Can AI Help Me Predict the Light?
Weather is never a side issue for me. If you photograph light, you wait. For clouds, for wind, for that one moment. And sometimes you wait for nothing.
A few weeks ago I wrote here about my AI Brain. Receipts, research, the weather briefing in the morning. Since then one question has stayed with me: can I understand not just the weather, but the light? And a few days ahead?
There is also some plain arithmetic behind this. A shoot costs more than an hour of helicopter time. There is the journey, the climb in the mountains, the early start, carrying the gear, the waiting. If I reach the top and the sky does nothing, the money and a few days are gone. Accuracy and reliability are not a game for me.
Weather AI Agent
For three years, the two cameras of the glaciers.today project on Diavolezza have photographed the Bernina region every 30 minutes, in high resolution, in all weather. My AI agent is now gaining access to these more than 50,000 images step by step. At the same time it has access to the data of the big weather models, including Copernicus. It lays both on top of each other and analyses them. Which clouds move how fast, in which wind from which direction, how high, and what does that mean for the light? The more of the past I connect with the weather data, the more the agent learns.
I am writing this deliberately carefully. It is complicated, and I do not know whether it will work in the end the way I imagine. Honestly, that is the exciting part.
For a few days I kept coming to the same conclusion: something has to happen, the conditions are good. So I changed the interval from 30 to 10 minutes. That was not a small decision. High resolution images every 10 minutes mean more data, more load on the connection and more power. We run the system on solar panels. I weighed it up and decided in favour of the chance.
The evening of 15 October
The morning after, when I looked at the images of the sunset over Piz Palü on the server, I knew: my AI agent had been right. High pressure, unusually warm, lenticular clouds above Piz Palü. And then that light, tipping step by step from orange through pink into the blue hour. Brilliant.
There is something else, which for me is almost more important. Knowledge is an important foundation for creativity. There is enough uncertainty, the weather stays the weather. But if I know a few days ahead what is possible, I can already imagine the picture. I no longer simply go out and see what comes. I go with an idea and a vision.
One evening is not proof. But it is a hint.
The real test comes in winter. A strong El Niño is under way in the Pacific. What it means for our region and our mountains, nobody knows exactly. That is precisely why it becomes the test. I will write down in which weather situations the agent is right and in which it is not, and the cameras will record what this El Niño winter does here. By spring we will know more.
If you want to see how it goes on, you can sign up for my newsletter. I also write about what does not work, and I like to share experiences, impressive images and works from our nature.
And here are the photos of the Engiadina Collection
Jürg
