Autumn foliage photography

Even if nature photography is not your passion, preferring instead sports, fashion, portraiture, architecture, or street photography, I would think it’s difficult to see beautiful autumn colors and not take pictures of them. Dazzling color is just too alluring.

To capture the best images of fall color, you need to look for several key elements. Being aware of these will make a huge difference in your work.

Lighting

The best lighting conditions for shooting fall colors is soft and diffused natural light. I know this is counterintuitive because many photographers think bright sunlight brings out the intensity and richness of the colors. However, this isn’t true as you can see in the image below. Bright sunlight is too contrasty, and unwanted contrast adversely affects the saturated colors of leaves. Forest colors even look good

The only exception to this is backlighting. When a low angled sun illuminates leaves from behind, they seem to glow from within and the beautiful colors maintain their integrity. The lakeside picture below illustrates this.

Therefore, the three best times to photograph autumn foliage is sunrise, sunset, and when the sky is overcast or cloudy.

Diffused light occurs when the sky has clouds. Those clouds can be solid white with no definition at all or any manner of storm clouds, cumulus clouds, etc. If the sky is dynamic, then you will want to prevent it from blowing out, i.e. becoming overexposed. HDR is the best approach as long as there isn’t any wind. If there is even a slight breeze, the moving leaves won’t align in postprocessing, so you’ll have to either replace the sky completely or use the tools in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw to bring back the detail in your RAW files.

If the sky is solid white, most of the time you won’t like it. In the above image, you can see the white sky

doesn’t add anything of interest to the picture and it is visually distracting. Our eyes are drawn to the lightest part of a photograph first, and our attention returns again and again to very light areas instead of focusing on the subject. This is why I suggest in most cases white skies should be replaced.

You can see in the picture at right that I replaced the sky, and this vastly improves the landscape. Nothing is distracting now, and the attractive cloud pattern adds artistry to the image.

You can replace the sky easily now with the Photoshop pulldown menu command, Edit > Sky Replacement. For most pictures (but not all), this is very effective.

Snow and frost

Toward the end of the peak autumn foliage season when the weather starts to turn cold, temperatures may dip below 32 degrees Fahrenheit and frost can form on leaves. If you happen to be lucky, you could experience a snowfall. Both scenarios offer wonderful photographic opportunities. In the picture below, the undergrowth of the forest is covered by hoarfrost, and the contrast of the bluish white vegetation with the

stunning colors of the trees is amazing. Similarly, I took the photo of the leaf, above, covered in snow before the yellow turned to brown. This is something to watch for.

Hillsides

There are many types of compositions to be made during autumn, from macro shots to panoramas, from backlit maple leaves to reflections in water. One of my favorite types of shots is the type of pattern that forms when trees are stacked above each other as in the picture at right and also in the shot on page 4. These are hillsides covered in color. Flat terrain can be photographed very effectively in the fall for sweeping landscapes, reflections, and other types of shots. For beautiful patterns of dazzling color and texture, though, seek out steep hills covered by trees. Use a telephoto lens to fill the frame with

the pattern of the trees, and choose a relatively small lens aperture such as f/11 or f/16 to insure the entire picture area is tack sharp.

Use manmade elements

There are many interesting and visually compelling manmade subjects to include in photographs with autumn foliage. They provide a focal point and sometimes great color, design, and interest.

The subjects I’m referring to are usually found in rural areas and they include covered bridges (right), historic homes (above), tractors, old barns, rusting old cars, miscellaneous farm equipment, churches (next page), and grist mills. In my own experience when photographing in the U.S., a majority of great subjects like these are found in New England -- Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, Massachusettes, and upstate New York.

Fog and low clouds

When shooting autumn colors, I always get up at dawn. This is the best time to find fog, mist, and low clouds, and this kind of atmosphere makes great photos. I took the picture above from Owl’s Head in Vermont. A short trail leads to a rock outcropping with this dramatic view of the forest below, and often low clouds and mist make the scene even more beautiful than it is normally. At left you can see in the shot of the white church in Stowe, Vermont, the distant hill is shrouded in mist.

Nothing makes landscape and nature images more dramatic and more compelling than fog and mist. If you get up early in the morning, there is no guarantee you’ll find optimal weather conditions like this, but if you sleep late, it’s guaranteed you probably won’t find them! Fog and mist can occur at any time of the day, but it’s more common in the very early morning. §

PERU NATURE TOUR

Sept. 24 - Oct 4, 2022