Welcome to Snapsure

Hey, so this is Snapsure—a service that helps photographers get the shot. Right now it’s super rough, but we’re moving things in the right direction so stay tuned.

The idea behind Snapsure is pretty simple—to get the great photos you want, you need certain things (like the time of day, the weather, and what the sun is doing) to line up. So, to get the best shot at a great photo of the Milky Way arch you need:

• The Milky Way’s centre visible from where you want to take the shot.
• Actual darkness (which you don’t get during the summer at high latitudes).
• Clear skies.
• Dark skies (so either a new moon, or the moon to have set by the time you plan to take the shot).

You can work around some of these, but the more things that line up the better. The problem is that, in lots of places, the conditions you need for the shots you want won’t line up very often. If you’re a professional photographer, part of your job is checking everything constantly so you don’t miss an opportunity. But if you’re taking photos as a hobby, you don’t have that luxury. This is where Snapsure comes in.

With Snapsure, you create custom alerts (right now, email only but mobile is on our radar). When the three-day forecast matches the conditions you’re looking for, you’ll get an email letting you know, so you can clear everything with your partner, scope out the location, and so on. 24 hours before, we’ll double check everything and drop you a second message to let you know if the shot’s still on.

So, say you want that shot of the Milky Way. Right now you could create a Snapsure alert that fires when:

• The galactic centre is visible in your chosen location.
• It’s a new moon.
• There will be astrological twilight (so properly dark skies).
• The skies will either be clear or slightly overcast.

And the next time those things line up, you’ll get an email letting you know. Without having to religiously check the weather every day.

Snapsure’s in Version 0.001 Beta at the moment so your current options to build alerts from are:

• The day of the week, month of the year, and season.
• Sunrise, sunset, and the golden and blue hours.
• Moon rise and set times, and moon phase.
• Precipitation type and amount.
• Whether the skies are cloudy or clear.
• If the galactic centre is visible.

With just these conditions, there are thousands of possible alerts from when there’ll be clear skies during the golden hours at the weekend so you can get out for some great sunrise shots or if it’ll be cloudy during the day so you can take some great natural light portraits in a local park.

And they’re just the start. We have plans to add dozens more conditions (and are totally open to requests) to make Snapsure indispensable.

National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson said, “If you want to be a better photographer stand in front of more interesting stuff”. But you can also stand in front of the same stuff, at a more interesting time. That’s what Snapsure wants to help you do.

Thanks for reading. You can go and sign up for Snapsure now or if you’ve any questions you can contact me by email or WhatsApp.

Cheers,

Harry Guinness, Snapsure CEO and co-founder.

(Keanan Koppenhaver, CTO and co-founder, approves this message).