Autumn for many photographers, including myself, is their favourite season. Days are still reasonably mild and nights (when clear) can be cold resulting in wonderful conditions in which to photograph. Dew laden spider’s webs, russet coloured leaves and misty mornings evoke all that is special about this time of the year.
Although our woods and parks may be full of colour, putting that across in our photographs is a very different matter. The temptation is to put on a wide angle lens and get as much of the scene in the frame as possible. The resulting image can often be somewhat disappointing since although you have included everything you haven’t captured anything in particular. The answer is to forget the wide-angle and instead fit a telephoto-zoom lens. Picking out details in the landscape and on trees can be far more effective where you reduce the scene to its key ingredients. This is what we term as “making sense out of nature’s chaos”. Forget the sky and grass, zoom in to shapes and colours that catch your eye. Venture out on misty days and drizzly afternoons when the soft light picks out fine details and should the sun make an appearance, use it to your advantage by shooting into the light, perhaps backlighting a colourful leaf or picking out dew on grass or on an orb web. Finally, don’t ignore subjects at your feet. Close-ups of colourful leaves overlapping one another, tiny mushrooms and acorns are just a few of the many subjects that offer enormous photographic potential.
Images (c) Robert Canis
