During the past few days I had a walk in the park and I noticed the beginning of autumn. After a few shots capturing lonely people in the far distance on the “golden” autumn afternoon – melancholic spirit, I got connected with the ground: some leaves (left standing or prearranged) create patterns and abstactional lines, shapes and colors. A few stairs covered by leaves and empty feet stepping on them was an idea I go but could not yet do. When I found myself close to a branch, I toked a close-up of it with the rest of the forest behind. However, macro shots of leaves are more impressive is you take one in your hand and shoot it even closer, creating a deeper DOF behind it. Another interesting idea I had was to combine old rusty objects and architecture pieces with the dead leaves. Go on and try that!
The 10 Tips
By trying to make a resume of how to acieve great photos in autumn I came out with these tips:
1. Try to take photos in the early morning or late evening (however, shooting directly against the sun will only cause a mixture of overexposed and underexposed areas – you don’t want that, but if you are lucky, you might get some spectacular sun rays through a golden forest)
2. Combine colors: take together red, yellow, green, and maroon leaves
3. Look up, look down and try different angles and backgrounds (I admit I climbed a tree to get one of my ideas done)
4. Follow the rapid changes of nature day by day on a near foliage
5. Look for contrasts but also fill one frame with just one color (same leaves)
6. Set the white balance to cloudy (even fluorescent might work) to get more vibrant colors – ah and by the way, also choose the vivid option for the pictures
7. The sun might be very powerful over the yellow leaves, and, in order to obtain more vibrant well-exposed colors, slightly underexpose your shots
8. A polarizer also helps allot, if any
9. Shoot near a lake and capture the colorful reflection
10.When editing your photos, saturate in yellow and red channels and add a yellowish photo filter to warm up the scene (if the cloudy white balance didn’t done well enough)
[tags]autumn photos, leaves photos, autumn photo tips, photo tips, macro leaves[/tags]
