Can Sunsets & Fall Colors Go Together?
My tips for sunsets with the best fall colors
Most people will open this and expect to see fall colors and a brightly colored sunset. but in my experience, the two rarely work well together. Most sunsets overpower the landscapes and unless your camera/phone takes HDR (high dynamic range) images, you can’t get both together.
*FYI* HDR means the camera or phone takes 3 or more images with one over-exposed, one under, and one averaged between the two. The process then blends them taking what the camera thinks are proper sky and landscape balanced images and merges them into 1 image.
But this is NOT about using HDR to get your fall colors. It’s How to use the late afternoon sun to get your best fall color images.
Tip 1, Sidelight the Fall Colors to make them pop!
I’ve yet to find both a real colorful fall scene AND the blazing sun in the same image. So what do I mean by sunset and the fall colors?
Photographers use three techniques to get the benefits of the setting sun to naturally enhance the fall colors. They are side lighting, backlighting, and reflection. This first image was printed in the Boston Globe. I found this Vermont farm road near Saint Albans Vermont and as you can tell the sun is just about to set.
The sky is a bit blown out but when the sun is not in the frame, you can use it to show the beauty of the Vermont fall foliage. The orange maple leaves glow in the setting sunlight. Sometimes all it takes is to stand next to the tree and look way up…
You can see the light on the trunk thus giving you the sidelight direction of the sun. This is one of my favorite things to do. Go to a big old maple, hug it and then place my camera (or phone) on the trunk and snap away. Wouldn’t you like to have a swing hanging from this tree?
Tip 2, Backlighting the leaves and blocking the sun
Backlighting means the sun may or may not be directly in the frame but if it is, it means there needs to be something blocking the direct rays of the sun from reaching your camera lens. Either there are leaves, branches, or the trunk of the tree keeping the sun’s overwhelming light from blowing out your image.
This image above from Palmer Mass is somewhat a failure because the sun is not blocked enough by the tree’s leaves or branches. In the one below, just a little of the sunlight made it through thus making it a winner (at least in my book).
The colors are made a lot brighter by virtue of the sun filtering its strong rays through the fall-colored leaves. Even the yet-to-turn-green leaves are showing more yellow than they would on a cloudy day.
Tip 3, Reflection of Fall Colors
Now, this does not mean ALWAYS, what you are thinking. In this image below I’m betting this is exactly what “reflection of fall colors” was pictured in your mind’s eye.
In this image, I was in Rhode Island capturing this fall foliage reflection. The sun reflects off the Rhode Island fall colors and back onto the surface of the pond. A perfect mirror of the scene onshore. The reflected fall color is the best part of the last rays of sunlight.
But, all of the colors we see everywhere are caused by “reflection”. The sun’s light reflects back to us and the colors we perceive are those not absorbed by the leaves. So in this example below, we are not seeing the sun’s light pass through the leaves, instead, the sun’s light is reflecting back at us.
No, there is no reflection on the Androscoggin River but all the same, it is a reflection of sunlight on the fall colors that we see. Of course, if you prefer a reflection of the fall colors from both the colorful fall leaves AND the water below… Who am I to say that sort of image isn’t pretty special as well… 🙂
Will the backlight work without the trees and branches?
In this last image, the dawn over Salem didn’t really give me any high hopes that I would get a great sunrise. I always wonder what the dawn will give me.
This day the sunrise on Salem Harbor was softened by the fog bank. I will say that I rarely get an effect like this. The fog bank filtered the direct sun so it doesn’t throw everything into a black silhouette so I can still have the filtered sun in the image but within minutes the sun had fully cleared the cloud bank in which case everything in this image would be silhouetted black.
[ One Last Tip] When the sun is low in the sky and there are still clouds in the sky, you might get a shot where the sun peeks out from under the clouds, it also may light up the underside of the clouds. Then you add good foreground elements, such as the sailboats above then you have (in my opinion) a really great photo.
Jeff Foliage Folger
Autumn is a state of mind more than a time of year – Jeff Foliage
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Thanks for the great tips, Jeff! I especially like the photo of the church with the dramatic sky. Unique. The Rhode Island one I’m guessing was taken at the Scituate Reservoir? At least, It’s from there that I have a similar picture, several years old.
Thanks for the great tips, Jeff! I especially like the photo of the church with the dramatic sky. Unique. The Rhode Island one I’m guessing was taken at the Scituate Reservoir? At least, It’s from there that I have a similar picture, several years old.