Autumn is Coming

Autumn is just around the corner, and I cannot wait for its arrival. While this summer started out to be pretty mild, it quickly turned into a beast. When the sun hasn’t even come up yet and the temperature is already in the 80s, it zaps all desire to go out and create photographs. Autumn is by far my most anticipated season of the year with its cooler temperatures, lower humidity, and, of course, the colorful foliage it produces. Of course, autumn colors never seem to last very long where I live, so timing is everything when it comes to photographing beautiful fall foliage. A single day can be the difference between photographing trees full of colorful leaves or trees that are bare. When I made this picture, I had waited too long. Most of the trees had already dropped their leaves, and the leaves on the ground had mostly turned brown. But, I found this one patch of leaves that still had color. Because my camera would be at an angle to the plane of the leaves, a small aperture was needed to ensure complete depth of field. Given the heavy clouds, the small aperture would require a slow shutter speed, but this wasn’t a concern since nothing was moving. Setting up the tripod, I positioned the camera to eliminate a strip of buildings in the background while keeping a portion of the tree trunk in the upper left corner of the frame to serve as a focal point and to provide a sense of depth to the scene. My settings were 70mm, 2 sec, f/22, 200 ISO.