GoldenLight: Photo Planner
See the shot before you go
Only for iPhone
Free · In‑App Purchases
iPhone
Find the night the moon comes up behind your lighthouse, and where to stand. Then check whether the sky will be worth the drive — scored at your exact pin.
It's 4am. An hour of dark road to the spot, and nobody can tell you if the sky will do anything when you get there. Drive, or stay in bed?
I'm Andy, a landscape photographer in Canby, Oregon. Every planning app tells you when the sun rises. GoldenLight tells you whether it's worth being there — at any pin, anywhere.
THE LUMEN SCORE
Sunrise and sunset, scored 0 to 100 at your exact pin, not the nearest town. It doesn't just look up. Color comes from under the weather, so the score looks out — along the path the light will actually travel, all the way to the far horizon — and asks whether that light gets through. Clear sky overhead with a wall of cloud out west is a dud. A lid overhead with a gap on the horizon is the night you talk about for years. GoldenLight knows the difference, and says so plainly either way.
Five days out, for every spot you keep, ranked. The Sparks Lake sunrise in the screenshots scored 89 the night before. Built and calibrated against real skies by a photographer who was standing under them.
ALIGNMENT ISN'T A FORECAST. IT'S GEOMETRY.
Pin the lighthouse. GoldenLight hands you the evening the moon comes up behind the lantern room, and the stretch of beach to stand on to watch it. The sun and moon go where they go. It lines up or it doesn't.
• Align — every alignment on that subject, a year out
• Event — one moonrise, and the whole line of ground it works from
• Scout — backwards: name the subject, get ranked ground to stand on
Mt Hood, 50 miles off, the moon on the summit, I knew that one was coming.
SEE THE SHOT BEFORE YOU BURN THE GAS
Horizon Profile raises the real ridgeline from your exact spot out of elevation data, with the sun, moon and Milky Way on it in true position, framed at your focal length. Goat's Eye lifts you off the ground and orbits the spot, looking back across the terrain — stand there before you stand there. Outside, the AR viewfinder lays the same bodies over the live camera and scrubs the day ahead. It all runs on the phone off cached terrain — no signal needed on the ridge.
MAP SCOUT
Sun, moon and Milky Way lines swing off your pin. Scrub forward and a week of forecast cloud drifts across the map — watch where it breaks. A color-score heatmap paints the whole view. Light pollution for the dark-sky hunt, public land, live US fire perimeters, and a cone that shows exactly what your lens will frame.
THE 4AM CALL, MADE THE NIGHT BEFORE
Pin Alerts watches the spots you pick and tells you when one is forecast to score — sunset hours ahead, sunrise the night before. Pins and plans export and import.
THE REST OF THE SKY
Golden hour, blue hour, astro dark, a Milky Way window and how much moon drowns it. Aurora odds for your own latitude off live solar wind, not one number for the planet. Fog, smoke, sea sparkle. Depth of field, hyperfocal, panorama math, the longest shutter before stars trail, reciprocity for 13 film stocks.
Score, alignment, ridgelines and astronomy work anywhere. Fire and tides are US, blooms Pacific Northwest, waves and sea sparkle want a coast — those layers say so instead of showing nothing.
What you save stays on the device. No account, no tracking. Coordinates go out so forecasts can answer — nothing linked to you.
No free tier — a crippled forecast isn't a lesser product, it's a wrong one. The yearly plan opens with a free month.
Questions, or a sky it got wrong? andrew@andrewsambucetophotography.com — I read all of it.
GoldenLight Yearly and GoldenLight Monthly are auto-renewing subscriptions; GoldenLight Complete is a one-time purchase and does not renew. A subscription renews unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the period ends. Manage or cancel in iOS Settings, under your name, in Subscriptions.
Terms of Use: https://andrewsambucetophotography.com/terms
Privacy Policy: https://andrewsambucetophotography.com/privacy
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
Alignments, rebuilt around your subject. Put a Subject pin on a peak or a lighthouse and tap it. "From my spot" opens Horizon Profile aimed at the subject with every date the sun or moon passes behind it.
Horizon Profile and Perch on a new renderer: a physical twilight sky, the real moon phase, and the lighthouses and fire towers standing as 3D models.
A new Calendar: the month with the sun's and moon's paths; Alignments, every coming date of an alignment you've saved; Trips, with sun, moon, tides and king tides for each day away.
Fall color, everywhere: a Fall Color Map of when leaves usually turn, Fall Color Reports from iNaturalist, and a Fall Foliage card on Home.
Blue hour on the Conditions card, with the sun's bearing. Plan reminders. Plans named for what they are. Home's weather follows your location wherever you are. And the AR Viewfinder draws the Milky Way over the live camera.
Dozens of fixes from the beta testers' field reports. Thank you.
The developer, Andrew Sambuceto, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Location
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Andrew Sambuceto
- Size
- 45.3 MB
- Category
- Photo & Video
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 26.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 26.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- Yearly $24.99
- GoldenLight Complete $79.99
- Monthly $4.99
- Copyright
- © 2026 Andrew Sambuceto