Chasing autumn light: capturing its magic with a phone camera

I love autumn and I know I’m not alone. Writers and poets have waxed lyrical on this magical season for centuries. Searching for a suitable quote, this one spoke to me more than most:

It was a beautiful, bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it.

Penned perfectly by American author Diana Gabaldon.

There’s so much to love about autumn, but as a photographer it’s the quality of the light that is at the heart of my love affair with this season. I was trying to explain to my husband how skies seem more intensely blue and the clarity of the light so much better, and he embarked on a complicated (for me) explanation of the science behind it. I prefer my science very dumbed down, so I did my own research and have come up with something I can get my head around, and that those of a scientific persuasion will hopefully find sufficiently accurate.

Magical autumn light is down to two phenomena known as Rayleigh scattering and Mie scattering. Both refer to how light from the sun is scattered as it passes through the earth’s atmosphere.

With Rayleigh scattering, molecules of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere scatter the light and are particularly effective at scattering blue light. As the sun is lower in the sky in the autumn, light must pass through more of the earth’s atmosphere. This means more Rayleigh scattering, which means bluer skies.

Mie scattering is about how water vapour and moisture droplets in the atmosphere scatter the light. High humidity means more scattering and hazy skies. In the autumn there tends to be lower humidity than in the summer, so there is less Mie scattering, which also leads to clearer, bluer skies.

So, it’s not just my imagination, autumn light is different, due to atmospheric conditions. That pleases the tiny percentage of geek in me.

Landscapes like the one of Pickmere Lake in Cheshire really play to a phone’s strengths. Unlike cameras, phones use software and algorithms to ensure bright and dark areas are well exposed. Camera users must often rely on editing to correct this. Phones also automatically enhance colours and definition to give an image that is vibrant and crisp, making the most of the blue skies and clear conditions. However, this does not mean that it is the phone that has taken the picture, you have. You use your creativity to decide what to photograph and when and how to do it.

A few tips for landscapes: make sure the horizon looks level and think about the image in terms of foreground, middle ground and background. All three areas should be pleasing and have texture or interest. Don’t include anything that doesn’t add to the photograph. Make sure there is a clear focal point that the eye goes to first, in this case the wooden jetty, which also leads the eye out into the scene.

The clarity of autumnal light is also the reason why sunrises and sunsets look extra spectacular, and another bonus is that the shorter days mean you don’t have to get up early or stay out late to see them. The wonder that is golden hour is also more likely to occur when you are out and about.

Golden hour is a year-round phenomenon and refers to the period shortly after sunrise and before sunset, when the sun is low in the sky and its light is soft, warm and golden, with long, dramatic shadows. It’s the magical hour that makes me grab my camera and dash outside in my pyjamas (cue a story about me running around the hills in flipflops and PJs behind our B&B on the Isle of Lewis, much to the bemusement of our hosts!).

In the autumn, golden hour becomes even more bewitching thanks to the earth’s tilt and the angle at which light passes through the atmosphere. As we’ve seen, blue light is more scattered, leaving more emphasis on reds, oranges and yellows. The perfect recipe for extraordinary photographs of nature’s autumnal glory. Here, the water at Shakerley Mere near Goostrey is reflecting the fiery sunset and golden light in the sky, but without the silhouettes of the pair of geese this image would feel lacking. They provide context and interest.

The difference between one moment and the next is shown to great effect in these images of the Knaresbrough Viaduct in North Yorkshire. The greatest tip I can give to budding photographers is to slow down and make more conscious decisions. First and foremost, ask yourself what is the light doing? What effect is it having on the scene or subject? Is it enhancing or spoiling it? Is this the best moment or should you wait? It was well worth waiting a few minutes for the warm autumnal afternoon sunlight to bathe the scene.

Can you also see how this photograph is divided into horizontal thirds. The foreground (the bottom third) is the stunning reflection, the middle third is the beautifully sunlit viaduct, houses and trees and the final third is the sky. The human brain seeks out harmonious patterns and shapes and finds them pleasing to the eye. This is one reason why some images work better than others.

Autumn flings her fiery cloak over the sumac, beech and oak.

Susan Lendroth

I can’t write about capturing the magic of autumn without mentioning trees and leaves. I am bordering on being a dendrophile (tree lover), especially preferring them when they are shedding their leaves and revealing their magnificent trunks, textured bark and skeletal branches.

Trees are, however, quite difficult to photograph. To fit a whole tree in, you have to move quite far away, and unless it’s a lone tree, other things are inevitably in the frame, making it look messy and have less impact. A good solution can be to look up and frame the branches and leaves against a deep blue sky. To capture the beauty of autumn leaves, look for some that are backlit. The sun is lower in the sky at this time of the year and if you can catch it shining through the leaves, they really glow and reveal their delicate structure. Use Portrait mode to create a soft-focus background. This also has the effect of making any twinkles of light blur into soft circles, known in the photography world as ‘bokeh’.

Autumn is the season that just keeps on giving to photographers. Fungi are a fascinating subject and images of them stage a takeover of Instagram. On our autumnal dog walks in Big Wood at Marbury Park my husband will suddenly dart off into the undergrowth, not because he’s answering a call of nature, but because he’s spotted a cluster of fungi. I’m quite fussy about the ones I choose to photograph, looking for those that are glowing in warm sunlight against an attractive backdrop. I used Portrait mode to capture this group and chose to include the background as it had so many lovely seasonal elements.

Fungi lend themselves to extreme close ups and on the pro models of the iPhone 13 and 14 you can capture sharp focus images as close as 2cm from your subject. First you must activate Macro mode by going to Settings / Camera / Macro Control. With this enabled, the flower symbol appears bottom left on the screen in Photo mode whenever you get close to your subject. Ensure the desired part of your image is in focus by tapping on it on the screen.