7 smartphone photography tips for fall photography

Fall can be a wonderful time of year. It’s not too hot, not too cold, and the colors change from week to week, so it’s worth photographing for posterity. But how can you make sure you get the best shots in the fall?

There is no magic recipe for taking great shots in the fall. Just make the colors and textures that make this season special work for you. Here’s how to get the best fall shots with your smartphone.

1 Shoot at dawn or dusk to complement the fall colors

When autumn arrives, not all times of the day are the same. While you CAN capture beautiful shots in any lighting condition, shooting at dawn or dusk will help bring out the natural colors of the season in your photos. This is due to the effect of light and its angle on autumn colors.

The first shot above, with the sun breaking through the trees, was taken at dawn. The park was empty and the scene had an ethereal quality that it wouldn’t have in the middle of the day. The other was shot at dusk, just as the street lights came on and brightened the fallen leaves.

2 Look for color contrasts that abound in fall

Autumn is primarily about colors, which are abundant in nature. Trees and plants are dying and ready to survive the winter and make it to spring. And if you can find contrasts with autumn colors, you’ll have a great shot on your hands. Water, buildings, man-made objects and even gray roads can work.

In the photo above, the trees are in various stages of decay, which adds interest before anything else enters the scene. Add the lake in the background to bring the blue into the scene, and then the unnatural colors of the shipyard directly behind.

3 Photograph seasonal objects up close

With the beauty of nature this time of year, it’s easy to get stuck photographing scenes from a distance. However, it is also worth zooming in on some objects associated with the fall. This makes the colors and textures really pop and fill your screen with the hues of autumn.

While I chose the leaves in the image above, just because I focused on them for this shot, you can choose any of a number of seasonal objects that you want to shoot up close. Think pumpkins, pine cones, fireplaces or even someone holding a cup of hot chocolate.

4 Enhance your autumn pictures with natural frames

Since fall photography is all about shooting outside to capture the gorgeous colors, you should try to use natural images as much as possible. This allows you to add texture to a shot that has a lot going on and isn’t obvious to the viewer to focus their eye on. And I recommend using the grid lines to help you find the frames (among other things).

As you can see above, this shot of a local park could have been a chaotic mix of colors and shapes with nothing to hold them in place or provide context. However, by shooting through these two trees, which create a natural frame for what’s behind them, the whole scene suddenly makes more sense.

5 Shoot when it’s wet or foggy to add more atmosphere

As beautiful as fall can be in terms of the color palette on display and the opportunity for textured photos, it also signals a change in weather. However, budding smartphone photographers should see this as an opportunity to capture more interesting shots.

Wet weather or fog can create an atmosphere that simply doesn’t exist in hot, sunny weather. So try to use the changing weather conditions to your advantage. A foggy night with leaves on the ground can instantly create an atmosphere. Just like the rain, whether it is falling at the moment or has already saturated the earth.

I took the two shots above just after the rain. In the first, the ground is completely soaked, so everything shines as if painted. And in the second, the puddle is a reflection of a rather nondescript tree.

6 Drop down low and grab the fallen leaves on the ground

With fallen leaves everywhere you look, you can also turn them into an element of your fall shots. And doing so means getting low to the ground, allowing them to fill the foreground of your shots.

Don’t think of these fallen leaves as background noise that just adds texture and color; they can be the main subject of your photo. And if it’s shot well enough, the viewer can imagine kicking them like they did when they were kids.

To demonstrate this, the shot above doesn’t really have a subject as it’s just a nondescript piece of land with a few trees and street lights. But by filling half the frame with fallen leaves, it suddenly becomes an interesting photo.

7 Edit to enhance natural colors but don’t go OTT

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I edit all the images from my smartphone in several ways and find it extremely addictive to crop, edit and add filters until I’m happy with them. However, it’s easy to go too far with editing, and I’ve been guilty of this in the past. This is especially true for autumn photos, where the color palette encourages over-editing.

The image above is a good example of over-editing, albeit on purpose. It’s a close-up of some holly, with fallen leaves around it and trees reaching up to the sky beyond. But I overdid it (on purpose) and the result is a little disappointing. The holly itself ends up out of focus and everything behind it looks saturated to the point where you can’t distinguish one thing from another.

As usual these days, with smartphone cameras so capable, you don’t need expensive equipment to capture beautiful shots. Using the above tips, you can capture the natural beauty of fall with just a camera you always have on hand.