6 tips to shooting better fall photos

Autumn is truly one of my most favorite times of the year.  Especially for photography.  Mother nature puts on her best display, and exchanges her normally green canvas for a vibrant red, orange, and yellow display.  Applying visual and color theory to this new palette reveals that red, orange and yellow are advancing colors.  This means that if you look at a variety of colors all from the same distance, reds, oranges, and yellows will appear to be closer to you.  Hence the reason autumnal photos tend to pop right out of the screen while viewing them.  Taking advantage of this visual phenomenon, fall foliage provides us with an opportunity to produce some truly striking images.  Let’s look at 5 ways to may your fall photos even better.

Les Feuilles magiques by darkpatator

1. Shutter Speed

Leaves are a part of nature, which means they’ve a natural tendency to be in motion.  We’ll get to framing a picture perfect still in a moment, but let’s look at leaves in motion first.  Playing with the shutter speed on your camera is a great way to capture ‘in action’ shots.  For leaves in motion, you’ll need to crank that speed up to at least 1/500.  This is a particularly useful and effective technique while shooting a subject that is behind or blocked by the falling leaves.  While there is the alternate option, setting a slow shutter speed to emphasize the motion and movement, I’ve found that this only works well when your background is relatively plain and subject free.

2. Put a filter on it

If you’ve not yet started playing around with filters, Autumn is a great time to start.  Warming filters will add a slight warm glow to your image and add a shade of orange to the leaves.  A circular polarizing filter will cut the glare from any mid-day foliage you might be snapping.  It will also improve the visual range of all colors, and can be particularly handy when using levels and saturation in Photoshop.  A polarizer will also kill any glare bouncing back from water you may have in the foreground (think reflections).  The Autumnal workhorse filter is a B+W 491 Enhancing filter.  An enhancer will really push those red, orange, and yellow tonal ranges and improve your fall foliage shots 10 fold.

Leaf in grass by Jeff Kubina

3. Get down baby

While out on a leaf peep you’re bound to get a number of great shots of tree lines, groups of trees, leaves in motion, leaves on the ground, leaves on the rocks etc.  Most of these shots your took with a tripod, standing, or taking a knee.  But how about taking a stomach?  A what?  Right.  One of the most interesting ways I’ve found to shoot foliage is to get right down to it.  Literally.  By changing your perspective and associated lens angles, you’re right in the thick of the action: on the ground.  Try shooting a solitary leaf or groups while lying on the ground with them.  Conversely, lying on your back and shooting straight up into a red, orange, and yellow canopy can produce excellent results.  Just be sure to meter off the leaves and not the sky to avoid overexposure and poor white balance.

Stages by Clearly Ambiguous

4. Paint with Mother Natures’ brushes

Mama Nature may put on one heckuva display, but that doesn’t mean that you always have to settle for her arrangement of the canvas.  Luckily, she’s left us countless swatches of colors to make our own arrangements with.  Try collecting a variety of leaves and different shades and colors and lay them out in an arrangement of your choosing.  Play with light and exposure along with different angles.  Raising a leaf up to the sun and shooting through it can produce some stunning leave structure images.  When arranging different leave and colors, keep your background in mind as well.  The green of grass is too similar to the original color of the leaves, so think about something in a neutral color with naturally occurring patterns.  Stones for example make a great setting.

Water Droplets on Leaf by Jason Means

5. Give that man a drink

Leaves and water can be one of the best combinations for outstanding pictures.  If you’ve got access to a body of water surrounded by trees, chances are you’ve already got 3 or 4 outstanding pictures on your hands.  Play with different locations around the bottom of water, but also keep in mind your position in relation to the sun.  Shooting into the sun can be tricky, so be sure to use a bayonet and meter not once, but twice before opening the shutter.  If the sun is at your back, be sure to check your entire frame and make sure there aren’t any distracting shadows in the foreground (i.e., make sure YOU’RE not the distracting shadow).

In addition to photographing landscapes with great reflective colors, don’t everlook the leave already in the water.  For some reason, I find bright colored leaves floating on water to be a form of zen meditation, and are always great images in my mind.  Capturing the solitude and sense of peace can be quite a challenging task, but the benefits are well worth it.  On the opposite site of the coin, shooting a leaf on water with a few ripples surrounding it can add a feeling of motion.

Another trick I use is watering leaves down.  Carry a common household plant mister with you when out on a shoot, and give those reds, oranges, and yellows a spritz.  Water is a natural magnifier, and when combined with some close up shots, a splash of H2O can lead to some highly creative results.

Autumn Cycle by moriza

6. Leaves and the City

Shooting fall foliage isn’t just an ideal setting for those living somewhere out in the middle of nowhere.  In the concrete jungles that I’ve called home, most were decorated in a variety of non-ceremonial shades of grey.  Cast against this drab background, Autumnal reds, oranges, and yellows can stand out even more than next to a green field and blue sky.  When shooting in urban environments don’t just simply head to the local park, but take advantage of this unique setting.  Freeze some leaves in motion blowing across a busy intersection.  Look for leaves floating in small puddles on the street, and try to capture interesting reflections in the water.  Fall colors that have been caught in a rainstorm and find themselves stuck to unexpected objects can also provide some great shots.

Autumn is one of the best times to get out there and get shooting.  By applying some of these tips, your fall photographs are going to make the leap from snapshot to artistic work.  Enjoy and keep shooting!