P#19 Q1A: What is the Biggest Mistake People Make When Taking Pictures of Fall Colors?

Direct Sunlight is Not the Photographer's Friend

Jim Zuckerman: That's a good question and it's an easy one to answer. The biggest mistake people make when taking pictures of fall is shooting during the middle of the day when the sun is out.

Everybody loves the brilliant colors, the red, the orange, and the yellow, and people think that you need bright sunlight to show it. That's only partially true.

It's true that direct sunlight makes the colors look great to our eyes, but to film or to a digital capture, it is much better to photograph fall colors in soft and diffused lighting -- the kind that you have on an overcast day or if it's foggy. Foggy days can be the best. In the early morning or late afternoon, when the sun is very low and the forest hides the sun.

What you want to avoid, in my opinion, is direct sunlight. The reason is because it sets up too much contrast. Shadows go very dark and sometimes the leaves reflect the sunlight. That kind of contrast is impossible for digital technology to be able to handle the way our brain does.

When the shadows go a bit darker, you'll lose detail. If the highlights are going to go too light, you're also going to lose detail. I think that the best way to take pictures of fall colors is in soft and diffused lighting. You wouldn't expect the colors to be so rich and saturated with soft light, but they are. They're really, really beautiful.

In Closing

Sometimes great photography means doing the opposite of what intuition tells you to do. The lighting in which you photograph fall colors is one of those things. According to Jim Zuckerman, you should avoid direct sunlight at all costs. If you want breathtaking pictures of fall colors, diffused lighting and foggy days will be best.