(Tutorial) How to Use Windy.com for Landscape Photography
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Hello everyone!
Important disclaimer: I am a photographer, not a meteorologist.
Despite this, I wrote an article on my blog to share how I use Windy.com to plan my landscape photography activities, hoping it might be helpful to someone else. The disclaimer is related to the fact that there may certainly be technical inaccuracies and jargon mistakes, but I hope it is still understandable and useful.
Here is the link: https://www.francescogola.net/tutorial/how-to-use-windy-com-for-landscape-photography/
If anyone has comments, suggestions, or corrections, I would be more than happy to hear them!
Thank you.
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@francescogola
Hi,
When you say “ there is a sort of tide layer on Windy.com, which can be activated when requesting more information about a selected point on the map, but it’s quite rudimentary, with few available buoys and limited usefulness for us ”, do you refer to the old way to display tides in Windy ?
Now the tides in Windy is not related to tide gauges, but to a worldwide model which gives tide prediction everywhere. Note it can lead to some inaccuracies on very irregular coastlines with enclosed bays, river mouths or straits.
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Hello @idefix37 and thanks for your reply!
Yes, I suppose we're talking about the same visualization(please let me know if there is any other view right now).
From a photographic point of view, this kind of view is quite limited due the following factors:-
Accuracy: as you said, a general tide model probably is not super accurate near the coastline, and that's where we need the info as we take pictures from there. With apps like Nautide or Tide Planner I can check on the map and pick the tide gauge I want and so I hope it's more accurate
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Possibility to scroll the timeline reading: for us, it's not just important to know the time for the high and low tide, but it's important to get all the intermediate readings, so in other words, for a specific time of the day (example: at sunrise or at sunset).
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Planning: in Windy I can get the tide forecast for the next few days. With the mentioned app and the paid licence, I can get the forecast for the next 12+ months. This is essential for us as we (I) plan trips really according to the tide. For example, I may need to find now (Aug 2024) a week where I have almost high tide both at sunrise and sunset in a specific location (example: near a lighthouse) and with the mentioned apps I can do that already for October 2025. I know that there is a certain grade of inaccuracy in such an amount of time, but it works incredibly well to pick at least the right week and the right coefficient.
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Coefficient: it's also important for us to understand the tide coefficient because, as you know, "high tide" is not a constant value, and it could change significantly.
Here a few of screenshots of the information I can get
I absolutely understand that it's probably over complicated to implement something like that in Windy, and I honestly I can't even figure out in my mind a specific layer for that
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@francescogola
I didn't imagine that the detail of the tides was so important for photographers, as much as it can be for sailors !
Indeed it would be very difficult for Windy to provide such detailed data in all countries because they all have their own hydrographic department (even if Nautide succeeds to do it as they claim to offer 10000 tides points). But what Windy currently offers can be useful to photographers because tide charts are generally only provided at the ports, anchorages or access channels locations but not in the middle of the coast.
You said that on Windy the tides are only given “with few available buoys”. I don’t understand what you mean. There are weather buoys in Windy same as there are weather stations. -
@idefix37 said in (Tutorial) How to Use Windy.com for Landscape Photography:
You said that on Windy the tides are only given “with few available buoys”. I don’t understand what you mean. There are weather buoys in Windy same as there are weather stations.
This will be definitely fixed in the article, I was unaware of the worldwide model!
Thank you!
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@francescogola
Your blog post appears to be offline? -
Hi @RonanR!
Oh, you’re right, the link was not working 😨
Now it’s should be fixed!
Thanks!
