Fall is a truly magical time of year. The brisk weather, color changes, and amazing opportunities to get out as a family are abundant. All these opportunities make for great photographs, so here are 10 fall photo ideas to spark your creativity.

Trip To a Park With Fall Colored Leaves

This may seem like an obvious one, but a trip to a park or nature preserve in the fall will provide you with ample opportunities to photograph the fall color.  You can do this on your own for some good soul calming peace and quiet or you can take your family and capture their joy in all the color the season brings. Look for leading lines by using trails or roads to add spectacular composition to your photos.  

Throw Leaves in the Air

This is a fun activity and the kids will surely enjoy it.  Make sure your shutter speed is over 1/300 so that you can freeze the action.  Then tell the kids to grab a bunch of leaves and throw them.  You will capture not only spectacular color, but pure joy in their faces.  Experiment with this by doing both a close up and a very pulled back shot.

Go to a Pumpkin Patch

It wouldn’t be fall without a trip to the pumpkin patch.  This is a great opportunity to practice documentary style photography while preserving the moments of this season.  Take close ups of the pumpkins as well as pulled back shots.  You can even get creative and make a pumpkin skirt or pumpkin head photos.  

Go to an Apple Orchard

Besides getting to taste fresh juicy apples at the height of their season, apple orchard photos are great opportunities to practice composition.  The perfectly lined rows of trees can provide an interesting backdrop for your subject.  Be sure to capture your family picking the apples, but also closeups of the baskets of apples.  If there are still blooms on the trees, be sure to capture them and you may get excellent shots of bees pollinating.  

Jump in Leaf Piles

Jumping in leaf piles are a fun ritual every year.  Its a great way to get the kids involved in lawn care but also to capture the moments of pure childhood joy that this creates.  This is a great way to practice both freezing motion and intentional blur.  Play with your shutter speed to create some works of art.  

Shoot Through the Fall Leaves

This may sound odd but shooting through low hanging branches that have fall leaves will add depth and texture to your photos.  This is also a creative way to practice framing.  

Covered Bridges in Fall

Covered bridges are beautiful on their own, but in the fall they are absolutely magical.  Grab your camera and go on a hunt for covered bridges.  They make great framing tools for family photos, and provide timeless beauty for your photos.  

Snaps Around the Campfire

We traditionally only think of the campfire during the summer camping season, but when you bring the blankets and cozy up around the campfire, your photo opportunities become endless.  If you are enjoying a warm beverage, try to capture the steam trails rising from the cup.  The campfire is also a great tool for creating silhouettes.  Make sure to meter for the flames, and the rest of your subjects will be in silhouette.  Another idea is to shoot a subject that is behind the campfire focusing on the warm light hitting their face.  

Shoot in the Fog

Fog can make for interesting and even spooky photos.  Fall is the perfect time to shoot in fog because the weather conditions provide so many opportunities.  The contrast between the light colored fog and the bright fall foliage is sure to make a compelling photo.

Try an HDR Image with Fall Foliage

An HDR image with the fall foliage will truly blow your mind.  To start an HDR image is a combination of usually 3 shots to form one dynamic range photo.  The three shots are one underexposed, one zero exposed, and one over exposed.  They are then combined so that all the shadows and highlights provide the optimum amount of data to produce an amazing image.  This can be done in two ways.  Some cameras have the capability to do this in camera.  To find out if yours has this ability, just look in your camera’s manual or try to find it in the menu.  The other option is to take the three shots yourself and use an HDR tool to combine them.  Photoshop is a great tool to use for merging the photos.  One thing to not, is you really must use a tripod to take the photos, as any slight scene movement will cause blur in the merged image.  

I hope these ideas have helped spark your creativity and encourages you to pick up your camera this fall. If you have any other ideas, I would love to hear about them below!

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