Hello Reader!

We had a few days of cooler weather here in Ohio earlier this week that made it feel like fall is right around the corner. Kids returning to school doesn’t hurt with that feeling either as the school year routines start to fall into place.

My Great Smoky Mountains National Park trip is back on the books! I am aiming for a shoulder weekend (i.e., the weekend just before or after a 3-day weekend) to help find a time with fewer clouds. This is mainly a scouting trip for me to refamiliarize myself with the area; it has been several years since I have been down. But the campsite is booked, and the parking pass has been acquired.

Five Tips for Fall Photography

With fall right around the corner, hopefully, you have some outings planned. Even if you don’t have a trip planned, don’t hesitate to get out and enjoy your local parks, the fall colors, and the crisp autumn air.

Here are my five favorite tips for photographing in the fall to help you come back with great images!

Don’t Wait

It is tempting to try to time your trip with the peak fall season when the leaves have turned and are still on the trees. And if your time for photography is limited, I get it—you want the optimal conditions. But fall color is so hard to predict—how much rain there has been, the temperatures and even the wind can all factor into when the optimal time for color is.

But, this can often cause you to completely miss the colors of the leaves due to mistiming or perhaps a weather front moving through that blows the leaves down several days early. I recommend planning more frequent, maybe shorter, trips to photograph fall colors. While peak fall colors are amazing, as a photographer with a long lens (see Tip #5), you can make creative scenes happen with even just pops of color.

Be very wary of trying to time our outing with peak fall colors, lest you miss the colors completely.

Use a Polarizing Filter

Polarizing filters are often associated with water scenes—streams flowing through woodlands, waterfalls, etc. They help remove the glare from the water and can result in a pleasing image. They are also helpful for photographing fall colors.

The polarizing filter will also cut through the natural moisture on leaves and add just a touch of saturation to your images, making your fall colors stand out even more.

White Balance

I highly recommend using the RAW file format when photographing landscapes in general. This helps you capture the most detail your camera can, though it does require at least some basic editing in your favorite editing software.

For fall photography, this gives you an opportunity to adjust the white balance of the image in editing software to change the warmth of the image. Often, a hint of warmer temperature will enhance the “feel” of the autumn photo. I usually have my camera set to about a 5500k or 5600k white balance and then make subtle adjustments in post-processing to season to taste.

Shoot from the Edges

Photographing in woodlands, whether in the fall or not, can be challenging. There is chaos all around, and it can be difficult to distill a scene into something pleasing to the eye.

When feeling overwhelmed in this situation, photograph from the edges. Find an opening or clearing and stand there and look back towards the edge line. This can help reduce the chaos of the trees into something your eye can compose into a scene more easily. (I got this tip from Sarah Marino a couple of years ago and it has stuck with me for any woodland area I struggle with - be sure to visit her website for all sorts of amazing images and resources).

As your creative eye gets better at visualizing woodland scenes, then by all means, head back into the woods and look for scenes there as well. But photographing from the edge can be a helpful strategy if you are feeling overwhelmed.

Telephoto Lens

Early in their journey, landscape photographers often believe the wide-angle lens is the only one they need. But as you become more in tune with the environment around you and your creative eye evolves, you will notice much smaller scenes that are often equally or more impressive than grand scenes. That’s where the telephoto lens comes into play.

With a long lens, you can look for those pops of color (remember, get out there early - don’t try to time peak fall colors) and compose scenes with just those elements. This can be how a tree stands out against the background or even small scenes within the woods, leaves on the ground, interesting tree limbs, or tree trunks against a canvas of colors.

Hopefully, these five tips will help you with your fall photography this year! Do you have any favorite tips for photographing fall colors? Feel free to send me an email with some of your favorites!

2025 Landscape Photography Calendar

For the past few years, I have been releasing a landscape photography calendar. With each iteration, I’ve learned a lot about printing, what people like in a calendar, and how to control shipping costs!

I usually feature one of my local areas, so I don’t mention the calendar much in the newsletter, but this year, I am featuring images from my US travels over the past year or two with some of my favorites. The calendar features images from West Virginia, Colorado, Arizona, California, and, of course, a couple from Ohio! Click the button below for all the information and ordering info.

Get Your Calendar Now

Adjusting Midtone Contrast With Lightroom

You are probably familiar with contrast and how it can impact a photo by adjusting it, but are you familiar with the nuances of midtone contrast? I cover that topic and how to use Lightroom to target the midtone contrast in your image to help take your landscape photography editing up a notch.

Until the next newsletter!

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