Fall Slacklining

ISO: 400  Focal Length: 12mm 

Aperture: f/18  Shutter Speed: 1/100s

I wasn't quite sure what kind of shots I'd be able to get in the middle of the day, but I was pretty happy with how this shot came out from slacklining. Thankfully I am much better with photography than slacklining.

Composition

There a few important aspects of this composition. First, the slackline moving across the frame creates depth to the image. Second, the sun and Scott create a well balanced image. In order to make the sun into that nice sunburst shape I used a very small aperture f/18. Having a small aperture made the shutter speed too long to capture the action of slacklining. So I put my ISO up to 400 to make the shutter speed fast enough to catch the action without any blur.

Lighting

I knew that I wanted the aspens to be backlit and that meant shooting towards the sun. Using backlighting in the Fall brings out great colors in the leaves. In order to bring light into the foreground I simply used my flash.

Post Processing

I did very little post processing for this image. It came out of the camera almost exactly like I wanted. The only adjustment I made was adding saturation to the blue channel to make the sky pop a little more. 

The Falls in the Fall

ISO: 400  Focal Length: 24mm 

Aperture: f/14  Shutter Speed: 1/4s

      On our same trip to Bridal Veil Falls I hiked up closer to the falls and there were these beautiful trees with very red leaves. I really wanted to get a shot with the red leaves and the falls behind it. In order for this to work I had to make this shot while standing in thick bushes on a steep slope. It made me very grateful for the independently adjustable legs on my Manfrotto tripod. The wind was blowing down the canyon so I had to adjust my exposure accordingly so I could get the shot I wanted. The aperture needed to be small because I wanted everything in focus from front to back, so I needed a higher ISO to keep the shutter speed lower. Normally I would've kept the ISO 100 and dealt with the longer shutter speed but the leaves were moving too much. In situations like this it is important to wait for lulls in the wind and then shoot quite a few images and look for the sharpest one when you get home.

Here are the post processing steps I went through:

Original Image

Using the white balance slider I warmed the temperature up to 61K from 58K

Increased the exposure by .15 ev

Increased the contrast and definition by .1

Increased saturation slightly on the green channel

Added a slight vignette to the bottom left corner to give more attention to the red leaves
Which gives the final image.

Head out and find some fall colors to shoot. It is a great time of year to get outside and take beautiful pictures.