FirstLight
The intelligent helper that tells a nature photographer where to be, when - and what the place is offering, honestly. A conditions-first decision engine that synthesises ephemeris, weather, season, place, and the photographer's own style into one honest answer.
Visit first-light.com.au →The decision is the product
Weather apps, ephemeris tools, star charts, and forecast sites all hold the raw data - photographers used to check five of them and still guess. None of them make the call. FirstLight synthesises the lot for a specific shooting intent and hands back a decision.
Live weather
Real-time conditions, cloud cover, wind, visibility, and precipitation - everything that affects a shoot.
Light times
First light, golden hour, blue hour, sunrise, sunset - colour-coded and annotated with exact times.
Astronomy
Moon phase, rise/set times, Bortle rating for light pollution, and aurora probability for southern Australia.
AI briefings
Claude AI generates personalised creative advice - composition, camera settings, weather reframing, and shot ideas.
Built for photographers who notice every detail
Scout AI assistant
A draggable, expandable AI chat panel powered by Claude. Photographers ask natural questions and get location-aware, condition-aware creative advice - not generic tourism tips.
Hand-vetted locations
A curated library of parks, dark-sky anchors, and shooting locations - every row personally vetted before it publishes. No scraped databases: if FirstLight says a viewpoint faces south-east, someone has stood there and checked.
Conditions dashboard
Live conditions at a glance - weather, light times, moon phase, wind maps, and satellite imagery. Designed for quick field checks with large touch targets (44px minimum).
Style profiles
Photographers set their mood, subjects, and palette preferences. AI briefings adapt - a moody seascape shooter gets different advice than a bright landscape photographer for the same conditions.
Weather, ephemeris, astronomy, maps, and place - every location personally vetted before it publishes, with Claude-powered briefings over the top.
Designed for people who notice design
Photographers have an eye for detail. The UI had to be premium but functional - dark twilight gradients, golden accent tones that evoke sunrise, and a data-forward layout that gets out of the way.
- —Dark mode twilight palette (#020408 → #0f172a)
- —Golden amber accents for warmth and urgency
- —Indigo accents for night and astro features
- —Large touch targets for outdoor field use
- —Custom typography: Sora, Plus Jakarta Sans, IBM Plex Mono
The UI gets out of the way
Data forward, chrome minimal - conditions readable at a glance from a car seat at 4:30am.
Honest first, encouraging second
Confidence decays as the forecast horizon stretches, and the app says so. It will never call 100% cloud "prime astro" - trust is the product.
The physics and the poetry
A deterministic engine computes the ephemeris, dark windows, and scores. The AI narrates over the engine's output - it never invents what the physics didn't compute.
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