While some may still be mourning the loss of summer, we think Fall is a great season for photography. There are so many changing colors to capture as well as differences in light to play with. Check out these five tips for some truly incredible Fall photography:
Use a wide aperture.
This will give you a shallow depth of field to highlight the sharply focused leaves' color and texture against a softly blurred out background. It creates a different, dreamy mood to the photo than when you use a small aperture. Be precise with your focusing since most of the image will be out of focus.
Use a small aperture.
Combined with your wide angle lens, using a small aperture will showcase a large scene with much or all of it in focus. This technique will help tell the complete story of your surroundings. If you find yourself in a beautiful setting, this can bring all the elements of the Fall season together with vivid leaf colors, blue skies, and puffy white clouds.
Look for reflections of your scene in water to add interest.
The mirror-like surface of a still pond is a great way to frame the fall colors and add interest to your photo. It works well both as a wide angle shot showing the entire scene or zoomed in tight with a telephoto lens to showcase a small section of color floating on the water or laying gently on a rock by the side of a stream.
Try composing your shot with extreme angles.
People are so used to seeing things from standing eye level that using extreme angles and elevation can immediately draw interest to your photo. Try shooting straight up into a canopy of trees with the sun filtering through, or straight down at a colorful collage of leaves. Or try getting very low to the ground with a wide angle lens and a colorful element in the scene right in front of you. Drones are now rapidly gaining popularity for their beautiful birds eye view of the landscape below.
Try a macro lens.
The close up detail that a macro lens provides can really highlight the structure, texture, and color of a single leaf or small scene. The resulting shot will be a nice addition to your gallery of Fall images that typically shows an entire wide angle big scene. Since macro lenses have a very limited depth of field you may want to use a smaller aperture such as f11 or f16 to help compensate and keep more of the image in focus.
What's your favorite thing to photograph in the Fall?
