Photography Technique - 10 Tips To Add Zing To Your Autumn Pictures

By Author: Adam Coupe
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Photography Technique - 10 Tips to Add Zing to Your Autumn Pictures

1 Get the Exposure Right
Although digital images can be tweaked in Photoshop to correct a reasonable degree of exposure error, you should always strive to get it right in-camera first time. That means understanding the basics of exposure, how your camera's meter works and recognising situations that are likely to cause error in the first place.
Underexposed is far more likely than overexposure when shooting landscapes and it tends to be caused by including lots of bright sky. Shooting into-the-light or photographing bright/reflective subjects such as water will also fool your camera's meter as it tries to balance out the scene. The easiest way to avoid this is by taking one shot at the metered exposure then perhaps two more with the exposure compensation set to +1/2 and +1 stop. It's rare during autumn that your meter could be more than one stop out so of the three shots, one should be perfect. If in doubt, add a fourth frame at +1 1/2 stops and a fifth at +2 stops. Remember also that exposure can be used creatively - if you shoot a ...
... backlit woodland scene at +2 stops, for example , you can produce dreamy, backlit images. The key is to experiment, get to know your camera and make mental notes of what happens when you adjust the exposure a certain way for a given subject.

2 Control White Balance
Instead of using auto white balance, try setting a higher ISO so that the camera thinks you're shooting in cooler light and warms up the colours. Don't go over the top, though, otherwise the effect can look off.

3 Avoid Flare
Flare tends to lower contrast and weaken colour saturation, so make sure your lenses and filters are spotlessly clean and use a lens hood or lens shade (your hand will do fine) to keep stray light off your lens.

4 Set a Low ISO
Digital sensors give optimum image quality when set to a low ISO as problems such as noise are minimised. Whenever possible, work at the lowest speed your sensor offers - usually ISO 100 but ISO 50 is possible in some cases.

5 Neutral Density Grads
Neutral Density (ND) grad filters let you balance the sky and foreground. Without an ND grad, if you correctly expose the landscape, the sky's washed-out, or if you get the sky just right the landscape's underexposed. ND grads come in different densities - usually 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9, which tone down the sky by one, two or three stops, respectively. For general use, a 0.6 is most suitable, while a stronger 0.9 comes into its own at dawn and dusk..

6 Steady On
Tripods are essential for autumn photography when the lighting is more dramatic but lower in intensity. Not only do they allow you to work with long exposures without worrying about camera shake, but they slow down the picture taking process, making it easier to fine-tune a composition and enabling you to leave your camera in position ready to shoot , while you wait, say, for the light to improve.

7 Shoot in the Right Light
The way colours record has a lot to do with the quality of light. Sunny weather's the most effective psychologically, though bright overcast is said to be even better because contrast and glare are reduced.

8 Combine Colours
Primary colours look stronger than pastel shades. Contrasting colours in the same picture also clash and add impact - blue and yellow are strongest followed by red and green.

9 Shoot in RAW
By shooting in RAW you can let your computer convert the image file into a viewable image (JPEG or TIFF) rather than your camera. As your computer has a more powerful processor and can utilise more sophisticated RAW conversion software, the resulting image will be sharper and crisper with better colour saturation.

10 Shoot Sunrise and Sunset
One of the great things about autumn is that the days are shorter, so to shoot sunrise and sunset you needn't deprive yourself of too much sleep. If you want to capture silhouettes against the sky and sun, just set your camera to Aperture Priority mode and fire away. When the sun's low in the sky you can take stunning backlit pictures of woodland or mist.
Adam Coupe is pro commercial photographer specialising in commercial photography, architectural photography and architectural interior photography for a wide range of organisations that need to project their products, people or brand in a vibrant way see for the full architectural photography and commercial photography portfolio : http://www.adamcoupe.com