What made me want to build Sidekick Planner was not that I had been out shooting Diamond Fuji and Pearl Fuji myself.
If anything, I have not shot much of either.
Diamond Fuji is when the sun sits exactly on the summit of Mt. Fuji.
Pearl Fuji is when the moon sits exactly on the summit of Mt. Fuji.
When the conditions line up, the result is a striking photograph.
But taking that photograph requires more than shooting technique.
When, and where, should you go?
Without knowing that, nothing begins.
It was more than ten years ago, I think, that this really registered with me.
"Want to come shoot Pearl Fuji with me sometime?"
Back then, someone I had met on Twitter was a veteran of shooting Pearl Fuji.
They invited me:
"Want to come shoot Pearl Fuji with me sometime?"
I went along.
Go to the specified spot.
Set up the camera.
Wait for the time.
The moon arrives.
And I got my Pearl Fuji without any trouble.
It was not that the shooting itself was difficult.
If anything, standing there, what struck me was:
If someone tells me to stand here, I can take the photograph.
What exposure to use.
Which lens.
How to build the composition.
As a photographer, I know what to do once I am on site.
But there was one large problem.
How did this person find this spot in the first place?
The hard part isn't the shooting — it's getting there
You want to photograph Pearl Fuji.
Then go to a place where the moon overlaps Mt. Fuji.
Put into words, it sounds simple.
In practice, though:
Where will the moon rise?
At that time, how will it sit relative to Mt. Fuji?
From which direction do you have to look for it to land on the summit?
And can you actually get to that position?
All of that has to be worked out.
Once I am at the location, I have ways to take the photograph.
But
when, and where, should I go?
Working that out for myself was not easy.
So:
couldn't this be made easy?
That is where Sidekick Planner starts.
Genuinely, that is all of it.
It isn't "I built it because I kept failing"
Writing about this, it might make a cleaner story to say:
"I failed at Pearl Fuji again and again, so I built software to solve it."
But that is not what happened.
I had not been out shooting Pearl Fuji repeatedly.
I had not been chasing Diamond Fuji over and over either.
Nor is it software I built after a string of failures, thinking
"I never want to fail at this again."
If anything, the opposite.
I tagged along with someone who knew what they were doing, and I got the shot.
And then I thought:
"Could I work out for myself the 'when and where' that this person knows?"
That was all.
It should be calculable
Think about it and the positions of the sun and moon are not a matter of pure chance.
Fix the date and time and you can calculate where they are.
We know where Mt. Fuji is.
A shooting location can be expressed as coordinates on a map.
So:
it should be calculable.
This way of thinking was nothing special for me.
As I wrote earlier, in my company years I designed television sync circuits.
I disliked "the signal is probably somewhere around here," so I built a jig that could measure it precisely.
In nightscape photography, processing thousands of images one at a time by hand became absurd, so I built something to let the computer do it.
This was the same.
If there is no need for a person to hunt for the positions of the sun and moon by intuition,
let the computer calculate them.
Except the answer was not a single point
Once I actually started thinking it through, it was not simple.
For instance,
"a place where the sun overlaps the summit of Mt. Fuji"
is not one single point.
Change the date and the place changes.
It changes with the time of day too.
The distance between the shooting location and Mt. Fuji differs.
The apparent size of the sun matters within the composition as well.
And even if it looks good on a map,
that does not mean a person can stand there.
Is it a road?
Is it deep in the mountains?
Is it the sea?
Is it inside a building?
Does it work as a place to shoot from?
And then there is terrain.
Even if the calculation puts the sun on Mt. Fuji, a mountain in between means you cannot see it.
Once you start thinking about it, this was not a matter of
"calculate the sun's position and you're done."
But I do not mind this kind of problem.
When the problems multiply,
separate them out one at a time.
Separate what can be known from what can't
The important thing here, I think, is not trying to make the computer decide everything.
For example:
"On this date, from this place, looking in this direction, the sun and Mt. Fuji will be in this relationship."
That can be calculated.
The moon can be calculated too.
Terrain heights can be looked up if you have the data.
Candidate shooting locations can be searched for, once you fix the conditions.
Those things should be left to the computer.
But
whether you get a good photograph there
is another matter entirely.
On a clear new-moon night, is the Milky Way beautiful?
Shooting nightscapes makes this very clear.
New moon.
High in the mountains.
Little light pollution.
Forecast clear.
On conditions alone, the Milky Way should look magnificent.
I once stayed several nights at Enzanso, photographing stars every night.
Clear skies every night.
Good moon conditions too.
And yet
the Milky Way looked different every night.
The transparency of the air differed.
The amount of water vapour differed.
The same word "clear" does not produce the same photograph.
It is not that the forecast was wrong.
It is not that the astronomical calculation was wrong.
It is simply that
what can be known by calculation and what can only be known on site are different.
"So where are we shooting tomorrow morning?"
Staying at a mountain hut, fellow photographers sometimes ask:
"Murata-san, may I shoot alongside you tomorrow morning?"
"Of course."
So far, so good.
And then, naturally, the next question:
"So where are we going?"
But sometimes I answer:
"I won't know until I wake up tomorrow and step outside."
I am not being flippant.
I have looked at the map.
I know the direction of sunrise.
I have checked the forecast.
I know the terrain.
I have thought about it a great deal.
Even so,
the last part cannot be known until morning.
Right, or left?
In the morning, I leave the hut.
Look at the sky.
Look at the cloud.
Look at the light.
Look at the wind.
It is different from yesterday.
It is a little different from the forecast, too.
And only then do I think:
"Today, it's probably this way."
Do I go right out of the hut?
Or left?
Even that is sometimes decided in that moment.
It is not that I have not reasoned about it.
If anything, I have reasoned a great deal.
But the final judgement is often
"this way, somehow."
I am a technical person by training, but when I am photographing, it feels as though the right side of my brain takes over for that last part.
Where you buy the lottery ticket
It is a slightly odd comparison, but with photography I think
"where you buy the lottery ticket" and "whether the ticket wins" are two different questions.
Go somewhere that does not sell tickets and you cannot buy one.
First you have to find somewhere that does.
That much you can look up.
But buying from that counter does not mean you will win.
Photography is similar.
Go to a place where Diamond Fuji cannot occur and you will not photograph Diamond Fuji.
Go on a day when the moon does not pass there and you will not get Pearl Fuji.
So:
the dates and places where it can occur are worth looking up in advance.
That is what Planner should do.
But whether going there produces a photograph worth having?
That is a separate question.
What Planner decides is not the photograph
Building Sidekick Planner, people may ask:
"So you use this to decide where to shoot?"
My own sense of it is a little different.
What Planner tells you is
not the right answer for a photograph.
For example:
On this date.
From around here.
Looking in this direction.
The sun or the moon will be at this position.
That is:
the conditions that can be calculated.
Whether, looking at those candidates, you think
"that looks interesting."
Whether you actually go.
Whether you shift position slightly once you are there.
Whether you call it off because of the weather.
Whether you abandon the photograph you planned and shoot something completely different.
That is for the photographer to decide.
Someone who doesn't shoot Pearl Fuji is building Planner
What is slightly amusing is that I, the person building Planner, am still not out eagerly chasing Diamond Fuji and Pearl Fuji.
Now that I have built it, am I using Planner and going out to shoot almost every day? Not really.
Why not?
I am not sure.
Probably the right side of my brain is handling that part too.
If I think "I want to photograph this today," I go.
If I do not, I do not.
Even if Planner tells me
"go here today and you'll get it,"
I won't go unless I want to take the photograph.
And I think that is as it should be.
Planner is not software for giving photographers orders.
What can be known is better known in advance
That does not mean the calculation is pointless.
Quite the opposite.
If something can be known, it is better to know it in advance.
There is no need to travel to a location to discover that the sun does not pass there.
There is no need to wait all night to confirm that the moon will not line up with Mt. Fuji.
If a calculation shows an intervening mountain will block the view, better to know beforehand.
Give the computer what a person does not need to do.
And with the time that frees up,
let people do what can only be done on site.
Look at the sky.
Look at the light.
Look at the cloud.
Feel the wind.
Decide the composition.
Press the shutter.
Or decide
not to shoot today.
I wanted to get rid of "when and where should I go?"
The day I was first taken to shoot Pearl Fuji.
I got the photograph.
The shooting itself gave me little trouble.
What gave me trouble was everything before that.
How did this person know that coming here today would work?
That was it.
Now I have my own answer to that question.
Calculate the parts that can be calculated.
Put them on a map.
Find the candidates.
Make them visible.
And
take it as far as the point where a photographer can make a judgement.
Beyond that is the photographer's job.
More time to take photographs
I have written several times about something Professor Mikio Takagi said when I was a fourth-year student.
Not a precise quotation, but the sense of it was:
Anything that can be automated should be given to the computer. The human mind is there to do creative work.
That was true of the lighten composite.
There is no need for a person to spend a month stacking images.
Let the computer do it.
Sidekick Planner may in the end be the same thing.
There is no need for a person to sit with maps and astronomical data, endlessly working out what could be calculated.
Let the computer do that part.
But there is no need to have the computer decide the photograph itself.
What Planner can work out, let Planner calculate.
To see what Planner cannot know, the photographer goes to the location.
That is enough.
In the end, you decide
Sidekick Planner is not software that guarantees
"go here and you will get a good photograph."
Probably nobody can do that.
Same place.
Same time.
Same equipment.
The photographs will still differ.
The cloud changes.
The light changes.
The air changes.
And above all,
the person taking it is different.
So what Planner should do, I think, is not to produce the right answer for a photograph.
There is something you want to photograph.
But
you do not know when or where to go.
In that case, calculate up to that point.
Once you are standing in that place,
look at the sky.
Look at the light.
Look through the viewfinder.
And in the end,
decide for yourself.
Sidekick Planner began with a very simple question from the day, more than ten years ago, when someone took me out to shoot Pearl Fuji:
"If someone tells me to stand here, I can take the photograph. But I can't work out where 'here' is."
In that case,
make that 'here' easy to find.
That is Sidekick Planner.