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Fall Foliage Photography Tips

If it's early fall, it's time for thinking about fall foliage photography, at least here in the Northeast of the USA. Already at the end of September the foliage is near the peak of color in some northern Maine counties, and the peak of the color will move slowly south over the next month or so.

Film Photography

In the days of film, peak colors were captured using a slow, highly saturated film such as Fujichrome Velvia 50. Sometimes an "enhancing" filter was used to intensify colors. Enhancing filters are doped with rare earth elements such as Didymmium which have selective absorption bands in the visible spectrum. The effect of these absorptions is to enhance red, orange and brown subjects to give more color saturation and contrast, while having very little effect on other colors.

Transmission of a B+W type 491 "Redhancer" enhancing filter

For an extra effect, enhancing filters are sometimes used in conjunction with a polarizer. If you're shooting film I certainly wouldn't take every shot with an enhancing filter. Sometimes they can be effective, but they can also sometimes result in an overall red/magenta color cast. When I used film I'd more often use something like a Tiffen 812 warming filter, which adds a more subtle overall warming tone and brings out the reds and yellows in fall foliage. You can get an "enhancing filter kit" which includes an enhancer, 812 warming filter and a polarizer (with a UV filter included too) if you want to cover all your bases!

While film is still good and is still being shot, I think most people will probably be shooting digital, so let's look at that next.

Digital Photography

So what about digital photography? Do enhancing filters still work and are they necessary? The answer is that they could be used, but really aren't necessary since you can use an image editor to selectively enhance reds, yellows and browns. If you used an enhancing filter and automatic white balance you actually might not see much of an effect since the auto balance may well try to negate the effect of the filter. You'd be better off setting a fixed or custom white balance when using an filter, but as I said, there would be little point in bothering since the effect can be duplicated (and with greater control) after exposure.

While enhancing filters can be digitally duplicated, polarizers can't, and so a polarizer (a circular polarizer for DSLRs) is still a very useful accessory if you want saturated colors and is something you should certainly have in your camera bag.. It doesn't always make a difference, but it's always worth trying. Though leaves aren't very shiny, they nevertheless can reflect some light which de-saturates their color. A polarizer can remove some of this reflected light because due to the physics of light reflection, it's often polarized. This is something that can't really be fully duplicated in an image editor.

Ideal lighting for foliage is probably a lightly overcast sky, which produces a soft, uniform illumination. Direct sunlight is often too harsh. If you have to shoot in direct sunlight, you might want to dial down the contrast setting on your digital camera. Actually I prefer cloudy conditions for fall foliage if I'm shooting digital since I can correct the colors via post processing.

Above is an example of what you can do in post processing. The original image on the left is very dull and not very interesting at all. It was shot under very flat lighting (overcast grey sky). The processed version on the right looks much better. To get this effect the original image was first adjusted by expanding (cropping) the histogram to make the darkest pixels black and the lightest white. Then the overall saturation was increased slightly and the color was adjusted towards both red and yellow. Final tweaks were done by selectively increasing saturation of reds and yellows. Is this "cheating"? I don't think so. You're just doing what an enhancing/warming filter would do, but by doing it digitally you have better control over the process.

Now you can do some of this in the camera if you wish. For example, with the Canon EOS 40D you can set a user defined picture style with increased saturation and contrast and use that to give your images a little more "punch". You can also selectively adjust white balance to adjust overall color bias. "Shade" is warmer than "Cloudy", which is warmer than "Daylight", so if you shoot in "cloudy" mode on a sunny day or you shoot in "shade" mode on a cloudy day, the images will be warmer, which is what you might want to emphasize warm fall colors. With cameras which support "Picture Styles" you can use the Canon Picture Style Editor to create a style for fall foliage. I made one which I called "foliage" which boosted contrast slightly and increased the saturation of reds and yellows. You can download it from here. Below are some examples using different white balance settings, with a couple of the images also using the "foliage" picture style. While you may not like any of them, they do illustrate the changes which are possible using different white balance and picture style settings.

Fall Foliage. White Balance and Picture Style Examples. Shot with a Canon EOS 40D.

Even better is to shoot in RAW mode and apply corrections using the Canon DPP (Digital Professional Pro) during the conversion to JPEG. This is by far the best method since it records everything seen by the sensor and gives you the option of trying various different white balance settings, picture styles along with differing levels of sharpness, contrast, saturation and color tone adjustments.

P&S Digital Cameras

If you have a P&S camera it's unlikely you will have the ability to shoot in RAW mode but you can still optimize your camera settings for maximum color. For example most Canon Powershot cameras have a "vivid" color setting which increases color saturation. Other P&S cameras may allow saturation to be adjusted via one of the menus. If you have exposure compensation, sometimes dialing in a little negative compensation (i.e. less exposure) can help with color saturation.

Fall Foliage, Fallen Leaves. Canon EOS 20D, EF70-300IS lens with circular polarizer

Fallen leaves floating in a puddle (shot with a polarizer to remove reflections from the water surface)
All fall foliage shots don't have to be of trees!

General Fall Foliage Photography Tips

Catch the "golden light" in the mornings and evening. Direct sunlight in the middle of the day gives overly harsh, high contrast images.
The air is clearest in the morning and after rain, so these can be really good times to shoot, especially if you have any long distance shots which can get washed out by haze
Look for color contrasts, such as bright red trees against an evergreen background.
Don't be afraid to use a telephoto lens to pick out detail in the landscape as well as wideangle lenses when there is a lot of color
Try the effects of the polarizer, but be careful if you're using a wideangle lens and the sky is blue. With very wide lenses, you may see differing amounts of saturation in the sky across the frame which looks unnatural. It occurs because the sky isn't evenly polarized. With a long lens (and a corresponding small angle of view), this effect is much less noticeable.
If the sky is grey and overcast you can still get good foliage shots, but you may want to minimize the amount of sky you show. Zoom in on the trees and save the sky shots for days which have clear blue skies.
If your camera allows you to adjust saturation, you might want to increase it slightly to richen the colors.
If your camera supports a "vivid" color mode (most Canon P&S cameras do), then try that to punch up the colors.

If the sky is grey, don't include too much of it

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You can see some fall foliage images in the two galleries below:

Foliage Reports for the Northeast USA

You can check fall foliage conditions for the northeast states on these websites (...if you're lucky! Tourism websites seem to delight in changing or removing useful URLs). Typically the colors peak in mid-September in the far north of Maine, mid to late October in New Jersey and in mid-November down in eastern Virginia.

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