The question is “If the weather is crappy, is my New England trip ruined”? I wish I could say the answer was simple but it isn’t. I will post some different shots from my travels and I will attempt to show you that even when the weather is daunting, you can usually make an image you’ll be happy with.

To be honest, I would rather be out there during the golden hours of dawn and sunset shooting in the fantastic light that can only be found at those times… (seen above) The question is, what do I do if this is the time I have to shoot at and it’s cloudy or worse, raining?

If it’s a deluge, then even I stay in and hope something is on the TV. But! If it’s just a misty, cloudy day, then I take off looking for scenes that will benefit from either the flat light of that giant softbox overhead (the sky) or the billowy clouds. Misty rain sometimes leads to fog as well. I call these occurrences, atmospheric benefits. You can see in the two images below that it was a foggy morning in Danville VT.

Flat light means that there won’t be strong contrasting shadows and everything will be evenly lit. If the leaves are wet, then the colors may be intensified.

What about broken clouds and sun?

If it’s a broken cloud deck with patches of sun peeking through (this is my favorite!) on the hills then you end up with light being painted on the hills as you see in this shot below. If you are lucky the clouds are themselves, an interesting photographic subject.

Below you will see the same image as a “raw” image and the (corrected) jpeg image after I enhanced the contrast, temperature, and a little saturation. I also removed some distracting leaves. thoughts?

As you can see the raw image on the left is pretty good and the clouds provide a good bit of drama above the Vermont fall colors below. The cleaned-up version on the right is what your image can look like with a bit of work.

Driving Alert: The town of Pomfret will close Cloudland Road from 23 September to 15 October this year to stop the level of traffic in front of the Sleepy Hollow farm. The farm has been causing so many traffic issues, that the town finally decided to stop all motorized traffic. Also on the other end of Cloudland Road which is Barbor Rd, that is also limited traffic so no slipping in that way Also if you try to park within walking distance, that will be stopped as well.

This is what you can see if you drive past Sleepy Hollow Farm and you keep going up to Kings Highway. There was no rain this day but the heavy clouds would part every once in a while and present scenes like this. So Patience is in order because without the sun poking through, even I couldn’t have salvaged this scene. We “paint with light” as photographers. You have to wait for the right opportunity.

Taking advantage of a plan “B” kind of day

The following image was taken on a day when it had been raining on and off all day and I was South of Boston and went to check out Scituate Lighthouse. Lighthouses are great plan-B locations because they look good at any time of the year. In fact the worse the weather, the better they look!

So I drove down to Scituate lighthouse and arrived during a lull from the rain. I walked around the lighthouse and I could see that the clouds were moving out over the water and the late afternoon sun was about to pop out from behind the clouds to the west.

This is the most critical and wonderful time to be at any great location. You have to be ready and wait for the sun to peek out.   I was ready for it when the sun’s rays shot out, illuminating the the lighthouse but directly over the lighthouse the black storm clouds provided a backdrop to make your jaw drop. Needless to say, I was already taking shots but when the sun dropped down below the cloud deck my shots went from ok to WOW!

Additional notes…

One thing with rain is that the fall colors will deepen and if you can get them reflecting on the water it can make a powerful shot especially when the water is still as glass.

When the sky is just flat white, the one thing to remember is to eliminate the sky as much as possible from your shots. The clouds render as just flat white with no interesting shapes and textures. So concentrate on keeping the focus on just the trees and the ground.

So when you find yourself with no option but to settle for a cloudy day to shoot on. keep your eyes on the sky because you don’t know when that photographic opportunity will present itself.

Jeff Foliage Folger

Autumn is a state of mind more than a time of year – Jeff Foliage

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