Autumn.

The most photogenic season?

Autumn, my favourite season. I’m not one for really hot weather, so the cooler days of autumn are perfect for me. What a wonderful time of the year for photography, every year when it is nearly the time, I have lots of inspiration and intend to go out early and do misty woodland shots, and/or go out at night and do misty night shots, but every year it slips away, and my time is taken up with other seemingly more pressing matters.

When I was choosing images from my archive to illustrate this article I was shocked to see how little actual autumn photography was in there. There were plenty of winter shots with bare trees, but not much that spoke of the beauty of autumn. This year I am going to rectify that. I was out yesterday morning with a 6x9 camera. There was an amazing morning mist;

(Just a phone snap) By the time I got to the woods the mist had cleared, but the light was still good;

We haven’t quite got the full autumn colours here yet, only a few of the leaves have turned, but I think it’s going to be a good one.

Even if you only shoot in black and white and don’t take advantage of the lovely colour changes, autumn is still a great time for pictures. As the days become cooler, the landscape becomes more atmospheric with early morning mists or fully foggy days. There are so many ways to take advantage of this season photographically, so don’t limit yourself to early morning landscapes, just off the top of my head you could look for the following;

Conkers, Seed heads, Apples, Dried flowers, Mushrooms, Leaf litter, Trees moving in the wind, Swirling water,

Allium seed head.

Trees.

Autumn is such a good time for photography, there are still leaves on the trees, but they are lighter and show up better on film, especially if you use an orange or red filter. This can look very similar to infra red photography if you get the right lighting. Filters lighten their own colour and darken their opposite, so try playing with this idea during autumn.

Dried leaves can make an interesting subject for still life. My friend Juan Borja has some wonderful work in this area. His instagram is; https://www.instagram.com/juanborjaphotographer

Here is a print made by contact printing an old leaf onto high contrast film and then printing from it;

For this one, the leaf was backlit and I did a close up on large format.

I love dried leaves, especially when they look skeletal.

This image was made from leaves that I found pressed inside a book;

There are many other organic subjects at this time of year too, dying flowers, pine cones, leaves on the ground and even fungi.

I found a puff ball a few years ago that had been half eaten. I thought it looked like an asteroid, so I put it on a black background to photograph it.

Keep your eyes open and take advantage of things that only appear at this time of year. Acorns and Conkers are certainly in this category. All seeds have interesting shapes that can be used to make a study or a still life.

Mist.

Early morning mist is such a gift to photographers. You can’t go wrong with a camera in the woods on a foggy day. You will see pictures all over! Night photography is better in the misty autumn evenings too.

The fog gives great separation between foreground and background and softens off distant distracting lights.

Have fun with your photography, don’t take it too seriously and try lots of different things.

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Thank you for reading, please let me know your thoughts.

Andrew Sanderson October 2025.