Where will the sun be?

By Adrian Toon, Director of a2n.

Pictures of installations are normally best taken in sunshine when the sun can easily get to the building elevation where you have completed your work. Sunshine generally offers good shadow which in turn gives a photography a pleasing 3D depth for the eye.

We have talked about where the sun is generally in the sky during the day, but it is not always that easy to guess where it will be, and the time you should be taking your pictures.

For some time applications and software have been available to accurate place the sun for a given time and location. These are now available on our phones and easy to use.

These apps are laid on top of a map, so you can easily find your location to determine where the sun is going to be for any given day, time of day and global latitude.

Couple this with your weather app and you are well on the way to being in the right place, at the right time, to take the best image.

In summer, all elevations will get sunshine at some time during the day. In winter, the north-facing elevation will not get sun at all.

Sometimes you do not have the ability to be on site at the correct time of day, so often the best weather to choose would be a bright overcast day (white cloud on the weather app) where the light levels on all elevations will be the same.

A little bit of planning prior to attending site to take those important promotional images does make all the difference.