Fall landscape photos - Captures of the day

Fall landscape photos and photography is one of the most exhilarating types of photography, and one can never seem to have enough of it! As someone rightly said, “All you need in life to lift your spirit is to take a moment and gaze at nature’s beauty”. The fall foliage colors brighten, enliven, and get our spirits up exactly this way, especially with all the happenings around us in these times.

This time of year, the woods in my neighborhood had beautiful foliage peaked to display beautiful vibrant colors than usual. The blanket of red, yellow, and orange hues has been incredibly breathtaking. This display was luckily, right in time for the Thanksgiving break. Anyone who appreciates nature and is a photo enthusiast, cannot resist capturing these amazing scenic views. You are just awestruck by the stunning beauty of nature. It is comforting and soothing to just sit quietly and be lost in Mother Nature. Nature can truly provide healing powers like no other. “In times of crisis, the natural world is a source of joy and solace. It produces the comfort that can come from nothing else “- Sir David Attenborough .

As it was mostly a quiet Thanksgiving holiday, I had plenty of time to experiment with my camera. I was glad to capture these memorable clicks right in time, as most of the foliage disappeared and was already gone following the wind and rain, the next few days. If you missed my earlier post on the tips, on how to capture the best fall photos, please do take a look. It is definitely worth reading and will be beneficial for first-timers who are capturing fall colors with a digital camera.

How did I capture the fall landscape photos ?

To capture these photographs, I used Canon Rebel T2i Kit lens EF-S/18-55 IS  and Zoom EF-S 55-250mm lens with my camera. If you have a wide-angle lens, that is an added bonus. It is very popular and best suited for landscape photography. However, I did get pretty decent and satisfactory captures with the lenses I had as well. These images were all captured from my patio. You can click on the right arrow in the picture below to view the slideshow of all the photos.

As always,  I used the raw option to capture the images. The images were shot in "manual" mode. Initially, I set the "Auto white balance" option to "shade" to get warm colors. I then switched to the "cloudy" option to reduce the intensity. Exposure values used for capture were mostly shutter speed at 1/100, ISO at 100, and aperture to f/5 with varying focal lengths.

The captions of the images have the details of the exposure values for each photo, for those interested. The zoom lens was used to capture the first set of images. To capture the second set of images below, the kit lens was used. Some images have a focus on the bird feed to get a bokeh effect or blurred background. Others were landscape shots in full focus, you can see the difference in the shots by clicking on the slideshow below.

Steps used in Post Processing

As already mentioned, the images were captured in RAW mode. The images captured in RAW will have the CR2 extension in the filename. As soon as you open up the photos in Adobe Photoshop, it brings up the “Camera Raw Filter” page. Scroll down to find the "Calibration" section. Adjust the sliders under the hues and saturation for red, green, and blue to bring out the right colors and what feels right. Some of the other options that you can adjust in the "Basic" section are exposure, clarity, texture, vibrance, and saturation. There are many more options as well. Play around till you are satisfied with the colors in the photographs. Do not forget to save the files with a JPEG extension to get the final image. Hope you enjoyed this post and photographs.Thanks for reading!

Finally , a wise old saying by the famous photographer Ansel Adams

"There are no rules for good photographs there are only good photographs" -Ansel Adams