Fall color has a mental, emotional, romantic value to it that centers around color. This comes from the combination of the color of the leaves and the color of the light in fall. Personally, I love the quality of the light in the fall of all light during the year. So when you go to take your fall color, often the “fall” value of the light is not considered in the fall color photograph. Light is considered but not the natural warmth the light has as the sun heads north.
I put these images up to illustrate my thought. The top photo uses the WB the camera assigned to the photo. This is what it says the WB was using AWB, the camera assigning 4265k to the scene. You can see the blue content in the photo making the trunks whiter and colors colder. The bottom photo was shot with the WB in the camera set to Cloudy, or 6000k. You can now see the fall light warmth in the photo that we saw as we stood there and shot it. Why would I set the camera to Cloudy in this scene, especially since there was no red sky in the photo? We were at 10,000 in altitude and we had bald skies. That combo I knew there was an over abundance of blue and Cloudy was the only WB that would accurately record the scene. Some would ask, why bother doing this in the camera, just “fix” it in post. There’s a book in answering that question but for me, it still comes down to camera craft. Knowing our camera, knowing our scene, knowing our storytelling and knowing that we want the ultimate quality in the end is why we do it in the camera. If you don’t understand all of this, take your camera outside and start testing. You can teach yourself to see light, feel light and when you do, the viewers of your photographs will feel it too!