It has been always our challenges to predict and prepare for good sunrise and sunset as a photographer. Not any more? No, it is not really yet but there is a good tool to increase the odds to capture beautiful sunrise and sunset scenes. A companion application of TPE (The Photographer's Ephemeris) called SkyFire. Skyfire is subscription basis and we need to pay per use period. I am subscribing Skyfire Plus (provides 4 days advanced forecast).

[Note] Below image is made from a panorama (4 images stitched into 1 shown in nearly bottom of this page) by shrinking the image horizontally (3:1 to 2:1).

I've used Skyfire for about 10 months and I would say it's forecast is helpful and I am inclined to use whenever I have a chance to take photos during sunrise or sunset scene. Below two example shows the resulted images are considered successful, meaning Skyfire worked very well for my photo shooting. 

With various data sources and algorithm, the Skyfire will predict the good color sunrise and sunset by showing the color mapping on the TPE display.

Example #1: Shooting date September 26th, 2016, Morning sun from Kerry Park, Queen Anne, Seattle, Skyfire predicted 75-90% good morning sun.

Based on weather forecast, this morning was expected to be clear in sky. It turned out very nice orange/pink and blue gradation.

Click here to see more images from the same day.

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Example #2: Shooting date November 18th, 2016, Morning sun from Kerry Park, Queen Anne, Seattle, Skyfire predicted 75-90% good morning sun.

Based on the weather forecast, overcast clouds were expected. The sun light came through and change the color magnificently.

Click here to see more images from the same day.

There is a YouTube video showing the shooting this morning with NIKON KeyMission360. Click here to see the video. This video is speeding up x20 and duration is 22nd (actual time is about 7 minutes). Click here to see full (7 minutes) version of video. Some browser such as Mac OS does not show 360VR and it will show as an equilectangular format video. Panoramic image below is from 4 images stitches into one and you can see the camera movement in the shooting video when I took those series of images.

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