Welcome to the first of my  Thursday newsletters.  As announced Last week, the general newsletter will now be on Thursdays not on Mondays – this is because Mondays will be the day for sending out “Inspiration Sheets” and news to the members of Ian’s Studio Photo Academy

Last week I said I would either be launching The Academy this week, or next Thursday.  Guess what?  It will be next Thursday.  I thought it probably would be, but there was a slim chance that it could have happened this week.   So, next week it will be – there is still a lot to do but I am quietly confident, barring unforeseen major issues I should be able to meet the deadline.  There are two main reasons I couldn’t get everything done for this week.  The firstly, I had some unexpected, short notice commercial work from one of my big name clients.  And secondly, I’ve been down in Bristol for four days visiting my father-in-law.  This was planned, but I always overestimate how much work I can actually do with just a laptop and public library for internet access!

The trip to Bristol did bring with it a fantastic opportunity to photograph a local park.  So that’s the theme of this week’s newsletter….

Autumn Colours

I wanted to go out and photograph the golden leaves on the trees, so that I had images for an “Inspiration Sheet” I am putting together for Academy members, but that won’t be going out until Autumn 2017 (yes, I really am thinking a year ahead with the Academy planning!).  But I’ll share with you now a few of my hints and tips for photographing autumn colours:

• Make sure you set your white balance to “shade” (that’s the image of the house with the lines at the side of it).  This will add a golden warmth to your images by adding a slight orange cast to the image.   Of course, if you shoot RAW you can always do this in post-production.
• If “shade” white balance is too much, you can also try “cloudy” (the picture of a cloud) and this is a little more subtle.
• If you are shooting with a compact camera; you can try ‘sunset’ in the creative modes – this will tell the camera to preserve any orange cast to the image that it might otherwise try to remove.
• Consider shooting a small cluster of ‘golden leaves’ still on a tree – this works best with a shallow depth of field (low f-number) and a background of contrasting colour.
• The sky in the autumn is often white.  Try to frame your images so that you keep the white sky out of shot as much as possible as the white area will ‘draw the eye’ in the final image.
• Think about shooting the leaves on the ground – or even a single leaf.

I hope these ideas will inspire you to go out and get shooting.  If you are going to, do it soon while there are still leaves left on the trees.  And please, if you have been out shooting autumn colours, I’d love to see what you have created.  So please tag any images you post on social media with #InspiredByIansStudio so that I can find them.

You can see the other images I shot at Page Park in Bristol here:  http://photos.imb.biz/travel/uk/bristol-page-park

So until next Thursday, when God willing, I will be launching the Academy, keep making great photographs,

Ian.