It’s just … gorgeous! We’re here in Cripple Creek, CO just a tad before peak fall color and it’s truly spectacular! The right combination of water and temperature has been right cause the landscape is celebrating the end of summer and the start of fall in grand fashion. So far we’ve been working almost within walking distance of of where we’re staying (the magnificent Carr Manor) there is just so much to see and work with. We have just begun our explorations for the week and we’ve struck gold!
One of the truly fun things once you have found great fall color is then exploring it photographically. One of the key things I personally do is always include some element(s) in the frame. That’s because the mind’s eye sees that green and then by association makes the yellow much more vibrant. By doing a number of basic in camera basics like this, you have to depend on far fewer in post (like the saturation slider which I never use) to make the color pop. Another basic has to do with White Balance. Both of these photos were taken with the Df / 80-400VR3 with the WB set to Cloudy. What, Cloudy and no red sky? Yep, we’re at 9494′ elevation with the Kelvin Temp about 9200-9400. Auto White Balance pegs out at 8000 so what occurs is you get a blue color cast. But manually setting the camera to 6000k (cloudy), while the numbers seem ascewed, you remove the blue color cast and thus the yellows pop as they are opposite on the color wheel. This probably sounds really confusing but if you get to this altitude and are shooting fall color, run your own comparison and you’ll see for yourself. I had the group do this today and they quickly said, they struck Colorado gold!