Fall colors in New England are usually nothing short of spectacular, but this year played out a bit differently. The foliage season started early, and by mid-October much of Connecticut had already slipped past peak color. After a hot, dry summer and fall, many trees were stressed and their leaves changed sooner than usual, colors were softer and more subdued, and in some cases the foliage simply dried out before it had a chance to turn. Even so, I wasn’t about to skip photographing the season. I headed out a couple of times to capture what autumn had to offer and to film a short nature-photography outing, similar to the summer video I made earlier, only this time I stayed close to home and skipped the camping. The biggest change, though, was my decision to shoot film. Fall colors look incredible on color slide film like Kodak Ektachrome E100. The video mixes nature sounds, hiking, photography, and a bit of music, but no talking.
I also had a new camera for the video work: the Canon EOS R10. As a first-time user, I made a rookie mistake and overexposed my first few clips after stepping out of the woods. I tried fixing them in post, but there was only so much I could salvage, so that first outing ends up being pretty short in the final cut. I kept only the essential overexposed shots needed to tell the story. By the second day of filming, when I was photographing the waterfalls at Enders State Forest, I had corrected my settings, and the remaining footage came out the way it was supposed to.
The still photos, on the other hand, turned out great. My trusty Canon EOS-1 film camera performed flawlessly. I shot two rolls of Ektachrome on the autumn landscapes and scanned everything with my Plustek film scanner. I really love this E-6 film stock, it handled Australia’s vivid red Uluru beautifully, and it worked just as well with New England’s fall palette. I ended up post-processing twelve final images, which appear as a slideshow at the end of the video. The three images featured in this post are my personal favorites.
Gear: Canon EOS-1 film camera, Canon 17-40mm f/4L, Canon 70-200mm f/4L, Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L II, Tiffen Polarizer, Tiffen 3-stop ND, Hoya 2-stop ND, Kodak Ektachrome E100, Gitzo G1340 tripod, Gitzo GH3780 ballhead
