Secrets of autumn photography | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Autumn has already arrived, and the most beau­ti­ful moments are about to give way to snow and cloudy skies. It’s time to pick up your cam­era and go shoot­ing. Well, as always, we have pre­pared some tips on how best to shoot unfor­get­table autumn pho­tos.

Source: learn.corel.com

portraits

There is hard­ly any­thing more spec­tac­u­lar than a mod­el shot sur­round­ed by yel­low leaves. Weath­er per­mit­ting, you can get win­ning light­ing with­out the need for a flash or reflec­tors.

You can always add dynam­ics to the pic­ture by kick­ing or throw­ing leaves up. In order to cap­ture the moment prop­er­ly, you’ll have to set your cam­era to aper­ture pri­or­i­ty mode and use a fair­ly nar­row aper­ture, like f/4. This is nec­es­sary so that all the facial fea­tures of the mod­el are in focus, and the leaves in front and behind, on the con­trary, turn out to be a lit­tle blur­ry.

landscapes

Autumn is the time for land­scapes, and the gold­en hour (right after sun­rise or right before sun­set) is a great time to pho­to­graph the per­fect land­scape. At this time, you will get soft light. Usu­al­ly you have to hunt behind the scenes either ear­ly or late, but in the fall it gets lighter and lat­er, and the gold­en hour lasts a lit­tle longer.

Shoot when the sun is behind you and don’t for­get the ben­e­fits of ND fil­ters. The sky will be much brighter than the ground, so this is where fil­ters come in handy.

Source: Bored Pan­da

wildlife

Autumn is also inter­est­ing because at this time you can meet a lot of wild ani­mals. Most of them are prepar­ing for the com­ing win­ter. If you care­ful­ly study the habits of ani­mals that inter­est you, you will have a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to catch them in their nat­ur­al habi­tat and take orig­i­nal pho­tos full of dynam­ics and life. Keep in mind that when shoot­ing ani­mals, it is best to use a tele­pho­to lens with a focal length of at least 300mm. The lens should be very fast, f / 2.8 or f / 4, this will be a sig­nif­i­cant plus in case you have to shoot in the dark.

Most often, you will have to shoot with an open aper­ture, this will increase the amount of light and high­light the object against the back­ground.

Fog

One of the beau­ti­ful fall effects worth pho­tograph­ing is the morn­ing mist. Pre­dict­ing its appear­ance is quite dif­fi­cult, but most often it appears on a warm morn­ing after a cool night.

The mist is at its most impres­sive dur­ing dawn, so it’s best to shoot at that time. It is worth choos­ing a high point from which you plan to shoot, or stay­ing near the water, and it is best to do this out­side the city.

You will need a tri­pod for pho­tog­ra­phy, as you will need to shoot at a slow shut­ter speed. The lens should be tak­en with a focal length of 70–200mm to get a decent per­spec­tive and empha­size the lay­ers of fog. Remem­ber to com­pen­sate the expo­sure by at least 1 stop.

The Tam­ron SP 70–200mm F2.8 Di VC USD G2 is designed for this kind of shoot­ing. A vari­ant of such a lens can be found for Canon and Nikon SLR cam­eras.

Source: Pix­els

Reflections

If you are lucky enough to be near the water in autumn, then be sure to cap­ture the reflec­tions. It is worth shoot­ing with your back to the sun, and it is best to do this in the absence of wind. When shoot­ing from a dis­tance, it is worth set­ting the aper­ture to f / 8, this will give you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to squeeze the max­i­mum out of the depth of field. And of course, for such shoot­ings, it is best to use a neu­tral den­si­ty fil­ter. It is worth shoot­ing such shots from a tri­pod.

The Man­frot­to Com­pact Action tri­pod is specif­i­cal­ly designed for use with dig­i­tal cam­eras. The com­fort­able hybrid tri­pod head and Man­frot­to’s light weight make it ide­al for loca­tion shoot­ing.

autumn colors

The leaves cre­ate a nat­ur­al palette, which, in turn, looks very impres­sive in the pho­to. You can cap­ture not only bright spots, but also the fine struc­ture of the leaves. To do this, you need a macro lens that can cap­ture the true size of the sub­ject.

It is bet­ter to shoot with man­u­al focus in Live­View mode, and you can enlarge the image for this by 5 or 10 times.

Macro pho­tog­ra­phy always implies a nar­row depth of field, so even when shoot­ing flat sub­jects, they may not be in focus. The aper­ture should be set to f / 8 or f / 11, this will not only allow you to cap­ture more space in focus, but also help to increase the sharp­ness of the pic­ture.