Photographing Fall Colour

When Less is More
Is there a photographer alive who doesn‘t enjoy a drive or walk in the woodswhen the leaves are turning? Colours are vibrant, the air has a unique smelland there‘s a melancholy in knowing that cold rain, snow and dropping temperaturesare on their way.
But if you‘re like me you‘ll find that your fall colour photographs can oftenbe disappointing. The brilliant hues of a sunny Fall day can appear over-brightin photographs, and it‘s often difficult to come away with anything other thanpretty pictures.
During the last week of October, 2002 I drove to New York city from my homein Toronto to attend thePhotoPlus Expotrade show and conference. The drive took Chris Sanderson (theDirector ofThe Video Journal)and me about 9 hours, but we decided to drive instead of fly because the routethat we took lead us through the beautiful Catskill mountains of Upstate NewYork. Fall colours were at their peak, and although this wasn‘t a prime yearfor colour, the drive along Route 17 through the mountains was wonderful.

Farm & Woods
Fall can be a time of both brilliant colour and drabness. Oneapproach to capturing these alternate states is to find a way to contrast them.In this instance as we were driving through the mountains we saw this fieldof stubble right next to a wooded area in full colour.

Rolling Fields — New York State. November, 2002
Photographed with a Canon D60 and 70-200mm f/2.8L lens at ISO100
I took perhaps a dozen frames, varying the perspective and compositionchanging the focal length of the lens. Because there was a shear drop of about75 feet this was the only way to achieve an effective composition. This frameended up being the most graphically interesting. It‘s a very unorthodox framing,with a large mainly featureless monochromatic expanse filling 2/3rds of theframe, but there‘s enough interest in the lower right because of the strongtextures that ultimately it works. In fact I walked along the highway for astretch so that I was more parallel to the rows, so that the dark earth wouldshow though and delimitate the rows more clearly. As with all the images onthis page it‘s worth viewing them in a larger size (by clicking on each), asit‘s the fine detail and textures that contribute to their appeal. These arebest seen in a large print of course.

Simplicity & Texture
I am partial to that time when most of the leaves are off thetrees yet a handful stand out against bare branches. Maybe this is due to mylove for Japanese art which carries a similar esthetic. I find that it‘s contraststhat attract the eye, and the intricate detail of an image like this also contributeto viewer interest.

Forest Brushes — Upstate New York. November, 2002
Photographed with a Canon D60 and 70-200mm f/2.8L lens at ISO200
Because this was more of a business trip than a "shoot"I traveled light, with just a couple of lenses and one camera body. My longestlens was the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS and I used the D60 in preference to a35mm film body because of its higher resolution, which I knew that photographslike this would demand.
When shooting landscapes my preference is always to work in mediumformat, but the D60 accounted itself well — though providing not quiteas high resolution as medium format. Knowing that the Canon 1Ds that I haveon order was due in a few weeks made me wish that I already had it for someof these frames, but regardless, the D60 produced some very crisp images .

Natures Paintbrush
On the two days that we drove back and forth to New York cityvia the Catskills, the skies were mostly overcast. I much prefer this type offlat light when shooting Fall colour because bright sunlight is usually tooharsh, and creates over-bright colours with strong confusing shadows.

Sharp Yellow Branches — Upstate New York. November, 2002
Photographed with a Canon D60 and 70-200mm f/2.8L lens at ISO100
Here again the contrast between the bright leaves and the barebranches creates a look that is reminiscent of some traditional Japanese artwork.I took dozens of frames like this trying to achieve at least one with graphicsimplicity that I was looking for. This is the best of the lot, though I‘m stillnot completely happy with it.

Escape from New York
We left the city early for our drive home, in part to escape rush-hourtraffic but also to get into the mountains while the light was still good. Wefound ourselves at the Rockefeller Turnout on the Palisades Parkwayjust as the sun was cresting the horizon. This shot works because the Fallcolours are muted due to the low light levels. The sun is just catching thetop stories of the Empire State Building, and the the lights are stillon on the George Washington Bridge.

Manhattan From The Palisades. November, 2002
Photographed with a Canon D60 and 70-200mm f/2.8L lens at ISO200

Early Snow
South of Buffalo, New York is Letchworth State Park.I hadn‘t been there in many years so we detoured into the park for a coupleof hours. This turned out to be fortuitous because colour was at its peak andwe ran into a sudden snow squall that created almost white-out conditions forclose to an hour. If we‘d been on an expressway we would have been in trouble,but as it was we simply cruised slowly through the park.

Letchworth Deer — Upstate New York. November, 2002
Photographed with a Canon D60 and 70-200mm f/2.8L lens at ISO400
At one point during the heavy snow we saw two deer grazing bythe side of the road. I walked towards them as close as I could without spookingthem and started shooting. This was the first frame, and the most interesting.The blur caused by the snow has created an unusual textured effect in the shadowareas that makes a large print look somewhat like a pointillist painting.