Making Better Autumn Photography

Autumn in Europe is the time the colours get vivid and the landscape looks its absolute best. Creating better Autumn photography is a matter of capturing those vivid hues. In this article we’re going to explore how that can easily be achieved.

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Polarising Filters

The absolute best way to really make Autumn colours pop is to use a polarising filter. This is a filter that fits in front of the lens and is rotated to control the degree of polarisation. The effect is to cut out reflected glare, so water for example will come out without the specular highlights and leaves without the reflected glare will show their true, rich colours.

Backlighting

Shooting into the sun or in the general direction of the sun, will avoid most of the elected glare and also render the autumn leaves cinematically bright. This can be tricky because you don’t want lens flare and if you’re using a wide angle lens then you need to shield the lens from the sun without of course getting the shield into the shot. This can lead to operating the camera one handed while using the other to shield the lens. Not ideal if you’re using a heavy DSLR.

This composition is quite busy, there is a lot going on but I like the layers introduced by the light, starting from the backlit grasses on the cliff face at bottom left and the highlit tree in the centre, going back into the mountains. And if you look closely there is a lone hiker, backlit on the pathway under the tree.

Software

None of the effects I’ve used here with my filters can be exactly duplicated in software.

As a last resort you can boost the saturation and adjust the luminence of the red, orange and yellow channels in software like DxO PhotoLab or Adobe Lightroom.

DxO also make Color Efex which is part of the Nik Collection. In Color Efex there is a filter called Pro Contrast that does an excellent job of boosting contrast.

Waterfall Photography

Autumn can be combined with Waterfall photography to great effect, you will find the Polarising Filter slows the shot down to an extent, but what you want is the water to retain the energy and movement, but to retain the stretched time look of a longer exposure.

I stack filters, to get the effect I want, so depending on the base light level, the process is this:

• Attach Polarising Filter to Lens
• Balance exposure – use ISO 100 if there is no wind, the length of the exposure will be long in any case.
• Add a 0.6 ND Flter – Check to see how long the exposure is once corrected – you’re aiming for 5-10 seconds max with a fairly vigorous waterfall.
• Swap the 0.6 for a 0.9 adjust exposure and take another shot.

You always have the option of adding a 0.6 to a 0.9 if you are working in bright conditions.

I find it difficult to see on the back of the camera, exactly what is going on in the water, we are stretching time, but we don’t want it to look like folded plastic, we need to retain the sense of movement. So I usually take a couple of different exposures to compare later in the studio.

In this image, the CPL has been used to get rid of specular highlights, so the water cascading over the rock looks transparent and wet. The river was flowing very fast indeed and the CPL was enough to get the effect I wanted without deploying an ND filter.

Glass Filters versus Software

Most things in photography these days can be done in software, but stretching time and eliminating reflections cannot. The effects I’ve achieved here with long exposures cannot be replicated in software at all.

I have always used Lee Filters but I’m evaluating some filters from Kase that are magnetic and round. These new filters are more convenient and take up less room than the 100mm square filters I’m used to using so I will do a comparison in a couple of weeks.