How to find a new location for landscape shooting

One of the most important phase before heading the location for my landscape shooting session, is planning. I need to know where to go in order to find the right elements which fit my project, what I’ve in mind to shoot.
Lately I’m very much in love for long exposure sun rise landscape. Unfortunately not always I’ve enough time to drive long journey to reach the perfect location and what’s even more critical I cannot go the day before to check that location (which I would say is pretty mandatory to avoid unpredictable results!!)

Use Google Earth as virtual explorer for new location
How I can explore for new location then? The first research I do is based on Google Earth! That’s a powerful tool which gives you at least an idea on what you “could” find on a specific location. The other extremely useful information you get is on how to reach the precise point from where it looks be better for the shooting. Third but still very important point is getting an estimation from which the sun will arise. In this way I can estimate (of course I’m not sure because territory images are not real time!) if there will be the view able to match the photo composition I’m looking for.

How to get estimation on the sunrise point?
I was searching on Internet for a time and I found that the “effemeridi” give the sunrise and sunset timing and the azimuth. The last one is definitely what we need. That tells me how many degrees compared with North point the sun will rise. Then I use the compass available in Google Earth to draw a line which gives me estimation on where I can expect seeing the sun raising. This is the internet site I use for that calculation: http://www.dgv.unina.it/effemeridi/calc_effemeridi.htm (Italian)

Based on that approach I decided to go to Brembate, a location not far away from where I leave, to have a shooting session of river view with water and rocks. Here a few examples of what I got at the end.

here you find the map I made while planning the photo shooting on the Brembo River. You see with the red line the direction of the sun at sunrise, and the white line shows

Here below a selection a few photos taken into the Brembo River