The colours of autumn

The peak of autumn offers deep reds, golden yellows and vibrant oranges, creating a striking natural display, Jason Parnell-brookes shows you how to photographically make the most of these seasonal wonders

Shoot the warm tones that the fall season has to offer

For this project, you’ll need to find vibrant foliage, so head to a nearby forest or park. We’ve come to the stunning Westonbirt National Arboretum, in England – one of the bestknown arboretums in the country, famous for its collection of over 15,000 labelled trees which started back in the 1850s.

So with the perfect location we can hone our creative eye and consider the lighting in the environment. You don’t need any fancy kit; an entry-level kit zoom lens or a simple 50mm ‘nifty fifty’ prime will do the job.

Autumn may be the shortest season we experience here in the UK, with trees like horse chestnut starting to turn brown in mid to late August, it’s only a few weeks before the country is covered in brown crunchy leaves.

If you want to capture autumn in all its glory the best colours (in the UK at least) are around the last week or two in October and early November.

In order to make the most of your time out shooting in this very short season, we advise using semi-automatic features like Aperture Priority and allow your Nikon to do as much of the work for you as possible. That way you can experiment with composition and other creative techniques such as free-lensing, enhancing the colours incamera and spotting important details in and around the foliage.

Let’s get started with your first steps into autumnal shooting.

Experiment with composition and other creative techniques such as free-lensing and spotting important details in the foliage