How to Make Stunning Images with Autumn Photo Effects

It’s that time of year again! Fall is on us, and it’s time to put on your favorite hoodie or jumper, depending on where you live, and get out and shoot some autumn shots that will make your friends awe.

What is an Autumn Shot?

  • The Colors

A certain type of light and color scheme is what makes an autumn shot feel like its chilly, yet vibrant self. When it comes to colors, you want to focus on these three:

Red

Yellow

Brown

  • Exposure

Make sure your shot contains most of these three colors, and you’ll have a nice fall feeling that will make your audience shiver and put on another layer.

For contrast, you want to match the golden hours, right after sunset, and right before sunrise. That means the sun is passing through clouds and other parts of the atmosphere to also give a reddish or pinkish hue to the portraits, along with long shadows

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What to Shoot

You have a large option of things to shoot. You can go for more traditional like the shots above, but also add in a few other caveats. Still water, which happens more in the early morning after sunrise before the wind has picked up, can be a great way to add more to your photos.

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Photograph: Simon Kitchin

People are also a great idea. You can shoot people playing sports like backyard football, rugby, or other rough and tumble activities. Also, who doesn’t love seeing a little kid having a blast with the leaves?

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Photograph: Andrew Yu/Fotovue.com

Setting up Your Photo

So, you’ve found the perfect spot at the perfect time to shoot. Now, what do you do? It’s time to set up your camera to shoot that perfect shot of the fall setting you’ve discovered and want to share with the world.

Sidelight is great for getting texture to pop off a subject, but backlight is actually better because, remember, leaves are translucent and will glow with backlight. So, while the light may be intense, it can be a great way to get your image to pop in a way you can’t get any other time of the year.

leaves

Using longer lenses is a great way to isolate colors, shapes, or textures. From outdoorphotographer.com, they like using lenses with a focal length of 200-400mm to help isolate visually stunning elements or compositions.

Wrapped in Red

Use a smaller focal length to blend the background in a bokeh effect, which can give you some really neat contrast between what you’ve focused on and the background. Pictures with shallow depths of field are a dime a dozen, but used properly, and sparingly, can give you some really unique shots.

leaves trees

Make Stunning Autumn Photos

Now that you’ve got a few shots you’re happy with, let’s get to how wecan help touch up those photos and make them feel like autumn.

First, let’s go to “Edit” from the splash page and upload the photo we want to use.

  • Curves

First, I played with the Red and Green curves. You can find these under “BASIC”->“Curves”

Red and Green curves

Original Photo from Rawpixel.com

That really gave it a bit more of that autumn feel we’re looking for. Now, lets see which Filters can help you.

  • Warm Winter

Warm Winter really helps to make that sun in the background and the sunlight it produces look really autumn-like.

Warm Winter
  • Illuminated

I really do love how this one makes the photo look. I think this one works really well to help things look very autumn, more early autumn, with a twinge of summer.

Illuminated
  • Intensity

I really think this looks so great with this photo and gives it a really surreal look.

Intensity

Autumn is a beautiful time of year. We hope this has inspired you to get out there and shoot. Then, when you come back, Photo Editing HQ is here waiting for you, your post-production partner that can help you make any tone or style of photo in just a few clicks.

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