Are You Ready For Autumn?
Are you ready for autumn? I don’t know about you but I am definitely ready for the best season of the year! You might be wondering why could I possibly be so excited for the fall season? I have simply had enough of this very hot and dry summer. I am a big fan of gardening and I have to admit that keeping my garden well watered has been quite a challenge this year. And in all honesty, when simply taking the trash outside gets you all sweaty from the ambient heat, you know you aren’t made for hot summer days. Am I fragile? Or am I always complaining? NO! I was simply made for cooler weather!
To me, it’s a no brainer that the fall season is the beginning of comfortable weather. I don’t sweat all the time while hiking and oh my God, is fall beautiful here! It’s such a gorgeous season over all. Allow me to convince you to love autumn. It’s the best! And in this article, I will post a few points anyone can use to create better landscape images.
ALL ABOUT TIMING
To get fall colors right, it’s all about timing. And the time frame to get it all together can often be only a handful of days. Many factors will affect the duration of peak colors. If it gets atrociously windy like most of the time here in the east or if it rains like crazy, you can be sure that the fall colors won’t last very long. A few days too early won’t give you much in terms of colors in the trees and a few days too late, the trees will start to look a bit naked. But how can you time it correctly?
Of course, back in the day the old way was to guess the perfect timing. You had to explore and physically go to specific locations, second guess what could potentially be the optimal time for the peak colors. Sometimes it turned out to be a hit while other times, it ended up being a flop. We are now in 2025 and technology has come a long way from second guessing. There are tools that exist now. Most weather apps will have fall color prediction maps which will vaguely tell when they should peak. If you simply Google Search Fall sea peak color forecast or any other combination of similar words, you will find surprisingly accurate maps out there.
I WANT MORE CONTRAST!
I have many other reasons to be looking forward to Autumn. I love the beautiful rich warm tones brought to us by Mother Nature every year. Even though summer is a lovely season to go camping or hiking in general, on a photography stand point, it is far less interesting than autumn. Vegetation for the most part will be green…green plants, green turf, green trees…everything is just green! It makes for a whole lot of green in landscape images. It can even make it difficult for us to understand the different elements of a particular scene.
As autumn progresses, the vegetation will take turns in changing colors. The effect of this in landscape photography will greatly improve the general contrast of any landscape image. It will also create some lovely separation between each of the elements of scenes making the whole image much easier to read and understand. Everything won’t be green anymore.
PLEASE, BE PATIENT…
When photographing the fall colors, be patient! I often tell people that the best time of the day to photograph is at sunrise or at sunset. Things are a bit different when it comes to the fall season. The best light could potentially be an hour after sunrise or an hour before sunset… Not going to lie…a spectacular colorful sky above a never ending field of equally colorful trees is surely going to create a memorable image. Just wait a bit longer where you are if there is a chance that the sun light peaks between the clouds. That moment could potentially only last a few minutes but if you are there to capture it, NOW you have the money shot!
Remembering a morning at the Three Sisters in Canmore in the Canadian Rockies…that location is often very busy since it is fairly easy to access. Don’t get me wrong, it is a lovely location to look at the sun rise over the horizon but I am often not a fan of popular locations. When the first sun rays came in, they lit up some of the clouds, it was lovely but I knew we could get better. I was enjoying the mood as each peak was playing hide and seek behind the clouds…it was a truly amazing mood. Then most of the crowd left. WHAT? Why? It was all over for them? I knew there was a chance that the sun might peak into the valley and it did. There was some rich light hitting the mountains everywhere, every tree was catching some light as well, the whole meadow was on fire. It went from good to great! And nobody else but me got to see it!
A LITTLE TOUCH OF COLOR…
One cool thing to do is to include some leaves in the foreground. It will add a little extra touch of color. This will greatly improve the impact of any landscape image while also creating a gentle color repetition in your images. It’s the fall season after all…trees on the mountains will have a touch of color, trees in the mid ground will also have a bit of color…if your foreground could also use some of that color, wouldn’t it be awesome?
I am not going to lie, I am often found guilty of adding some leaves in my foreground. In other situations, I will remove the ugly ones and replace them with prettier ones. Or I could move them a little bit to maximize their presence as well. Why? Because why not? I am sure you have also done this at some point. We are all here to create art, right? Then why not create something even prettier! Some people will call this cheating…I am just having the time of my life doing something I love; landscape photography. It’s my art and I decide what I want to do with it.
A SIMPLE APPROACH
Nobody ever said that landscape images have to be captured with an ultra-wide angle lens…the ultra-wide angle lens just happens to be THE most used tool for most landscape photographers but it is far from being the only one available in our tool box! The grand views are always fun to capture. But when I am done with the ultra-wide angle lens, I always try to look for much simpler compositions which will include very few elements. It can be a repetition of trees, it could be to use a very shallow depth of field which would greatly help to separate the subject from the background. Doing so with an ultra-wide angle lens simply won’t work well. That’s why I love to bring my Canon EF 100-400mm in my camera bag for all those occasions when nature’s simplicity tickles my eyes. If you have a 70-200mm, instead of a 100-400mm, bring it! I guarantee that it will open a wide variety of compositions. I know…the big lens is heavy. But every single time I left it at home or inside the hotel room, I ended up missing some great opportunities.
A FRAMED PERSPECTIVE
At some point, we have all looked outside of a window and really enjoyed the framed composition that the window offered us. I really love to do the same with natural elements instead of a wooden frame. That frame could be made with leaves, it could be made with tree trunks, it could be from inside a cave… It will add depth to the scene. Framing a scene is a great way to add the lack of the three dimensional feel to photography which is a two dimensional medium. It is such an enchanting way to improve a composition. You will definitely need to train your eyes to see these very different perspectives though. A while ago, I published an article about framed compositions. You could find more examples in that article by CLICKING HERE.
And if you want to try the framed compositions, be prepared to use a technique I have commonly used for most of my landscape images: Focus Stacking. Unless you wouldn’t mind purposely leaving the frame out of focus, you will definitely need to capture multiple images of the frame especially if it is much closer to you than the background. Don’t know what focus stacking is? I have also published an article that talks about it. CLICK HERE to read that article.
…IN CONCLUSION
In conclusion, you would need to work your hardest to try to convince me that autumn isn’t the best season of them all. Ok, winter is a very close second place to autumn for me but still it isn’t as spectacular as autumn. Everything looks so enchanting and vibrant during the very short duration of the peak fall colors. It feels like being part of a Walt Disney Fairytale! It’s absolutely magical and unique.
This article is the third one on my Blog that talks about Autumn in which I have mentioned different points from the two other articles. Reading the two other articles could greatly compliment this one. Have a look at THE BEST SEASON IS NEXT! or ISN'T AUTUMN THE BEST FOR PHOTOGRAPHY? for more useful Autumn photography tips.
Where will you go to enjoy the fall season this year? Please let me know, I am super curious to know! Have a wonderful Autumn.
