Welcome to issue 65

Autumn is a special time for the outdoor photographer. The ever-shortening hours of daylight mean that you want to make the most of your weekends before winter really sets in. And the glorious colours of fall, that start to get at their best from late October in my neck of the woods, act as a reminder to head out in search of colourful foliage.

We are all creatures of habit, and therefore it’s very easy for us to end up taking the same set of shots whenever we use our Nikons. I have an obsession for shooting markets, for instance, and it is hard to break from taking similar pictures of stalls wherever I travel in the world. So how do you get yourself trying new subjects, and approach the season or situation with a new set of eyes?

Heading out on a photo scavenger hunt is one idea to try. Rather than you choosing what to photograph, you’re given a list of things you have to shoot, and the order to shoot them in. It’s a great team-building exercise for non-photographers – but great fun for real photographers too.

You can go on a hunt on your own, but it’s more fun if you go out with a like-minded photographer or two. For this month’s feature, I did just this. I headed on a road trip with my old mate Marcus Hawkins to see what our deck of scavenger cards would force us to shoot. You can see how the game is played, and how we fared, on page 16.