Autumn Scenes

Autumn leaves are so colorful and inspiring that it would seem hard to take a bad photograph of them, but I’ve lived in New England all of my life and yet have relatively few shots of foliage that I really love, so I’ve come to realize that capturing those colors is tougher than it looks. Timing is very important when it comes to shooting colors — both the time of the season and the time of day.

Fall foliage responds especially well to warm lighting, so early and late in the day are the prime times to shoot. As with most landscape subjects, I tend to scout during midday and then shoot about a half an hour before the sun sets. Fall colors are also particularly vivid when they are wet with rain, so shooting after a storm often produces great photos. Better still, if you can arrange the bright colors against a dark stormy sky, before or after a thunderstorm, for example, the contrast can be positively electric.