T
HE TRANSITION BETWEEN
autumn and winter can provide
some of the most dramatic
weather conditions landscape
photographers can hope to
experience. The combination of warm days
and cooler nights often results in mist and
cloud inversions that make the landscape
look magical. As well as the obvious turning
of the leaves and amazing colour that brings
with it, it’s this that helps to make autumn
one of the most popular seasons on the
landscape photographer’s calendar.
Autumn, like all seasons, has a beginning,
a middle and an end, with each part
providing different opportunities. It's the
middle part that provides the amazingcolour that brings the verdant landscape to
visual life. But even though this is the most
spectacular part of the season, the
beginning and end are equally as special in
their own unique ways.
I m et Digital SLR Photography reader Jon
Cartledge, a consultant surgeon, at Mam
Tor in the Peak District with the hope of
misty conditions in early autumn when only
a small amount of the foliage on the trees
had begun to change. Mist is particularly
common at this time of year, so when we
met in the darkness at 5:50am with plenty of
time to get to our location, we were
cautiously optimistic despite being in a
completely clear valley – you never know
what’s over the next hill.One of the main challenges of the day is
that Jon doesn’t use filters. When enjoying
his walks in Yorkshire he often finds he has
little time to stop, set up a tripod and filters
and get the shot while walking with his
family. His kit consists of a Sony Alpha 7R II
and prime lenses that are both small and
lightweight to allow him to shoot the
majority of shots handheld.
With this in mind, the plan was to
introduce Jon to HDR photography – a
technique he’d never tried before – but
one he was looking forward to because it
enables him to capture more detail in the
scene without the need for filters – but it
would mean slowing down, using a tripod
and controlling the exposure.