Tag Archives: fall color

fall in january

Don’t forget the dead stuff! These dried leaves were a rusty red color and with the sun behind them, they glowed. The color in the background is from an Arizona Ash tree with a few yellow leaves left. The blue is the sky.
dired leaves

What makes this photo is the use of what’s called “shallow depth of field”. It means I used a large aperture (or small number). Compact cameras have a difficult time getting this kind of depth of field because their small sensors don’t have as much of a range of f/stops. So even though you have f2.8, it’s still much sharper than on an SLR. There are tricks to help, though. For instance, stand far away from your subject and then zoom in using f/2.8 and you might get lucky.

Click here for a link to an excellent video about Depth of Field.

a phototographers dream day

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First I get up, walk out the door, walk a minute and I’m staring at Oak Creek. Ahhh. Here’s anotherr reflection:

oak creek reflection
oak creek reflection

A short drive north and we encounter the best fall color in years at the West Fork Trail!

West Fork Trail in Oak Creek Canyon, Sedona

Then heading toward Utah, we stop in Bluff and I get to see the famous flute playing sheep! Sand Island Petroglyphs

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Finally at our campground (see our cute RV), we get a glimpse of what we might expect all next week.
Look at the Cottonwoods!

Cottonwoods along the San Juan River in Bluff, Utah
Cottonwoods along the San Juan River in Bluff, Utah

No internet connection tomorrow and possibly the next but stay tuned for more photos.

sedona west fork trail

We drove to Flagstaff on Thursday with hopes of color but found very little. We did find
beautiful yellow and red trees at our hotel though, so we made plans to shoot them in the morning.
With temps at 28 degrees, we opted to enjoy a sumptuous breakfast and share our photos instead 🙂
We did take a couple of minutes to get a few shots of the trees.

Little America Maple Tree (we highly recommend this hotel!)
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We then headed to Sedona with no idea that the West Fork Trail would be ripe with color!
Had we known, we would have left much earlier because as you know if you’ve ever hiked
the trail, the light is best between 9 and 11am. We didn’t arrive until noon and had to wait
a short time because the parking lot was full. We took time to eat a picnic lunch and then
headed out about 12:30 and enjoyed shooting even though the maples were in shade.

Apple Trees hadn’t turned yet but there was plenty of this red ground cover and soft grasses.
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Ferns were especially thick. Mostly yellow.
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Shade is a perfect opportunity for shaking your camera !
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Oak Creek shot with very slow shutterspeed.
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Red Maple and Ferns shot with Orton Effect in mind.
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raining aspen leaves

Today’s image was taken in early October, 2003 in Utah. That was an excellent year for color!
While driving down a road in a rented Subaru, it started raining aspen leaves. I put a few under
the wiper blades for a fun shot. There probably won’t be this much color at the Grand Canyon.

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Captured with a Canon 10D and a 15mm lens. ISO 200, f/6.7 at 1/125th sec

I added a section of this image as a banner on this blog. The other two images are from Sedona.

ready…set….fall!

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I’m so excited to be going to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon later this month in search
of fall color. I don’t do much landscape photography so although I’ll have a few conventional
fall color shots, much of my stuff will be “different” from the other photographers 🙂

Speaking of conventional, here’s one of my favorite photos taken at the West Fork of Oak Creek.
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Carol Leigh has been thinking about fall color too and yesterday she sent out her excellent
60-Second Photo Lesson with 20 tips on getting the best fall photos you can this year.

Click the following picture to download the tips. If you enjoy it, I hope you’ll let Carol know!
60-second-tip

Thanks Carol!