HEAVENLY-OPPORTUNITY

For Better Photos Involving the Sun and Moon

The sky broke like an egg into full sunset and the water caught fire. – Pamela Hansford Johnson

The Moon for all her light and grace
Has never learned to know her place. – Robert Frost

Galen Rowell once said, "A photographer that deals with two or three sunsets a day has more chances to be lucky than a person who settles for just one."  Well, the same thing is true for moon rise and moon set: a photographer who has two moon-shot opportunities per day is ahead of the game.  Mark your 2012 calendars now for the full moon days in February, April, and July through November (with August having a blue moon!).  These months will provide supurb, multiple photo opportunities.  Try Heavenly-Opportunity to find out exactly why and take your sun and moon photography to the next level.

Program Overview

Do you want to be prepared when you visit a new photo location? Want to plan your trip to catch the full rising moon? Heavenly-Opportunity will help you find the best times and best places to take photos that involve sunrise/sunset or moonrise/moonset, or best yet, combinations of the two. The program accurately predicts the times of rise and set, their position on the horizon, the phase of the moon, and lets you search for just the right combinations to compose that shot you've been looking for – the Heavenly-Opportunity.

Top Features

• Easy and Intuitive Design that Frees Your Imagination to Interact with the Possibilities
• Choose from over 30,000 Photo Locations in the United States
• Including over 500 National Parks, Wildlife Refuges, and Recreation Areas
• As well as 2500 named Mountains, Lakes, and other Important Landscape Features
• And All other Cities and Towns in the US
• Or Enter the Latitude and Longitude of Your Photo Destination almost Anywhere in the World
• Automatically Adjusts for Time Zone, Daylight Savings Time and Magnetic Compass Declination
• Quickly Shows Today's Sun and Moon Events at Your Chosen Location
• Including Twilight times
• Exactly where to look on the Horizon (or throughout the sky), and
• A simulated Moon Phase illustration
• Helps estimate Duration of Mountain Alpenglow and the "blue hour"
  
• And Searches the Future so you can
• Get a complete table for a long time frame
  
• Or find just those days that have the right combination of events you seek!

There are many tools available on the World Wide Web that do part of what Heavenly-Opportunity can do, but none are as seamless and effortless, none that will truly help put you in the right place at the right time. Luck will always play a strong role in photography, but Heavenly-Oppurtunity can certainly increase your chances of getting what you are looking for.

What Users Have Said About Heavenly-Opportunity

Allan Northcutt, nature photography instructor: "The program stimulates you to imagine more sun/moon photo possibilities than ever before. That's what got me hooked."

Mike MacDonald (Mike MacDonald Photography): "Given all the stuff in this program, I doubt I'll ever need a similar program again."

B.L.: "The installation process was simple and effective. No problems."

Bob Johnson (Earthbound Light): "The search capability is incredible" taking this class of programs "a huge step further."  This is "a great program and one that offers unique and innovative features, just when I thought everything that could be done with this sort of application had already been done." See Bob's review for more.

Alan Havlicek (President, Photogenesis Camera Club, Naperville IL, and photo tour guide for LightChase Photography): "I want to use your program because it allows me to get the data without an Internet connection, so I can use the program on a laptop at any location I might be."

Jeff Conrad, author of several similar programs in the course of chasing the moon: "Not all moons are created equal.  Heavenly Opportunity makes it easy to find those that represent the best photo opportunities.  Any landscape photographer who is serious about capturing the sun or moon can't afford to be without it."

Frank Ciccone: "[I] read about your program in Outdoor Photographer and immediately went to your Web address to order. Have just started using the program and find I am now able to replace the 5 tables I used to have to create, print out and refer to (Sun Rise/Set, Moon Rise/Set, Civil Twilight Begin/End, Nautical Twilight Begin/End and Astronomical Twilight Begin/End) in order to get just a fraction of the functionality and convenience I now have with your program. My town is listed in Heavenly-Opportunity's database, so I no longer have to remember my town's latitude and longitude. [I am] an avid photographer who wishes to capture a good landscape shot in the "sweet light" of early dawn or twilight with the full moon in just the right location.  The more I explore Heavenly-Opportunity the more I realize it is exactly what I was looking for!  I don't even need the calendar I used to need with the old tables I used. You are to be praised at being so thorough!  Best Regards from a Very Happy Customer/Photographer."

Paul Puckett: "Thought you might like to see one of the first opportunities that H-O provided me with. I was standing in the exact spot I needed to be (with info from H-O) just before the moon came up  to get this pic in this link.  Thanks again for a great program..."

Jim Griggs: "I downloaded, registered and started using your software a couple of years ago.  I have to say this is excellent software and does a magnificent job of getting my tripod in the right place at the right time.  So far I have used the software in Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, Washington, New Mexico and Arizona and it is dead on perfect.  Here's one of mine:"

Glenn Randall, a full-time freelance photographer and writer since 1979.  In his career he has accumulated over 900 photo credits, including 60 covers, and sold over 10,000 prints.  He was the sole photographer for two books of landscape photos, Rocky Mountain National Park Impressions and Colorado Wild & Beautiful, both published by Farcountry Press.  Glenn says: "Heavenly-Opportunity is crucial to my work as a landscape photographer.  I would no more leave home without a Heavenly-Opportunity printout of complete sun and moon data for each day I am on location than I would leave home without cameras, lenses and tripods."  Glenn highlights the use of Heavenly-Opportunity in the canyonlands in the December, 2008 issue of Outdoor Photographer magazine.  Click on the following links to see remarkable examples of Glenn's use of Heavenly-Opportunity on both moon and sun shots: Full Moon Through Delicate Arch, South Window Through Turret Arch, or Landscape Arch with Sunstar.  Also see his new (November 2000) article in Outdoor Photographer, X Marks the Spot.

Photographer George Brown: "If I want to include shots of the moon at different phases and at what time, you take care of that, too.  This was critical information to have when I was at Seneca Rocks, West Virginia, last month and was trying to get the moon in the notch of the rock.  Your program helped me get it.  And when I am scouting for possible backlit shots, well, your program shines again as I can really get a feel in advance for what I envision the scene to be."

Andre Gunther, "You do not have to be a magician to put the moon where you want it in your pictures." in a web tutorial about one way to marry H-O with Google Earth.

Screen Shots

Heavenly-Opportunity’s main screen set to display what is happening at Everglades National Park in Florida on January 24, 2004.

Heavenly-Opportunity’s search screen set to look throughout the next two years for days when the moon is just a sliver (phase between 1 and 10 percent), with the moon's position on the horizon (measured in degrees from north, called the azimuth) between 180° and 270°, and with the moonset occurring within 90 minutes after sunset.

Heavenly-Opportunity’s results screen listing eight days in the years searched that matched all search criteria used for Everglades National Park.  The image shows the time, azimuth (Az) and how full the moon is (Phase).

Heavenly-Opportunity’s Daily Details screen listing solar and lunar positions throughout one particular day for Everglades National Park.  Note that both azimuth (Az) and altitude (Alt, degrees above the horizon) are given in addition to the moon's phase.

Shareware Agreement

Heavenly-Opportunity is copyrighted and distributed by Fossil Creek Software. All rights are reserved, but the program is available as shareware with a non-exclusive license. This software is fully functional; there are no disabled features until after the 30-day trial period.. 

Purchasers are granted the right to make as many copies of the program and documentation as necessary for their personal use. Permission is also granted, indeed encouraged, to distribute copies of the program or documentation to any other party using whatever means you wish as long as the program and documentation remain unmodified and your personal key is not distributed. This permission includes posting on personal or commercial web sites, bundling with electronic newsletters, and similar broadcast methods.

Download Latest Version

Heavenly-Opportunity has recently been upgraded to Version 3, which builds on previous versions to collectively:

   * Add viewing of details throughout the day (down to the minute if you want it), not just horizon-specific events
   * Start-up fast with a connection to the same large 30,000+ location database
   * Provide selection of locations by state, then place within state
   * Support place selection by typing the first few (or all of the) characters in the place name
   * Auto-load your last saved favorite location (and remembers up to nine favorites)
   * Make it easy to open any saved location by double-clicking one of Heavenly-Opportunity's parameter files in the Windows^TM Explorer view
   * Turn off azimuth correction for magnetic declination if using map products with true north
   * Improve accuracy and text readability on the printed page
   * Supply context-sensitive help
   * ... and numerous small cosmetic changes

Both the latest version of the Heavenly-Opportunity program for Windows^TM and its fun-to-read, 22-page documentation may be downloaded. If you have a previous version of Heavenly-Opportunity installed on your computer, please uninstall it before downloading this version. Then download and run the program below in a new temporary folder to extract the required installation files.  Finally, run the SETUP application that you will find in the folder to  install Heavenly-Opportunity on your computer.  Be sure to keep any libraries than are newer than those distributed with H-O by responding with "Keep" or "Ignore" as appropriate during the installation process.  If you have any difficulty, see the Q&A Log for more download details.

• HO-3-4.exe (as of February13, 2010; ~10 Mb).  Download and test it for yourself.  If you have difficulty installing this version, depending on the symptoms, try these possible solutions: (1) First, go to the Microsoft website to install the latest Service Pack or updates to your operating system as necessary. (2) Some antivirus software interferes with H-O installation; disable it temporarily to assure proper installation. If you continue to have problems, it would help if you report just what the symptoms were.  If you are installing under Windows 7, see here, though Microsoft seems to have taken care of early release problems.  Sorry for any inconvenience.
  
• HeavenlyOpportunity3.pdf (January, 2009; ~350 kb; requires Adobe Acrobat Reader, available at no charge from Adobe)

Please refer to the Shareware Agreement for licensing information and Payment Options for cost.

Notes:    1) Heavenly-Opportunity has been designed for Microsoft Windows^TM operating systems (95 or newer) and works best with a screen resolution of at least 800×600, or even better at 1024x768.  Sorry, there is no Mac version.
                2) Also see Q&A Log for answers to user questions.

Payment Options

You can expect your personal key to be delivered within about one week of registration [unless I am out shooting somewhere :)] It is possible that my email reply may be caught by your "Spam Protection" tool or may be automatically sent to your "Junk" folder, so please be sure to check those locations if you don't receive the email.  If possible, please allow the subject line "Heavenly-Opportunity" to pass through to you unmolested.  If you do not receive my email, please contact fcs@fossilcreeksoft.com. 

If you would like to charge your registration fee, payment is accepted in most currencies, using most popular charge cards, with or without your own PayPal account.  Please choose the option that best suits your needs:  

New Low Price - Tell Your Friends

Download only.  $15.95 (US)  Download latest version as shown above, test it out, and you will be sent a personal key via e-mail within about one week.

CD and printed copy of software documentation mailed to you. $17.95 (US) plus $10 shipping and handling.  You will be sent a personal key via e-mail within about one week.

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