Some Thoughts On Autumn Photography

With the aspen and other deciduous leaves all going gangbuster-nutso in the Colorado high country, the tendency is to want to yank the car to an abrupt stop by the side of the road (anywhere! anywhere!), whip out the camera, and attempt to take a picture of the entire grand, colorful, enchilada.

Here’s another thought…try zooming in on the details instead. Especially if your sky is empty blue and boring. Especially if you have a sunny, cloudless day with high contrast. Instead of photographing the entire platter, cast about with your hairy eyeball into the shaded areas within the forest for more intimate portraits.

Hmmm…Does an image of a small part of a landscape say more about the emotion of an area than a huge panorama of that same scene? A good discussion topic.

Here are some examples, with tips and commentary, from a stroll around the Caribou Ranch Open Space loop yesterday…

Don’t aim and fire randomly–look for something that can be an obvious center of interest like this young golden aspen, surrounded by its still very green elders and highlighted by the late afternoon sun. I placed “Goldie” off-center, to the right, partly because it seemed more pleasing that way (rule o’ turds???) rather than centered…but also to contrast this vigorous young tree with its more Charlie-Brown-looking brother on the left. The wonderful mish-mash of fall colors and the nice shadows in the foreground were a plus and helped with environmental context and general framing:

Young Aspen, Autumn. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

There are little “still life” possibilities scattered all over the place on the forest floor. Keep your eyeball skinned. The key here is the even lighting (overcast day, or shaded area), then working out a pleasing composition using an obvious center-of-interest. (Again, don’t just photograph randomly.) In this case, the infamous rule o’ turds…er…thirds did seem to be the way to go. The original raw file was quite a bit more bland–snoozingly flat even. In post-processing, I increased the contrast and saturation, darkened the pine needle background, and did some burning and dodging on the “star plant” leaves and on some of the assorted colorful surrounding leaves:

Autumn Star. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

Another example of working with an obvious center-of-interest–the 2 1/2 (or four?) young aspen babies. Again, with some creative post-processing, you can darken the background and increase the contrast and saturation (careful, not too much!). Sometimes it is hard to get everything sharp (if that is your goal) if the wind is moving the leaves excessively–you have to wait for the gusts to cycle through, or (sigh) return on a calm day, or happily embrace the movement and deliberately shoot at really slow shutter speeds for a different effect:

Baby Aspen. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

Here is another photo with an obvious object o’ interest. In this case, I also used a very narrow depth-of-field (shot at f/4) to blur most of the image with the exception of the gob of berries at the bottom left. Pay just as much attention to your background as you do to the main subject–even when blurred like this–as odd sticks and stones and leaves can show up as distracting lines or blobs of light. As an example, you could argue that the green blob at top and center should have been cloned out. I did do a small bit of clean-up gardening here before shooting–pulling out a couple of small sticks and a blade or two of tall prairie grass:

Berries. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

This photograph is all about the white aspen trunks, their angle, and their strange “eyeballs”…and that one twisty dead tree just right of center. Again, darkening the background, increasing contrast, and some selective dodging of the trees improved the original file dramatically. With direct, high contrast, sunlight, this would be an impossible (or very different) image. With shade, or under an overcast, the lighting (dynamic range) becomes manageable and more pleasing:

The Aspen Nine. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

Here, I found a nice, cherry-red, stand-out subject for yet another autumn still life. I made sure to place the background logs at diagonals within the frame to add a bit of tension/interest–vertical or horizontal lines (with the logs) would have made the image much more static. What a veritable cornucopia of kaleidoscopian delight in this valley!

Autumn Still Life. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

In this case, the center-of-interest is obviously a cultural element–that is, human-made. Was this one of the first structures built in this valley by the Delonde family back in the mid-to-late 19th century? What did the local tribes of original Americans (“Homeland Defense, Since 1492”) think about that? Interesting to speculate. I spent some time dodging some of the leaves, aspen trunks, and wooden beams in an attempt to add dimension. I wasn’t completely happy with the meadow on the left–it added a bit of space back there but it also seemed to be a bright distraction to the roving eye of the viewer, so I attempted to darken it a bit. Also, with a scene like this, try shooting from a variety of angles, heights, and distances. Once you get home and see the files on the screen, you might be surprised at which perspective you think is ultimately the best:

Autumn at the Homestead. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

The five main objects in this “still life” are the rock, the three aspens, the red bushes, the yellow-green bush, and the grass. Often, photographs are really nothing more than a collection of carefully arranged shapes, textures, and forms. If you squint your eyes and blur your vision, you can see them:

Autumn Still Life, #2. Caribou Ranch Open Space, Colorado, 2016

Finally, you’ll notice that none of the above images included any sky. That is because the heavens on this day were blah-blah-boring sans any interesting clouds and quite blue-white bright. Rather than trying to include the bright sky and the dark forest elements in the same image (a dynamic range problem), I just worked in the shade. Eventually, though, as evening flowed over the landscape, a few interesting clouds appeared, along with some subtle, pink, twilight tones. Naturally, my camera followed. Is it the Mother Ship with a baby UFO tagging along behind?