If you live in an area where the leaves take on wonderful shades of yellow, orange, and red, be sure to grab your camera and capture the beauty. It’s a perfect time to put on the hiking boots too and enjoy time outside in the nice cool air.
Below are some of the photos I captured this fall:
What I discovered in shooting these photos was that the beauty of fall isn’t just at local parks. It’s everywhere! For example, the photo of the tree with orange leaves and the fence in the background was taken from a parking lot. Also, the photo that shows the trees reflecting in the stream was taken from a sidewalk next to a busy road.
Working It
The tree with the beautiful orange leaves caught my eye when I was looking around in search of my next photo.
Here’s what I initially saw which shows the parking lot in front of the tree. Six lanes of road were separating the tree from the fence in the background too.
To “work” this scene, I decided to try the following:
- get rid of the parking lot in the foreground
- just focus on the one tree
- avoid showing the road
- patiently wait for no cars to pass
- avoid the traffic pole on the right
So I moved to my right a little (to avoid the traffic pole), zoomed in (to cut out the road), and shot this photo from eye level.
In asking myself if I could capture a better photo, I considered adding the fallen leaves on the ground – to give it more of a “fall” feel. The challenge was to not show the 2 lanes of road just beyond the tree. To address this challenge, I got down low to the point where the 2 lanes of road didn’t appear. This actually required me to sit down in the parking lot (good thing this section of the lot was unused!).
Below is the final photo which is shown in the above slideshow. You’d never know there was 6 lanes of road between the tree and the fence and that this was taken from a parking lot!
Enjoy capturing the beauty of fall!
Composing Cool Photos 