First light striking the buttes of the Grand Canyon from Mather Point
NatureFlare · Parks

The trip before the photograph.

Tell it where and when. It gives you back the hour the light arrives, the places worth standing, and how long the walk in takes.

Start free See a real entry

No account. No card. Opens in your browser.
Add it to your home screen and it keeps working past the last bar of signal.

10
Parks live today
63
Parks written & queued
335
Photo moments mapped
0
Crowdsourced pins
Why this exists

You drove four hours to be there. You arrived at noon.

The wrong hour

Golden hour at Mormon Row is not sunrise. The barn front-lights for about eleven minutes and the range behind it goes flat a quarter-hour later. A generic sunrise time will not tell you that.

The wrong place

The overlook with the parking lot is rarely the frame. The one you want is a quarter mile down the rim, and nothing at the trailhead says so.

The wrong plan

Shuttle-only canyons. Timed entry. Gated roads. Pullouts that fill forty minutes before first light. The trip fails in the logistics, not the camera.

One entry, in full

Not a pin on a map.
A briefing.

Every place in NatureFlare is written the same way — around fifty fields, each one sourced and checked by hand. This is a real one, unedited.

The T.A. Moulton barn on Mormon Row with the Teton range behind it
Jon Sullivan · public domain
GRTE-19 · Historic barn / sunrise
T.A. Moulton Barn, Mormon Row
The definitive Jackson Hole shot · 1900s homestead barn · Teton wall behind
Golden hour AM5/5
Golden hour PM3/5
Blue hour4/5
Storm light4/5
Milky Way5/5
Coordinates43.66056, −110.665 · bearing 285° W to the range
Walk in2–5 min · flat sage two-track · ~0 ft gain
Best monthSeptember — golden grasses, clear post-monsoon dawns, low front-light on the barn
Milky WayJun–Sep · core arcs SW over the range · barn as silhouette · 11pm–2am
Lens24–70mm to place the barn under the range · 16–35mm for a wider sage foreground
Filters2-stop soft GND for the bright dawn sky over the peaks
Conditions Traffic · very heavyNo waterExposure lowDogs leashedNo reservation
CellWeak / intermittent on Antelope Flats
CautionBison graze these flats — NPS requires 100 yards. Never stand between animals.
2026 noteMormon Row site-improvement project runs Jun 1 – Nov 15, 2026. Equipment can intrude on the scene — scout to exclude it, or shoot at astro hours.
  • The light is rated, not just timed. Any app can hand you a sunrise. This one tells you that the morning gold here is a five and the evening gold is a three — so you know which end of the day to spend.
  • The walk-in is measured. Distance, gain, surface, shade, water, cell signal, where the parking fills and when. The part that actually decides whether you make first light.
  • It knows what year it is. Construction, gate closures, timed entry, shuttle-only seasons. A spot list written in 2019 sends you to a fenced-off parking lot.
  • It tells you the shot is done to death. Then it tells you where to stand instead — the fence line, the second barn, the bison in the sage. Honest beats flattering.
  • Every field is sourced. Nothing here is generated from a guess. When we aren't sure, the entry says so rather than inventing a number.
Open one yourself
What's inside

Everything between the idea
and the frame.

Plan the trip. Read the light. Walk in prepared. Keep what you witnessed.

The light, to the minute

Sunrise, sunset, both golden hours and both blue hours, computed for the exact coordinates — not for the nearest town. Plus how long the good light actually lasts there.

Places worth standing

Hand-curated photo moments with coordinates, bearing, lens recommendation, foreground notes and the composition everyone else is missing. Written by a photographer, not scraped.

The walk-in

Trail, distance, elevation, difficulty, shade, water, exposure, parking, permits and how early the pullout fills. Everything between the car and the frame.

The night sky

Moon phase, rise and set. The darkest window of the night, to the minute. Whether the Milky Way core is up at all this season, and where it arcs. Computed on your device for the exact coordinates — no signal required.

A field log that's yours

Record what you saw, where, and in what light. Over a season the patterns surface — which species keeps returning to which bend, at which hour. Private by default.

It works where you're going

Runs in the browser and installs to your home screen in one tap. No store, no update prompts, and your plans stay readable where the network doesn't reach.

A lone figure standing at the edge of Taft Point above Yosemite Valley

Leave the crowd,
find your light.

Taft Point · Yosemite · 7,503 ft

Coverage

Ten parks live. Fifty-three written and waiting.

Every US national park is being mapped the same way — one at a time, by hand. Six are finished to full depth. We would rather ship ten parks you can trust than sixty-three you can't.

Light bouncing through the sculpted walls of The Subway in Zion
ZION-24 · Slot canyon
The Subway
Avalanche Lake in Glacier National Park with the headwall reflected in still water
GLAC-18 · Reflection
Avalanche Lake
The orange bacterial mats and blue centre of Grand Prismatic Spring
YELL-02 · Thermal
Grand Prismatic
● Live in the app now ○ Written · wiring in progress Six parks at full depth: Yosemite · Grand Canyon · Zion · Yellowstone · Grand Teton · Glacier
What it costs

Buy it once, or once a year.

One paid tier. No trial countdown, no upsell interruptions, no ads, and nothing held back for a higher plan that does not exist. The free tier is genuinely useful on its own.

 
Free
$0
Where you are now
  • Sun & golden hour, anywhere on earth
  • The Light tab, in full
  • Field log to ten entries
Start free
Everything, one price
Parks
$39 /year
The whole product, nothing held back
  • Curated photo spots, trails & permits
  • Moon phase, rise, and the darkest window
  • Unlimited field log
  • Your own patterns over a season
  • Every new park as it lands — no upgrade
Go Parks · $39/yr Lifetime · $79 once

Secure checkout by Stripe · cancel any time · 30-day refund, no justification needed · terms

Before you ask

Questions worth answering.

Is there an app to download?

Not from a store. NatureFlare opens in your browser and installs to your home screen in one tap — on iPhone, tap Share then "Add to Home Screen"; on Android, tap the install prompt. After that it launches like any other app, full screen, no browser bar, and its data stays cached so it keeps working where the signal doesn't. No store account, no 400MB download, no update nags.

What exactly is a "photo moment"?

One place, one photograph, one set of conditions that make it work. Not "Grand Teton National Park" but "the T.A. Moulton barn at front-lit dawn in September, from the fence line rather than head-on." Each one carries around fifty checked fields: coordinates and bearing, light ratings by hour, the trail in, exposure and water and parking, lens and filter recommendations, what the sky is doing, and what has changed this year.

Where does the data come from?

Curated by hand, from NPS sources, published trail data, astronomical calculation and a great deal of reading. Nothing is crowdsourced and nothing is generated from a guess — where confidence in a field is low, the entry says so instead of inventing a number. Photography is a craft that punishes bad information, and a spot list that sends you to a closed road costs you a sunrise you can't get back.

Do you sell or publish my locations?

No. Your field log is yours. We don't publish user pins, we don't sell location data, and we don't turn quiet places into a leaderboard. Some of the reason photographers guard their spots is that apps like this one historically haven't.

Which parks are live right now?

Ten national parks are wired into the app today, with six of them mapped to full depth. The other fifty-three are written and being brought in park by park. The list above marks which is which — no guessing, and no paying for a park that isn't there yet.

What if it isn't for me?

The free tier answers that before you spend anything — the light tools are complete and unlimited, and you can plan a real trip with them. If you do buy and it turns out not to fit, write to us and we'll refund it.

Capture all of life

The light is already on its way.

Free to start, in the browser you already have open.

Start free