Features

Find your viewpoint

Updated 2026-07-09

Most scouting tools answer one question: “I’m standing here — when does the light line up?” Find your viewpoint answers the one photographers actually start with: “I want this shot — where do I stand, and when?” It’s scouting run backwards, and it’s one of the most distinctive things Viewpoint does.

You know the shot you want — the moon balanced on a cathedral’s cross, the sun setting behind a lighthouse, the Milky Way core rising over a ridge — but not where to stand to get it. Name your subject and Viewpoint searches the map for the real places you could stand so the sun, moon, or Milky Way core lines up behind it — and tells you the date and time each line-up happens, how far and in which direction to walk, and the lens to bring.

It is the alignment planner run in reverse. The planner answers “when does the body line up from where I am?”; Find your viewpoint answers “where do I go, and when?”

Where to find it. Find your viewpoint is live in the Viewpoint web app and on iPhone (from the App Store, 1.1.0 and later). It’s one of our newest features and still gets better all the time — treat each suggestion as a strong lead to verify on site, not a guarantee.

How it works

When you open the alignment planner you first choose how to start: let Viewpoint discover it with AI (the flow below), or place the camera yourself on the map and read the alignment windows. This describes the AI discovery flow.

  1. Start from your subject. Open a saved spot — a cathedral, a peak, a lighthouse — and tap Plan alignment, or drop the subject straight on the map. When it’s a known landmark, Viewpoint fills in its height automatically from its place database; you can adjust it, because the height changes where you’d need to stand (a 170 m tower needs a very different vantage point than a 5 m one).
  2. Pick a body — sun, moon, or Milky Way core — an optional moon phase (moon only), and how far ahead to look: a week, a month, 90 days, or a year.
  3. (Optional) Add a detail in your own words — “next full moon”, “around golden hour”, “behind the top cross”. Viewpoint reads it in your own language and uses it only to narrow the search and understand which part of the subject you mean. It never invents the answer — every position, angle, and time still comes from the astronomy engine.
  4. Find viewpoints. Viewpoint works through the search — the AI place suggestions and the on-server checks take a few seconds, so it shows a “finding viewpoints” progress state while it works — then returns a ranked list of places to stand, each plotted on the map.

What each result tells you

Every candidate viewpoint comes with:

  • a confidence score and band, so the strongest line-ups rise to the top;
  • the distance and direction from that spot to your subject;
  • a recommended lens — the focal length that frames the subject from that distance (the farther out you stand for a tighter “moon compression” look, the longer the lens);
  • the date and time the alignment peaks, in the subject’s local time; and
  • the body’s compass direction and height above the horizon, plus the moon’s illumination for moon searches.

Every candidate is also a numbered pin on the map matching the list, so you can see where they all are at a glance. Tap any pin or list entry to preview how that spot lines up. Use this viewpoint opens a shoot plan pre-set to that spot and moment — ready to fine-tune and save.

AI-proposed spots and the honesty gate

Alongside the positions the engine finds on its own (engine-found coordinates), Viewpoint can suggest real, named places that photographers actually use — a hilltop, an overlook, a riverside promenade — each marked “AI-Proposed Spot” and paired with a few words of gear and technique for shooting from there.

The honesty gate is the same for both kinds: the AI only ever suggests where (a place name) and how (the gear and technique note). Every position, angle, time, distance, and lens you see is computed by the astronomy engine and verified before the spot is shown. The AI never invents a coordinate, a height, or a time.

When the engine can’t confirm that the body lines up over your subject from a proposed place inside your window, that place isn’t shown as a verified viewpoint — but it isn’t silently thrown away either. It becomes a clearly labelled scouting lead: the named place with the photographer’s gear and technique note, an honest “not confirmed — scout on site, or widen the window” caveat, and no invented numbers (no time, angle, or lens — the engine computed none for it). Leads are real places worth checking on site; they are never a claim about the geometry.

Only places you can actually stand

Every viewpoint is a place you could really go:

  • Public and reachable. Viewpoint drops positions that fall on water, inside military or protected zones, or on otherwise inaccessible ground — and tells you when some were hidden for this reason. If every spot that lines up is off-limits, it says so plainly instead of sending you somewhere you can’t go.
  • Clear line of sight. In towns and cities a spot can have the right angle yet still face the back of a building. Viewpoint drops positions where a building stands squarely between you and your subject, and flags the close calls with a “Sightline tight” note — worth verifying on site. Tree cover isn’t mapped, so treat an all-clear as “the buildings are out of the way,” not a guarantee of a perfectly open view.

If nothing lines up inside your search window, Viewpoint tells you honestly rather than guessing. When the AI named real places it couldn’t confirm, it leads with those scouting leads to verify on site; otherwise — or alongside them — it suggests what to change: try another body, or widen the window.

What needs a connection

The astronomy itself is computed on your device. The parts that reach our servers are the AI place suggestions, looking up each suggested place’s location and ground height, and the public-access and line-of-sight checks — so Find your viewpoint needs an internet connection to give you its full answer. The underlying alignment planner runs fully offline.

Availability

Find your viewpoint is in the Viewpoint web app at web.getviewpoint.app, and on iPhone (from the App Store, 1.1.0 and later). See plans and limits for what’s included.