Labor Day! Get Ready for Colorful Fall Foliage
See the ladies paint their faces and prepare for their final performance. They blush as you watch them audition their most brilliant colors before fading to brown with a sigh that only the birds hear. The crisp autumn air deepens their beauty but loosens their grip as, one by one, they drift back to the ground from whence they came.
Everyone is a photographer when Mother Nature presents her magical fall foliage fireworks pageant. Who can pass a tree emblazoned with orange and crimson leaves without snapping a pic? Now is the time to get your gear in order, make your travel plans, and otherwise prepare to capture the best show the earth can offer.
Labor Day has been a federal holiday for 131 years, and I’m happy to report that I’ve spent every one of the last 130 of them getting ready to photograph autumn colors. I missed the first one because my horse threw a shoe on my way to cover the Pullman Strike. Every year I follow the same routine: gather the gear, select the location, review the game plan.
What’s Included?
Hay rides, pumpkin picking, bountiful vegetable harvests—they’re part of the fall photo scene, too, but those are finger food compared to the main feast. In this story we’re focusing on leaves—literally.
What Equipment Do You Need?
The camera or smartphone you already own is probably all you need. Fall leaves are not particular about which camera is used to capture them. If you’re planning a special trip, consider making it extra special by upgrading your gear to that new stuff you’ve wanted all year anyway.
Zoom lenses in the 28-75 range work well in the autumn season. You’ll want some sort of wideangle to cover colorful landscapes. The kit lens that came with your mirrorless camera is probably sufficient, but think about adding some faster glass for shooting early and late in the day. A fast all-in-one, like the Tamron 28-200mm f/2.8-5.6 Di III RXD, is small (4.6 inches long) versatile and easy to pack. (Read our review here.)
If you’re eager to upgrade but are short on coin, consider buying a used camera. Reliable resellers like MPB, UsedPhotoPro and KEH offer cameras and lenses that have been fully inspected, tested, and guaranteed to perform as advertised. Personally, I prefer buying from these three guys instead of rolling the dice on eBay. Additionally, look into the refurbished products many manufactures sell. We wrote about it, and listed sources, here: You Can Buy Refurbished Cameras & Lenses Directly From The Manufacturers You Know & Love.
Know Where & When to Go
Now is the perfect time to begin planning your trip. You may not have to travel far. Some of the best scenery may be in your back yard, local park or hiding on a winding country road just a few miles away. If you’re up to turning fall foliage peeping into a weekend getaway, your options are many.
Some areas, large parts of the Northeast, the Upper Midwest and everywhere along the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, are famous for colorful photo ops. Many include regional features like covered bridges, bristling mountain ridges and picturesque farmsteads. Every year we remind you about the hyper-useful and fully interactive Fall Foliage Prediction Map, presented to the world courtesy of SmokeyMountains.com.
The prediction map is not 100% accurate, but how could it be? Use it to generalize your possibilities and recalibrate as you get nearer to the travel date.
Anticipate the Weather
When timing your travel to coincide with max leaf color, consider the likely temperatures. And just to make sure you’re ready in case it’s colder than you’d predicted, pack a couple hokaron in your pocket. Hokaron are single-use chemical hand warmers that originated in Japan. The HotHands brand can be ordered from Amazon and other sources. If not for hokaron I would have lost my fingers to frostbite years ago, since I often become senseless when taking pictures.
When to Shoot
Ideally, start before sunrise and don’t stop until just after sunset. If needs be, take a nap at noon. Fall leaves exhibit different color profiles at the extreme edges of the day. And you don’t want to miss even a drop of nature’s paintbox.
Golden Hour? Learn all about it here: Golden Hour Tones: How to Boost Them or Add Them (VIDEO). Personally, I don’t spend a lot of time chasing the Golden Hour, but I do shoot favor dawn and dusk.
What time does the sun rise? When, exactly, does it set? Here’s the link to the website maintained by the Astronomical Applications Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory. In addition to data about Sun and Moon rise and set times, for any location in the US, it also contains info about Moon phases, eclipses, seasons, positions of solar system objects, and other stuff. Watch out for the rabbit holes; some of this info is fascinating.
And by the way, Daylight Saving Time ends at 0200 on 02-NOV this year. Spring back, fall forward, sleep fitfully.
Want Fall Photos with Amazing Colors? Do This in Lightroom (VIDEO)
How Polarizing Filters Work and Why You Should Use One on Your DSLR Camera
Choosing Wisely: Tiffen Introduces Innovative Smartphone Filter Mount
Easy Photo Tip: Using a Lensbaby to Capture Fall Leaves and Holiday Lights
Watch Out for Bears
Depending on how far north you go, watch out for bears. And depending on how far back you go, woolly mammoths. The forest is the creatures’ home and we are the visitors. Bears are particularly hungry in the pre-hibernation fall period, and they’ve shown an amazing appetite for the colorful footwear most tourists feel compelled to don. (They like Rockport Duck Boots, too, I’m told.)
In reality, you’re pretty safe. According to the World Animal Foundation, you have approximately a 0.02% chance of being attacked by a bear. That’s 1 in 5000. But if you’re traveling with 4,999 of your friends, somebody just might be lunch.
Composition
Include people for scale in some of your shots. Zoom in on individual leaves, leverage bokeh and practice all of the composition techniques you use in other situations. Barns, fences, windmills (the old kind, not the generators), abandoned vehicles, birds, covered bridges, and small hordes of ravaging Huns on horseback add context.
Filters for Fall Foliage
If you’re like me, every year you want to shoot the best fall foliage of your life. To do so you, I recommend a handful of optical glass filters. Yes—physical filters—the kind that screw into the front of your lens. If you’ve never purchased screw-in filters for your camera, or if you have any questions, check out this article How To Buy A Filter For Your Camera Lens.
Didymium filters, made of a clear metallic mixture called (surprisingly enough) didymium, are sometimes sold as “red-enhancers.” They have unique spectral absorption characteristics that create a narrow-pass filter that blocks only certain wavelengths of light. Consequently, you get bright foliage colors that are free of distortion. They accentuate the warm, fiery fall colors without stepping on everything else. Didymium filters are a secret weapon—few people know about them—so you can create incredible fall scenery while your friends are wondering what you know that they don’t.
Polarizers aren’t just for fall, but autumn is the season when they really shine. Polarizers darken blue skies and make the clouds pop without causing color shift or adding a colorcast of their own—and that makes them immensely popular for fall foliage imagery.
Also, since polarizers reduce or eliminate surface glare (the light that is reflected from slick-surfaced objects like leaves) they allow true, richly saturated colors to be recorded. If you’re trying to catch the reflection of fall leaves on a pond or lake, a polarizer is an absolute must. You’ll love how polarizers help tame snow glare, too.
The only drawback is that polarizers, especially the lower-priced versions, are notorious light hogs. Exposure must be increased by two or three stops (depending on type and brand) and that can be challenging on a dull fall day. Your camera will compensate for the exposure bump automatically but you may need to hike the ISO.
Conversely, polarizers double as de facto Neutral Density filters, reducing overall light transmission without adding any extraneous tones.
Warming (amber) and cooling (blue) filters get their names from the common notion that colors near the red/orange end of the spectrum are “warm” while colors at the blue/violet end are “cool.” Use a warming filter—an 85A for instance—to add a gentle glow like the rusty colors we see at sunset. To simulate the blue of twilight or pre-dawn, shoot through an 80A. And always remember that the easiest way to exaggerate the effect of a filter is to slightly underexpose the scene. Slightly—about one-third to one-half stop only.
White Balance
To a surprising degree you can simulate Golden Hour by experimenting with the camera’s White Balance setting. Instead of Custom or Auto (you should always use Custom when possible) try the Incandescent, Fluorescent and any other options available. Note that your camera may identify these settings by different names.
Some cameras, like the superb offerings from Fujifilm, allow you to tweak the White Balance even further. Shown above is a snip from the X-T4 Owner’s Manual. You can adjust the values in small increments quite easily.
Smartphone Enhancements
If you’re a SMO (Smartphone Only) photographer, check the manufacturer’s website to brush up on options, enhancements and features. I’d love to be more specific but we’d be here all night and I don’t get paid by the word.
You can use 58mm photo filters on your iPhone 14, 15 and most 16 series smartphones via the Tiffen Filter Adapter. Crafted from black anodized aluminum, it attaches magnetically to your iPhone and accepts screw-in filters with 58mm threads, no tools required. Check Tiffen’s website to confirm compatibility.
Great Time to Try Film
If you’ve been hankering to shoot film “one of these days,” this season is your reason. Film does capture fall colors in ways digital cameras cannot. Don’t believe me? Try it and prove me wrong. For a little help getting started in film photography, read Start Shooting 35mm Film – Here’s a Complete Guide.
And for advice on getting your film processed, check out: Shoot Film? Here are 5 Labs that Develop & Print.
Enhance Via Software in Post-Processing
Increase saturation (just slightly, please!), remove distractions and otherwise enhance your images after download. Adobe offers a free version of Photoshop (see Photoshop Phone Home) and there are dozens of other mobile apps for photo editing.
One of our favorites is Snapseed. Read SNAPSEED: The Top FREE App For Mobile Photography (VIDEO). It’s perfect on an iPad and offers seemingly endless creative possibilities.
—Jon Sienkiewicz
