LWPhoto Atlas is an independent reference for nature and landscape photographers in the United States. Our goal is simple: help you be in the right place when the light is right.
What we do
We combine official and open datasets — USGS place names, National Park Service data, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, NASA climate records, NOAA and the U.S. Naval Observatory, iNaturalist observations and the Lensfun camera database — and compute, for every location, the things photographers plan around: where the sun rises and sets through the year, golden and blue hour, when the Milky Way is up, how dark the sky is likely to be, and which months are clearest.
Everything is generated as fast static pages, and the live widgets (today's light, cloud forecast, tides, Kp) run in your browser from public government APIs.
How the numbers are made
- Sun and moon times use standard astronomical algorithms (accurate to about a minute).
- Golden hour is the sun between −4° and +6°; blue hour between −6° and −4°.
- Milky Way windows: galactic core ≥ 10° high during astronomical darkness on the 15th of each month.
- Sky darkness is modeled from town populations and distances (Walker's law), calibrated against known dark-sky sites — an estimate, not a measurement.
- Climate is NASA POWER long-term monthly averages for the surrounding 1° grid cell.
- Bloom and wildlife calendars count research-grade iNaturalist observations, which reflect both seasonality and when people are outdoors.
About this domain
This domain previously hosted the portfolio of a Colorado nature photographer, whose galleries, blog and free Photoshop kaleidoscope templates were well known in photo communities. The current site is a new, independent project and is not affiliated with that photographer; none of their photographs are used here. Visitors looking for the old kaleidoscope templates will find a free online kaleidoscope maker that does the same job in the browser.
Corrections
Spotted a wrong location, a closed road or an outdated rule? Please tell us — we review every report.