Autumn is a magical season for photographers, offering unparalleled opportunities to capture a pallet of natural colours in the trees. I usually prefer to photograph around sunrise and sunset, when the light is at its best. However, autumn often brings a twist to this routine, and is probably the only season which is perfect for daytime landscape photography.
Let’s take a closer look at why this is, illustrated with a few examples taken this autumn in the Scottish Highlands.
Golden Hours of Autumn: Capturing Daytime Golden Hues
The sunlight during this time of year is unique; it glows on the leaves, turning them into shimmering gold and creating beautiful hues that make any scene stand out. At other times of the year, the daytime sun is often too strong to photograph, creating hard shadows and over exposed highlights that do not create aesthetically pleasing shots. But in autumn, the natural lighting and vibrant colours come together to produce stunning images. In the photo below, I was photographing a tiny island around 3pm, when the sun was still quite high in the sky. The sunshine lights up the golden leaves in the trees and this helps with enhancing the contrast with the deep blues of the Scottish loch.
Dramatic Skies and Bold Colours
One of the most captivating aspects of autumn photography is the dramatic sky. When the season changes, the sky often offers dramatic opportunities for composition with dark clouds in the background, making the yellow and orange foliage pop against the grey backdrop. In the photo below, the sun lights up the lonely tree and the grass around it with a bright and warm colour. The scene contrasts with the sky full of dark grey clouds in the background. In this image, the light changed rapidly, and I had to wait for a while to capture the right amount of light on the tree and the foreground against the shadows of the mountain and the sky behind.
These conditions can be challenging to shoot as the light changes rapidly, requiring patience to wait for the perfect moment when the clouds and light align. And let me tell you that sometimes they never align. It often happens that I see a stunning light on a particular scene, and by the time I get ready to take the shot that light is already gone. There usually starts a long wait during which I weight the pros and cons of waiting for the next sunny spell, which might, or might not come around…
Creative Shadows and Contrasts
Clouds play a crucial role in creating interesting shadows in autumn photography. These shadows can enhance the contrast between the darker and lighter parts of the image, adding depth and dimension to your photos. The lighter parts of the image become particularly bright and saturated due to the autumnal colours, while the trees in the shadows remain a lot darker and colourless. Another example here where the light was changing rapidly, and it took a few attempts to get the shadow just in the right place. But this patience paid off.
Forest Photography: An Autumn Wonderland
Photographing in the forest during autumn is a truly magical experience. The dense canopy allows us to escape the bright skies and harsh shadows of midday, creating a softer, more diffused light. Autumn transforms the forest into a wonderland of colours and interesting shades, with the leaves displaying a range of reds, oranges, and yellows. The best moments are when sunlight filters through the canopy, illuminating the coloured leaves and enhancing their vibrant tones.
This is also the ideal time to use a polariser filter, which helps diminish reflections on the leaves, especially when they are humid, allowing for deeper and more intense hues to be captured by the camera.
I hope you get a sense of why autumn is the best time of year for daytime landscape photography!
It’s that time of year where it all comes together for me and I often find myself photographing from sunrise to sunset, making the most of the sun shining through the bold colours of the trees.
Photographically yours,
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