shows the tide times at your location. Incredibly important when taking photos at the ocean or sea. I use this all the time when I go to Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Reserve in Virginia as the tide in the bay changes the water level in the marsh. I’ve also seen animals like foxes running along the shore at low tide. These are all things I can consider when checking the tide along with the temperature and conditions from Clear Outside and sun direction from The Photographer’s Ephemeris. I also used to use it in Fiji to check when it was safe to make the three hour walk along the coast to the bus stop.
If you know FroKnowsPhoto on YouTube then you probably know this app. You enter all your gear, its value, and serial numbers, and then you are able to purchase insurance for said gear. As I travel full-time, I am not able to be covered by their insurance. However, I still use this app to keep a list of my gear in one place with the serial numbers in case anything ever gets lost or stolen. It’s also cool to see how much all of your gear is worth.
My Aurora Forecast & Alerts - Android / iOS
I used this app when I was in Sweden for a few months and it was great. It notified me when the Aurora was strong so I could run outside and get some photos.