Northern Minnesota Fall Color Photos and a Lightroom Technique to Warm Photos
Over the last couple of weeks, I've taught a fall color photography workshop, shot some portraits, and spent a lot of time in the field photographing the northern Minnesota fall colors in Cook County. This year was amazing. Everything turned at once and the maples, birch and aspen were all in peak fall color at once. It's a rare year when that happens.
For this issue I'll share a few photos from this year's fall colors and then give a quick tip about warming up photos in Lightroom. While fall colors are winding down in Cook County, I do have a guidebook available.
The thing to understand about the fall color in Cook County and most of the north shore is that there are usually two season. The first is the maple season. This often happens around the end of September. Then there's the aspen and birch season. This often happens around the second weekend of October or about seven days into October.
You may be driving up Highway 61 and be disappointed that the trees haven't turned along the road, but that doesn't mean that the maple forests haven't. They may be at peak fall color even when the hills next to 61 are still as green as summer. This is usually the case.
But this year, it all turned at once.
One of the most interesting juxtapositions of this was at the Lutsen ski hill. The top of the peak, which are covered in maples, were all red. The valleys, which are aspen and birch, were all yellow.
What happens along Lake Superior is that during the winter, the big lake stays relatively open and ice free. The heat from the warmer water keeps the area near the shore warmer, and it also rises and reaches the tops of the ridges along the lake. That warms those ridges enough to keep them warm enough for maples to survive. In the valleys, it stays colder and aspen and birch survive in those colder areas better.
There are just a few overlooks that give you a view of this forest variation. The best are at Oberg and Carlton Peak.
When everything turns at once, you get the amazing yellows and the reds. At the above viewpoint, which is in my guidebook, the maples and birch mix just below an overlook. This allows for a mix of reds and yellows.
This year the roads through the maple forests where hard to drive; you wanted to the passenger, because the colors were so distracting. Below is an example and shows one of my favorite S-curve roads in Cook County.
While I say everything turned at once, the hills behind Grand Marais waited until later in the week to turn, and when they did it was brilliant! The yellow was so bright that it hurt your eyes.
I managed to photograph a rainbow over the yellow birch and aspen on the hill behind the North House Folk School and the Grand Marais marina. My kid and I were running around in the snow flurries right before I took this photo.
If you know me, you know that I say I have a hard time photographing fall color. I do. It wasn't really my thing. But over the years I've forced myself to do it, and I can say that this year I loved it and was motivated to get out there and photograph the fall color.
But, my favorite shot of the fall so far is the following one without much fall color. It's the quintessential fall Minnesota lake shot.
It's about as prefect as it can be. That also sums up this year's fall colors.
Adding a Warming Filter in Lightroom
Back in the days of slide film, I'd often use an 81b warming filter. It was a reddish/yellow filter that warmed a scene up by about 300-400 kelvin. With digital photographer, the way that most people accomplish this is in Lightroom by sliding the temp slider to the right by 300-400 kelvin.
This works okay, but there's a better way that gives you much more control. You can use the Color Grading panel instead of temperature.
In the Color Grading panel, select the "Global" adjustment and set the Hue at 60 and the Saturation at ~24. This adds a simple 81b warming filter look. See the screenshot below.
You could also just apply this to the highlights and let the shadows remain bluer if you wanted to get fancy. I liked the look of those warming filters back in my Fuji Velvia 50 days, so I like doing it globally.
The advantage of using the Color Grading Panel is that you can tweak the Hue into the orange colors and get a nice effect.
The way I use this is I use the Color Temperature eyedropper on a neutral color in the scene to correct any color temp weirdness. This will often remove the warm feeling of sunrise and sunset shots or it might make it too yellow. In the latter, you'll need to cool down the temp sider. Then after the colors look natural, I'll use the Color Grading Panel to introduce that nice warm look back into the scene.
The following photo shows the difference. The left side is corrected for color using white balance and then the right side shows adding in the warmth in Color Grading. You can see it in the reds in the buildings and the yellow fall colors on the hill. It's subtle and builds a welcoming feeling into your photos.
For sunrise and sunsets, using this technique can prevent those unnatural-looking and gaudy skies that result from warming the color temperature. Check out the examples below. The first is warmed using white balance. The second is made after correcting the white balance for the foreground rock and then adding in the 81B with a tilt toward and yellow orange hue (39).
I hope you give this a try and let me know what you think.
p.s. I made a preset for the 81B Warming Filter. It's easy to make your own preset using the settings shown in the above screenshot, but if you want to toss me $5 for a preset, you can get it here.
Until next time
I hope you enjoyed this issue and hopefully the color grading example is helpful. I sure had a great time photographing fall color this year and hope to get out a couple more days before it all falls to the ground.
On another note, my 2023 calendar should be out in the next week or so. I'm tallying up votes from my Facebook page and Facebook supporters. Also, my new workshop Feb 24-26Â Late Winter In Northern Minnesota photo workshop is open and filling. I hope you'll sign up.
I'll see you again in two weeks. Until then I hope you get outside to enjoy the fall and take a few photos with whatever type of camera you use.
