You can certainly just head out with your camera and create photos as you happen upon interesting scenes or subjects, but when it comes to shooting things like landscapes and cityscapes, planning ahead can really help you get next-level images. This helpful video tutorial features an experienced photographer discussing how he plans a shoot and showing some useful tools to give you a better chance of coming home with the shot you want.
Coming to you from aows, this great video tutorial discusses how to go about planning a landscape shoot. One of my favorite tools for this is The Photographer's Ephemeris. Available both on the web and as an iOS app, it contains just about everything you need to see how the light will behave at a given location and time and date, see golden hour times, and a lot more. Perhaps my favorite feature, though, is the augmented reality view. This allows you to use your phone's camera to overlay features like the sun to see exactly where they will be in a landscape at a certain time. Pair it with a good weather forecasting app, and you will be in great shape for a lot of shoots. Check out the video above for the full rundown.
