It’s all about the colour…

Get strong, natural-looking autumn hues by taking manual control over your camera settings

There are two key camera controls that enable you to capture the colours of the season authentically: White Balance and Picture Style.

Faced with a chilli-hot mix of reds, yellows and oranges, your camera may choose the wrong white balance. It may bias it towards blue to cool the colour temperature, for example, or add green. If you’re shooting raw, you’ll be able to set the white balance when you process your shots, but if you’re shooting JPEG, it’s worth using a white balance preset such as Daylight or Cloudy, or setting a custom white balance for the conditions.

Similarly, take a manual approach when it comes to the Picture Style, Picture Control or Film Simulation. Use Landscape for robust reds and yellows, or try Portrait for more subtlety.

There are several things to consider when you include the sky in your autumn pictures. First up is exposure.

While a blue sky doesn’t usually pose too many problems for your camera’s meter, a pale sky definitely does. Bright white clouds cause your camera to underexpose the image, leading to muddy colours and dark details. If you’ve set a semi-automatic mode such as Aperture Priority, be prepared to dial in some positive exposure compensation to restore the brightness of the scene. Use the histogram as a guide: the graph should be towards the right-hand side of the display if the white clouds take up a considerable amount of the shot.

The second factor to consider is composition. A white sky provides the perfect blank canvas for canopy shots, but it can also be quite distracting. A viewer’s eye will be drawn to the brightest part of a picture, so if there’s a white patch in a conspicuous spot, that’s where people will look. Use your thumb to hide a white patch between branches and ask if the scene is stronger or weaker without it.

There are two easy ways to light a leaf for interesting results: from the side and from behind. Lit from the side, you can bring out the texture and relief of the leaf’s surface. It works best with a point light source, such as a flashgun or a torch. Position this to one side and angle it across the leaf, and it will provide the necessary shadows along the midrib and veins that will give the photo a three-dimensional look.

When a leaf is lit from behind, you’ll be able to bring out all of its delicate structures. It will also appear to glow with colour.

Finding the perfect specimen to shoot can be a thankless task, as a leaf that looks good to the naked eye can often appear a bit battered under the unforgiving glare of a close-up lens. Embrace blemishes and inconsistent colouring, though, as they can add interest and contrast.

To get frame-filling shots you’ll need a macro lens, or a leaf that’s large enough to pick out details using a regular close-focusing lens. You can always crop into a more interesting section of the leaf in software.

Once you’ve got some classic autumn scenes in the bag, you may want to try something a little different. In issue 242, we looked at how intentional motion blur can bring a more painterly and surprising quality to picture-taking, and it’s a useful tool for creative autumn photography.

Not only do the rich colours bring added interest, but the technique can also help to mask foliage that might otherwise look ragged and damaged towards the end of the season. It can also get you out of a photographic hole when you’re faced with strong winds: either keep the camera stationary and let branches and leaves move, or move the camera itself.

Whichever option you go for, you’ll need to use a relatively long exposure.

In order to achieve this, you may need to set a narrower aperture, or fit a light-blocking filter such as a polariser or a neutral-density filter to the front of the lens.

It pays to experiment with the shutter speed and the speed and style of camera movement. Be sure to pack a large-capacity memory card, as you’ll end up taking a lot of pictures…

White move An Auto white balance setting gives a more sickly-looking image (right) than Daylight (above).

Annual leaf Using a more saturated picture setting ensures that colours are captured vividly in JPEGs shot on an overcast day.

Sky fall Filling the frame with pockets of white and orange means that there’s no distracting single patch of bright sky between the branches to draw the eye.

Lighten up! Shots can be underexposed when there’s a lot of white sky (left). Dialling +1 or +2EV of exposure compensation can fix this.

These leaves were backlit to capture the intricate details. For a more dynamic image, consider arranging the leaf (or rotating the camera) so that the midrib runs at an angle.

Keep the camera still for the majority of a long exposure, but move it at the end to capture sharpness and blur.

Micro-movements may be all that’s needed. A circular motion at the end of this 1/4 sec shot had a pleasing effect.

Set a relatively slow shutter speed (1/6 sec in this case), then wobble, rotate or jerk the camera.