I’ve posted some of my favorite autumn landscape photos from this past year here and here, but I’ve never posted a gallery of everything I did this past fall. I just purchased Elementor mainly for its gallery capabilities and because it jived well with this theme. So now, I have the capabilities to create a gallery of all my photos!
Autumn is my favorite season. For somebody who lives in the northeast, it’s the most exciting landscape photography time of the year. I can’t afford to fly to exotic places like Iceland, so this is as good as it gets for me–taking autumn photos in my local New Jersey nature spot. See the photos that I took at South Mountain Reservation in Essex County, NJ. I even won an honorable mention from South Mountain Conservancy for one of these (although that one was not my favorite!).
Fall Photos at South Mountain Reservation
I took a majority of these photos on the Fairy Trail in South Mountain Reservation because my daughter loves going there. It’s nice for both of us to get out of the house and take a walk. I captured some photos at the Hemlock Falls area as well.
I took these autumn landscape photos from the end of October to the end of November, which is the best time for fall in New Jersey (at least where I live in Essex County, NJ). These were taken either at the beginning of the day or end of the day in order to get the best light, although some of them may have been outside the window of “golden hour”.
I bracketed these photos, meaning I took 3 exposures (+2, 0, -2) and then merged them in post-processing to get the best dynamic range. Landscape photography has a high dynamic range and using bracketed photos and an HDR merge guarantee colorful skies and bright subjects.
Processing The Photos
I use Lightroom as a library to hold and organize all my photos and sometimes develop photos in Lightroom. However, I find Luminar NEO’s HDR Merge tool to be the best HDR tool out there. I also find Luminar Neo to be great for processing due to all the presets (which are much better than Lightroom presets). Using presets lets me quickly “try on” some looks and get an idea of how I want it to look. I haven’t used all of Luminar’s amazing capabilities such as creating atmosphere, replacing skies, etc., but I plan to use more of that in the future.