Exhibition: Autumn (October 2006)

Go to the gallery of images of the exhibition.

Introduction

The mood of autumn out side now (in October of 2006) has inspired me to collect a set of autumn images and combine them to form this exhibition.

In my mind mainly three visual impressions form autumn: Colorful foliage, the sight of Pumpkins essentially everywhere and dens morning fog.

Foliage

Colorful Tree

In North America and in Europe the unmistakable sign of autumn is (apart from the temperatures getting colder) that the leaves are turning their color. Most well known for autumn color is New England. I guess that is mainly due to good marketing, since equally impressive fall color can be seen in most other parts of US and also in Europe. Germany is not that well known for fall color due to the fact that most forests consist of mainly evergreen trees. Non-the less breathtaking fall colors can also be seen in Germany, see the Image of Wesslinger See, which is located just south of Munich.

Wesslinger See

In the beginning I did mention that colored foliage is the sign for autumn in Europe and North America. In countries closer to the equator you will not see much of a change of seasons and consequently you will also not see much of colored fall foliage. I only became aware of that when I talked to a friend from Taiwan a while ago.

From a photography point of view colored foliage is welcome to "spice up" images with additional color. The same landscape might look quite dull in summer when all leaves age green and even worst in winter when there are no leaves at all. But in autumn things look entirely different!

Personally I prefer backlit colored leaves. This improves the contrast towards the (usually darker) background and it improves the colors.

Pumpkins

Pumpkins in Canada

Pumpkins being sold on the street or being used as outdoor decoration are a very familiar sight in North America probably since a long time. Also the Halloween tradition is from America. In the recent years this is also becoming more and more popular in Europe.

Again from a photography point of view the orange color of pumpkins adds a focal point to an image. Piles of pumpkins, photographed with a wide-angle lens make a good image by themselves.

Green Mountains

Fog

Thick morning fog is also typical for autumn, especially when you live in the west of Munich, which used to be a swamp area and where still the ground tends to be very moist.

Fog obscures items in the back of an image and reduces much of what is in the image to its form, essentially removing the color. Thus shooting photos in fog is in a way similar to black and white photography. Also you have to cope with a very small dynamic range (i.e. a small difference between the brightest and the darkest pixel of an image) of the resulting image.