Fall color can really make your wildlife images pop…But how do you incorporate colorful fall foliage into animal pics? It takes a bit of creative thinking because when most of us are out shooting, we are either focused on landscapes (and fall foliage) or concentrating on getting great wildlife portraits…but rarely are we thinking of combining both!

COLORFUL LEAVES AS BACKGROUND
This sounds simple but how often do you find a subject in a spot where colorful leaves create a nice backdrop? Not often! But when you do, take advantage of the situation and shoot like crazy!

I just happened to stumble on this Bald Eagle perched in an aspen while driving around northern Minnesota. My car served as a blind and I was able to get a few shots out the window. Remember to stick your lens as far out the window as possible to avoid the shimmer of heat from your car escaping to the cool fall air.

Sandhill Cranes congregate at Wisconsin’s Crex Meadows in late fall. The rusty red oaks compliment the red crowns of the Sandhill Cranes.

A juvenile Northern Goshawk swoops across a backdrop of yellow aspens atop Duluth, Minnesota’s Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve. I attracted it with the use of a plastic Great Horned Owl.

A shallow depth-of-field turned the leaves in the background to pleasing blobs of color.

Tamaracks reach peak color in mid October. Their yellow needles will soon drop, but for now, they glow. Northern Hawk Owl in the Sax-Zim Bog of northern Minnesota.

Young Mule Deer buck and aspen leaves. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

REFLECT ON THIS
This may actually be the easiest way to incorporate fall colors into your wildlife shots. Find a small pond, river edge, or lake margin that is lined with colorful trees. The leaves will reflect on the surface of the water if you position yourself at the right angle.

Warm yellow leaves reflect off the surface of a Galesburg, Illinois pond. A low angle and perfect evening light make for a great Canada Goose portrait. The open-billed expression adds to the photo.

Rock Pond on the University of Minnesota Duluth campus is ringed by beautiful Sugar Maples whose red leaves make amazing reflections.

FRAME WITH LEAVES
It is often a tricky proposition to find a subject that you can frame with leaves, but if you do, it certainly makes a compelling image.

MOTION BLURS WITH FALL COLOR
Get real creative and try some slow shutter speeds with your wildlife subjects and fall color.
Snow Geese take off from a roosting pond in New Mexico’s Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. Cottonwood leaves create the yellow backdrop.

Panning with the Mallard at a slow shutter speed made for an interesting image.

FOG FOR BUCOLIC FALL SCENES
Fog and mist can soften fall colors and create moody fall photos.

Fog on Carlton County, Minnesota’s Spring Lake softens the scene, turning it into a watercolor-like photo.

2012 is gone and I’ve had a chance to look at all my images from the year and pick my favorites. Time helps clear your vision. Some images I was crazy about right after I took them, are no longer exciting to me. Here I present my favorite images of 2012 in reverse order…Maybe not the most saleable nor necessarily the best portraits (which can be boring), but the shots that I kept coming back to..the ones that intrigued me…or were difficult to get…or were the most creative. And this last bit about creativity brings me to my big announcement for 2013…I will be releasing a new video: GET CREATIVE: WILDLIFE IMAGES BEYOND THE PORTRAIT this year. Stay tuned!

#20—The surprise image of the year…I was perusing photos from my June work for the Minnesota County Biological Survey when I found this very underexposed, blaah image. But then I saw the potential as a high-contrast black and white image. The result was a very graphic silhouette of a foraging Pine Warbler amongst the long delicate needles of a Red Pine. St. Louis County, Minnesota.

#19—I spent much quality time with our backyard hummers this summer. We mainly hosted females but occasionally a bully male would show up…but never when my camera was in place. I was using flash and a Better Beamer to throw light onto the hummer but in this shot the flash did not fire. But I like the resulting softer look…No harsh light blasting the tiny bird. My home in Carlton County, Minnesota.

#18—Fall leaves always seem to vex me…I have a hard time creating interesting images of the stunning scenes around me in late September/early October. On this windy day I used a tripod and a very slow shutter speed to render the leaves a colorful blur while the trunks remained relatively still. I like the contrast of white vs. orange and blur vs. sharp. Rock Pond, UMD, Duluth, Minnesota.

#17—Eye-level Bald Eagle shots are not easy to come by! And this one has a story…It was taken 80 feet up in a firetower! I was visiting Big Bog State Recreation Area in far north central Minnesota and decided to climb the tower to get a bird’s-eye view of Lower Red Lake and surrounding forests. Some distant eagles caught my attention and I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if one flies past me in my aerial perch…And the miraculous part is that one did! It was not a gleaming white and black adult but rather a dramatically patterned youngster. I panned with the bird and amazingly it came out razor sharp.

#16—I cross this bridge over the St.Louis River on the outskirts of Duluth every day on the way to work. It has many moods and this hazy spring afternoon created a bucolic and blue still life of swans, ducks, ice and trees.

#15—My youngest son, Bjorn, shows great promise as a wildlife photographer…At least he looks good in khaki!

#14—Not a set-up! A fortuitous find that resulted in a very nice portrait with a little behavior too. This very rarely happens but it did this August morning on the Gunflint Trail. I’d just returned from a early morning paddle on the Brule River, loaded up the canoe and was pulling out of the dirt parking area when I spotted the foraging Cedar Waxwings in a heavily-fruited Mountain Ash.

#13—Just a very pleasing composition (to me anyway)…a water lily on dark water taken from a low angle to get the reflection. I also love the purplish lily pads. Cook County, Minnesota.

#12—A very long exposure with my 10mm Sigma lens was made possible by a 9-stop ND filter. I love the soft ethereal feel of the powerful Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, belying the thunderous roar. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

#11—I had to include this portrait as I have been trying to get a decent winter Snowshoe Hare photo for years! And on this snowy Sax-Zim Bog day, I succeeded! The hare really felt it was invisible and stayed put as I crawled closer and closer through the snow.

#10—Seems like I always slip in a non-nature subject. I really enjoy photographing vernacular architecture, including abandoned buildings like this farmhouse. A HDR image and sepia color finished it off. Itasca County, Minnesota.

#9—Abstract macro image of a Polyphemus Moth’s wings turned upside down to create a strange “face” complete with big blue eyes and a puckered mouth. My home in Carlton County, Minnesota.

#8—The banner headline of 2012 for us Duluthians/Carltonians was the Great Flood of June. It affected all of us dramatically. But my most powerful image was this shot of the raging St. Louis River taking out the historic and much loved Swinging Bridge of Jay Cooke State Park. Read more here.

#7—A rite of spring, the congregation of Sharp-tailed Grouse at their dancing grounds or leks, is an event I hate to miss. But it is always difficult shooting. They are most active just before sunrise when the light is poor…And it is April so the weather is often cloudy and windy. Visibility in the cramped blind is not great either. This time I resorted to a slow shutter speed and panning. I love the shot as it conveys the manic intensity of the males as they dance, pursue females, and chase off rival males. Carlton County, Minnesota.

#6—One of the few straight-up wildlife portraits in the collection, but I had to include it. Much has been made of the dramatic decline of Moose in Minnesota…and it makes me very sad. They are one of my favorite mammals. I learned to call Moose years ago…imitating the sound of a female. After a several-year dry spell, I was able to call this young bull in this fall. Intense moments followed as he was deciding whether I was a cow Moose or some stupid human. Thankfully he came to the right conclusion! See the video here.

#5—Can you tell what this is? Colorful river rocks below a Yellowstone National Park stream. It’s funny…I really don’t like abstract painting but I love much abstract photography.

#4—Two icons of Duluth in one shot! The Aerial Lift Bridge and a Ring-billed Gull. Not your typical wildlife shot but one that is certainly unique. In this technique I learned from flash/lighting guru ??? you set your camera to tungsten white balance (to turn the dark brooding sky blue) and then use a flash with an orange CTO gel to throw a very warm light on the subject, in this case, a Ring-billed Gull.

#3—Often times I’ll get home from a trip and when viewing my images in Aperture, I’ll come across an unexpected prize. It’s like Christmas as a kid! I thought I knew what my favorites would be from viewing them in the field on the back of my camera…but I’m often wrong. This is one such image. It was taken into the sunlight to backlight the Bison’s fur…but it was mostly a “G&G” shot (grab-and-go)…No premeditation, No tripod…Jump out of the car and “snap.” But after converting the image to sepia, I really loved it. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

#2—I really concentrated on wide-angle wildlife this year and this may be my favorite. Crawling on my knees for hours on an Iowa prairie in September finally netted me this image. Read the whole story here. Northeast Iowa.

#1—Drumroll please…My personal favorite from 2012. Read the whole story of this bog encounter here. See the video here. I like the Great Gray Owl’s furtive glance around the trunk of a spruce…It lends an air of mystery. It is very “Brandenburg’s-wolf-peek-esque” if you’ve ever seen his famous photo. Sax-Zim Bog, Minnesota.

This fall’s color has been one of the most spectacular in recent memory…It is not every year that the oaks, aspens and maples all peak at the same time, but this year they are. So what’s your excuse for not getting out and shooting? Here are some of the reasons I find myself hmmming and hawwwing and procrastinating and avoiding taking fall foliage photos.

1. I CAN’T FIND A GOOD COMPOSITION
SOLUTION: Make your own! I found this dewy Quaking Aspen leaf and very carefully placed it on a background of reversed maple leaves that I laid out. I love the contrast of the yellow with the magenta.

2. IT’S CLOUDY OUT
SOLUTION: No problem, cloudy and foggy days are the best for recording the saturated colors of fall. Even rainy days can be great. But remember to use a polarizer to reduce the sheen from wet leaves.

3. THE LEAVES HAVE ALREADY FALLEN
SOLUTION: So what?…The leaves can be just as pretty and colorful on the ground.

4. I WORK DURING THE DAY
SOLUTION: Get out early! Frost on fall leaves can be a dramatic element

5. TOO LATE…SNOW HAS ALREADY FALLEN
SOLUTION: Count your lucky stars because this is a rare event. Get out right away and find some colorful leaves dusted with snow to make a stunning shot.

6. IT’S JUST A JUMBLE OF LEAVES, TREES, AND COLOR OUT THERE…I CAN’T FIND A SUBJECT
SOLUTION: Isolate! Find a clump of particularly beautiful leaves…or an individual fallen leaf…or grab the telephoto lens to highlight one area of color.

7. THE LEAVES WON’T STAY STILL
SOLUTION: Use this to your advantage…If leaves are swirling in an eddy of a river or creek, just set your tripod up and shoot at a very slow shutter speed…Slower the better. The leaves will become a swirl of color but the rocks and shoreline will be sharp.

8. I CAN’T FIND ANY COLORFUL LEAVES
SOLUTION: Shoot brown leaves

9. I ONLY BROUGHT MY WIDE ANGLE LENS
SOLUTION: The best lens is the one you have with you…So use it! But you have to be careful with wide angle fall foliage shots that you don’t include too much of a gray sky. Here I intentionally eliminated the sky to focus on the variety of colors in a wooded meadow.

10. I ONLY BROUGHT MY TELEPHOTO LENS
SOLUTION: Perfect…Much easier to find good compositions with a medium telephoto (70-200mm) than with a wide angle lens, I believe. Head to a vantage point or lookout where you can isolate part of the scene like in this image from Oberg Mountain, Minnesota, Lake Superior North Shore.

There you have it…A bunch of reasons NOT to shoot this fall’s gorgeous leaves…And a bunch of solutions to these common excuses. Now let’s get out there and shoot like crazy before all the leaves are gone!

I was up with the baby at 5am…As I was rocking him back to sleep, I saw the temperature was hovering around freezing and the sky was clear. I knew the temp would fall a couple more degrees at or near sunrise, often the coldest time of day. Frost forms when the air temp around the leaf is below the dew point; moisture condenses out of the air onto the leaf and then crystallizes into ice. Conditions in early autumn are often ideal for frost formation; Cold, calm, clear nights in an atmosphere loaded with moisture. Winter is often too dry.

I headed over to the Wrenshall WMA where I knew a field of goldenrods and dogwoods would be a good place to find frosty subjects. A red dogwood leaf rimmed in frost first caught my eye. I intentionally chose a shaded background to contrast with the white fringe of ice.

My real goal, though, was to find an orbweaver spider web that had frosted over. I have a running “battle” with my friend and fellow author Larry Weber about finding and photograph a frosted orbweaver web. He technically won last year when he found an old tattered web that had frosted. But the one I found today was 80% perfect. Larry is in the Adirondacks so I’ll have to rub it in when he gets back!

Yes, mine is on a barbed wire fence but I kind of like the juxtaposition of permanent hard and cold metal with the impermanent delicate fragility of a spider web. Ironically, both are meant to capture and contain…One insect prey and the other cows!

Dogwood Leaf: Canon 7D, Canon 70-200mm f4 lens with Canon 500D close-up lens, f13 at 1/125, ISO 400, tripod

Orbweaver web & barbed wire: Canon 7D, Canon 70-200mm f4 lens with Canon 500D close-up lens, f6.7 at 1/1500, ISO 200, tripod

Shaded goldenrod: Canon 7D, Canon 70-200mm f4 lens, f5.6 at 1/180, ISO 200, tripod

Orbweaver web close-up: Canon 7D, Canon 70-200mm f4 lens with Canon 500D close-up lens, f16 at 1/125, ISO 200, tripod

It takes me a while to embrace each new season. I tend to cling to the waning season, holding on to the past, wishing for more. Like now, I am just starting to get excited about autumn. The realization that summer is gone is just now hitting me. Yes, Brown-eyed Susans, some goldenrods and asters are still blooming. Yes, a few butterflies are still out on the warmer days, but I do understand that the flowers will be done soon and the butterfly I saw today—a Red Admiral—is just looking for a sheltered place to hibernate…Even the insects have resigned themselves to the reality of fall.

So now, on this first day of fall, I finally have become excited about the prospects of autumn. And I’ve made a photographic wish list of images I hope to take before winter sets in. I hope to call in a few Moose, preferably bulls with big antlers. The next full moon is in late October and I have an image in mind involving Sandhill Cranes at Crex Meadows. A few fungi have eluded me thus far and I hope to catch up with some in the next couple weeks.

But the kaleidoscope of leaf colors call to me as I drive home each evening. But how can I put a fresh spin on such a commonly photographed subject? That will be my challenge this fall. Stay tuned! The images here were taken last October. The dew is real but I did set the yellow Quaking Aspen leaf on top of the nearby Red Maple leaves, whose undersides really are that purple!

Top Image: Canon 7D, 70-200mm f4 lens (at 78mm) with Canon 500D close-up attachment, f19 at 1/30 second, ISO 400, tripod

Bottom Image: Canon 7D, 70-200mm f4 lens (at 200mm) with Canon 500D close-up attachment, f19 at 1/90 second, ISO 400, tripod