How to Photograph Fall Colors

Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire

Once you have found yourself in and amongst the fall colors, whether it be northern Maine or the eastern Sierras of California, you need to know how to capture the beauty and color of the fall season. Most of the great locations for fall colors don't give you but a week or two of peak color so you have to act fast. 

The first thing to consider (almost always the first thing) is the light.  What kind of light are you working with?  The tried and true times of the day to best make photographs still apply; sunshine in early morning and late in the afternoon are usually the best conditions.  However, don't put the camera away if you find you have overcast, gray skies. This soft light can bring out the colors quite well without having to deal with the extreme contrast of a sunny day. 

Look for contrast in color and in texture of the image.  The fallen leaves make a great lead-in to blanketed trails and waterfalls.  The lower light of an overcast day, coupled with the shade of a forest  may enable you to shoot slow shutter speeds without the use of a Neutral Density Filter. With your aperture being set with a tiny opening and a very low ISO, you might get the shutter speed down to an 1/8th of a second which should be slow enough to get soft blurry water falls.  Do remember to bring a tripod or figure some way to stabilize your camera.  Maybe using a sandbag or some extra clothing to create a support.  Also remember to bring some sort of camera trigger.  I would suggest a cable release but if you don't have one, try using the self timer to fire the camera without it being moved.

If you don't have a big budget for camera equipment I would still encourage you to put a Circular Polarizer filter at the top of the list.  Not only will it knock down reflections from rocks and allow you to see into rivers and streams, it will give more depth to the color of the leaves. Also, most Circular Polarizer filters will cut the light by about a stop and half.  That could be just enough light reduction if you are trying to get a slow shutter speed for shooting waterfalls.

While most people are on the look-out for the reds, oranges and yellow colors in the leaves, don't forget the cool colors.  The accent of green pine trees and the blue of a lake will make the warm colors pop off the page. 

Shot with a Nikon 600 f/4 lens for better compression of the lake.

Keep an eye out for reflected color. Using a longer lens can compress the color in the image to make a beautiful background shot. Since you are likely shooting digital, give yourself options.  Shoot one of just the reflection, then go ahead and include the actual trees in the composition and shoot both vertical and horizontal. That way, you will have lots to select from when it comes to the editing process. 

If you are shooting with a tripod, make sure you utilize your range of aperture to get images with full depth-of-field  as well as some with shallow depth-of-field. Lead the viewer through your images with your composition. Have them linger on what you want them to look at by using depth-of-field or lack there of, to your advantage.

This image caught my eye as it kind of looked like a creepy hand stretching into the leaves. 

Be sure to look around, both up in the sky and down on the ground.  You might find a tree with a root structure that is interesting or a blue sky that contrasts well with the autumn colors.

For your camera settings, put your white balance on "clouds". This will yield a warmer set of tones that will help enhance the fall colors. Avoid using the "A" mode for white balance as the camera will see large sections of yellows and reds and try to compensate by cooling the image down (adding blue and cyan). 

The most important part is to keep shooting. Shoot from before the sun rises and until at least an hour after it sets. If the sunlight makes the scene too contrasty, head under the canopy of leaves and shoot in the forest.  If the light still doesn't cooperate, spend those brightly lit times of day searching for where you want to be at sunset and sunrise. 

Capturing the colors of the short fall season is challenge but it can be most rewarding with hues that can only be seen in certain locals and during a season that just doesn't last very long.   

How to Find the Best Fall Colors in New England

Knowing when to go to New England to see a vibrant show of colors in the fall will have you planning your vacation months in advance. Understanding how to forecast your getaway to the North East to see the peak of color is very important to the planning process. 

The leaves will start changing in late September and early October. What needs to happen in a best-case scenario, is a warm summer followed with a sudden, dry, cool down in the fall. Nights should be in the 30 to 40 degree range while the days can reach 60 or 70 without having an effect on the color.  It’s the cold at night that brings on the color. For this reason, waking up in the morning can be like Christmas day, eager to see what new color as emerged.

Storms that make their way into the North East can be devastating if they happen to arrive at the wrong time.  Some leaf-peeping seasons can be cut short by wind and rain that removes the color leaves prematurely. However if you are patient, you maybe able to drive to where the storm doesn't effect the color burst of the leaves. 

Cold Nights 

Keeping that in mind, it’s generally colder in the north than in the south. The fall colors will gradually sweep down from the mountains and work their way to the flat lands as the season progresses. Trees are more apt to change from green to color when they are more exposed to the cold night air. For example, trees along a river or lake will change faster that inland trees that might be protected from the cold.

As a good guideline, start your trip in northern Maine. October 1st.  While Bar Harbor and the Acacia National Park are great places to visit, you will have better color as you go inland away from the coast in early October. Up in the area of Baxter State Park is a good place to start or head over to the White Mountains in New Hampshire or head over to the Green Mountains in Vermont.  These higher elevations will yield more color early in October.

Along the Kancamangus Highway, out side of Conway New Hampshire

Around the second week of October a fantastic drive is in New Hampshire along the Kancamagus Highway. This 34 mile stretch of road follows the Saco River with several turnouts along the way for photographs of covered bridges and tumbling water and rocks. Drive to North Conway, New Hampshire, do some shopping and then drive a mile south to pick up the Kancamagus Highway heading east.  Allow a few hours or as much as a full day to enjoy this scenic drive.

As the month of October progresses so does the color down into Southern Vermont, up-state New York, southern Maine and New Hampshire, working its way down to Massachusetts, Connecticut and beyond. So let the time of year be your guide.  If you have the time to spend in New England from late September all the way through October you will surely have some great opportunity to see the fall colors at their peak. If you only have a one or two week window, then be ready to drive a little north or little south to see the best colors. 

Five Products You Can Use To Improve Your Portraits

Five products to improve your portraits.

If you are looking to improve your portraiture, you may just need more practice. However, at some point, the right equipment will make a big difference.  If you add these products slowly to your arsenal of “go to equipment” you will get a better feel of how each one can improve what you are already doing.

1)   Get a longer lens.  Many times photographers use lenses like the 85mm as a portrait lens.  With more full frame cameras being produced and being used these days, the 85mm lens can be too short to compress some of the facial features, yielding a kind of stretched look to a person’s face.   While if you go in the other direction and get a longer lens on your camera, you can create a more flattering look. The nose is not as pronounced as with a shorter lens and it fits the face more evenly.   The longer lens will also let you take advantage of a shallower depth-of-field and drop the background out of focus.  I shoot with Nikon equipment and I routinely use the 200mm f/2 lens or the 70mm-200mm 2.8 lens zoomed as far out as the situation will allow.

2)   Use a good reflector. I use the Lastolite TriGrip Reflector.  Typically I use the version that has silver on one side and soft white on the other. Seldom do I use the silver side but it can come in handy when you are trying to boost the light from an otherwise overly dark scene. The light from the silver side creates a sharp reflected light and many times has too much contrast for most portraits.   The white side is more commonly used to bounce soft light into the shadows of the subjects face.  You can move this in to the subject or out to increase or decrease the depth of the shadow on your subject’s face.  The Lastolight has a nice grip for an assistant to hold or to clip to a light stand. Lastolite also makes a version that has shiny gold on one side.  This seems to me to be useless since if I wanted a gold light over everything I would shoot for this in the first place with gels or add the color later in post.  Don’t tie your hands by using gold in a reflector during a portrait shoot.

3)   Portable Strobe Units. I use the Profoto B1 portable strobes.  Yes, these are expensive but they offer tons of power and  many different options for light modification. The TTL on these units work fabulously with my Nikon equipment and the quality of light is fantastic. Lights like these will allow you to light just about any portrait situation that comes your way, inside the studio or outdoors away from any power source.

4)   Beauty Dish. I recently purchased the OCF Beauty Dish from ProFoto. I use the 24” white version (they come in silver lining as well). This light gives out an outstanding quality of light that has some direction to it but is still soft enough to be extremely flattering.  This one folds up for easy packing and is very simple to put together quickly. The quality of light is quite different than the large soft box look that I have used for years.  Maybe because its different is why I’m drawn to it but check it out and see what you think.

5)   Apple Box.  Mostly used in the film making industry, the  Large Apple Box  can be used to stand on while creating your next portrait.  Matehews makes the ones I use and it's a sturdy plywood box that will allow you to elevate the camera and slightly look down on your subject.  Obviously this is not for photographing children; it’s for photographing heavy people!  If you are looking down on your subject by a few extra inches, they can bring their chin up to you and elongate the neck.  Thereby reducing the weight around their neckline. It’s a simple fix for some portrait clients.  What’s not simple is lugging around a ladder or using some other unstable chair to get you higher than the subject.  If you don’t use it for standing on, you might find it helpful for your subjects to sit on to create different eyeline levels.  The Apple box excels at beingsimple to carry and stow and has multiple uses.

Terry VanderHeiden has been a full time, nationally published photographer since 1980.  He is the owner of ImageLight.com and he is an instructor of photography, Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.

Tracking the Coyote

Coyote, Yosemite Valley, California.  ©Terry VanderHeiden 2016

To improve your photography, make a point to go out and photograph with other photographers.  They will push your creativity and help you spot angles and subjects you might have missed. 

Early this winter I went with fellow photographer and naturalist, David Bozsik up to Yosemite National Park to photograph the first snow of the season. We missed that event by about a day but we did have a great experience following at Coyote along the valley floor. 

Early one morning, on the East end of the valley, Dave and I were out looking for scenic images to photograph and Dave noticed some movement in the tall grasses. As we crept a little closer, we saw that it was a lone Coyote hunting for food. 

Coyote hunting for food, Yosemite Valley, California.  ©Terry VanderHeiden 2016

Like I said, you can really improve your photography by photographing with someone else, but it really helps when your companion is steeped in the knowledge of animal behavior, like Dave is. Its' very important to know about your animal subjects and their tendencies. We know that Coyotes can travel as much as 12 miles a day in search of food. Since all of us knew that winter was about to descend upon Yosemite, the coyote was looking for food and we knew he was going to keep moving. 

The main diet of the Coyote is mice, rats, insects, rabbits, etc. They are also known to hunt day or night, whenever food is available. We followed the Coyote for a couple of hours and then lost him. He was keeping his distance from us and he was much better at maneuvering over fallen branches and soft ground than we were, so he had more control of how our photographs were going to come out.

Our technique for the chase was to follow on foot for a while, go back to the car, race ahead of where we thought Coyote was going be and set up in the hopes of seeing him come by.  This was an all day event.

Coyote, Yosemite Valley, California.  ©Terry VanderHeiden 2016

Finally, late in the day just as the sun was falling we were set up on the West end of the park hoping the Coyote might make it there before it became too dark.  We got lucky.

The Coyote emerged from one of his hiding places and walked right toward out waiting  cameras. 

This last shot was taken with a Nikon D4, using a 600 mm lens set at f/4.5 and shot at 1/800th of a second.  When working with a very long lens, you have to make sure your shutter speed will be able to keep up with your lens.  To avoid camera shake, I always try to shoot at a higher shutter speed than the length of my lens.  To do this, I set my Nikon D4 on Auto ISO.  With this setting you can be sure that your shutter speed is high enough to avoid camera shake.  The camera will pump up ISO  to compensate for low light conditions and keep your shutter speed where you want it.  I have mine set for a shutter speed of 1/800th of a second if I'm using my long glass. 

Coyote, Yosemite Valley, California.  ©Terry VanderHeiden 2016

The downside to this technique is that your ISO can get pretty high, wether you like it or not.  In this case the ISO on this image of the Coyote's face was a very high 10,000.  I knew however with the Nikon's ability to handle high ISO without a lot of noise and using a little bit of noise reduction in Adobe Lightroom, I could make a large wall print that looks very sharp. 

Saving Time in Lightroom

A great way to save time while editing in Lightroom is to use the previous button. This button, located in the lower right part of the Develop Module screen, can speed up your workflow quite a bit as you work your way through your images.

Once you make settings to an image, use the filmstrip on the bottom of the screen to access another like image.  Then hit the Previous Button.  All of your settings used on the last image will be automatically assigned to that new image.  Be aware, that if you don't make any setting on an image selected in Lightroom and move to a new image, the Previous Button won't apply any changes. 

Here is a quick video on how to use the Previous Button in Lightroom.