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October 2025 DPA Newsletter

October 2025 DPA Newsletter:

How to Photograph Autumn Skies, Color, and Reflections

DPA Instructor Matt Stock Featured on Adorama’s 42West Blog

October FinerWorks Winners!

Photo by Amanda Deutsch, Digital Photo Academy instructor in Denver.

October brings autumn into focus. Leaves reach their brightest colors, pumpkins and decorations appear, and cooler days shift the mood. For photographers, it’s a chance to capture bold fall landscapes, festive details, and the softer light of shorter days.

Digital Photo Academy is pleased to bring you the latest updates and photography inspiration in our monthly newsletter. This is all made possible by our valued sponsor, Finerworks.


Primer of the Month

Each month, we share a primer with insights from our instructors across the continent. It’s a chance to learn from experienced photographers and see how they approach their craft, through tips, advice, and a behind-the-scenes look at their photography.


How to Photograph Autumn Skies, Color, and Reflections

Step-by-step guidance on exposure, depth of field, framing, and more for fall photos.

By Digital Photo Academy Instructor Eric Tilson in Cleveland.

Though autumn creates ever-changing, stunning landscapes, it can be extremely difficult to capture that beauty in a photograph.

In the past several years, while exploring Ohio’s beautiful parks, I have come across a few techniques that I thought other photographers may have fun trying.


1) Use Overcast Skies to Your Advantage

Where I live in Ohio, many fall mornings are a bit gray and overcast. On such days, the seemingly colorless sky doesn’t add much to a beautiful autumn composition.

However, the even lighting provided by a dreary day can actually provide a perfect opportunity to purposefully overexpose the image. A white sky can actually provide a very interesting contrast to the oranges and reds of the fall.

For this shot, it is effective to use a 70-200 zoom and an aperture of f5.6–f8. With an ISO of 800 or so, you should have plenty of leeway to slow down the shutter speed to overexpose the image.

I was also lucky in this image to have a tree much closer to my car than the barn, therefore providing some asymmetrical and slightly out-of-focus balance to the image. The most visible autumn hues roughly fit into the “rule of thirds,” in the upper right and lower left of the image.

On a day with more harsh, direct light, the whites in this image would have likely been “blown out,” with very little detail. However, the gray, even light allowed me to retain a significant amount of detail across the frame.


2) Add Just a Hint of Color in Portraits

To make the best of autumn colors in a composition, sometimes it’s best to allow just a “hint” of color to add dimension to the image.

For example, while photographing portraits last year, when I arrived at a local park to photograph a student’s graduation portrait, I was a bit disappointed to see that the leaves had only started to turn colors.

However, when I found a few branches of leaves in a shade of orange very complementary to the color of the subject’s dress, I knew that the fall hues would draw the surrounding environment into the portrait in a subtle, yet effective way.

I used a 45mm lens at f1.8 to achieve a narrow depth of field. The slightly out-of-focus orange leaves provided an almost watercolor-like frame to the image.


3) Highlight Contrast in Autumn Landscapes

The same color contrast can be very effective in a landscape shot.

While driving down a rural road, I was struck by how the shadows from the fence below seemed to divide two perfectly placed, extremely colorful trees, hinting at the “rule of thirds.” The two trees bring plenty of “autumn” to the composition without bathing the entire photograph in orange.

For this type of shot, a 70-200 zoom lens allows the photographer to draw attention to specific components of a relatively busy scene. Smaller apertures, from f8–f11, allow just enough depth of field to keep all desired subjects in focus.


4) Blur Fall Colors into the Background

When you can’t seem to find the perfect autumn leaves in a beautiful setting, perhaps the most effective way to include fall colors in your composition is to allow them to blur purposefully into the background.

For example, the red bush behind this bee would have most likely shown itself as an indistinct red “blob” if it were the primary subject of my photograph. However, slightly out of focus in the distance, it provided a beautiful natural backdrop.

I used a 400mm lens at f6.3. To capture the bee’s movement, I used a shutter speed of 1/2000. The narrow depth of field achieved by using a long telephoto at its widest aperture evokes hints of autumn without oversaturating the image.


5) Look for Reflections to Add Depth

Similarly, in this photograph of a swan, the trees on the opposite side of a local pond had muted colors and were barely hanging onto their branches at the end of the season.

I would never have made them the primary focus of my composition; however, they added just enough orange to the reflection in the water to add depth to the image.


Beyond the Lens with Eric’s Music

The author of this month’s primer, DPA instructor Eric Tilson, is fortunate to have two hobbies that he’s grown increasingly obsessed with: photography and music.

Here’s Eric on his song “Dreams Ahead”:

“When my son had just turned three in 2014, I began thinking more and more about the lessons I would do my best to teach him as he matured into a young man. “Dreams Ahead” attempts to sort through the complex experiences of navigating childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.”

Watch Eric perform:

🎶 A full studio version with added instruments and harmonies is also available on all major streaming platforms.


DPA Instructor Matt Stock Featured on Adorama’s 42West Blog

We’re proud to share that Miami-based DPA instructor Matt Stock has been featured in Adorama’s respected blog, 42West.

It’s a go-to destination for photographers, filmmakers, and creatives with gear reviews, tutorials, and in-depth articles from industry professionals.

Matt, an award-winning artist and educator with work in major U.S. collections, contributed “Taking Back the Night: A Photographer’s Residency in the Smoky Mountains.

In it, he reflects on his Artist-in-Residence experience at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, exploring the challenges and beauty of night photography through his unique light-painting approach.


October FinerWorks Award Winners

Every month, our judges select 2 of our social media members to receive an HD Metal print of one of their photos, printed by our sponsor Finerworks.

We choose one winner from each of our Facebook groups:

Celebrating Senior Shutterbugs” and “Digital Photo Academy Community

Posted on our “Digital Photo Academy Community” Facebook group by Yuji Morita:
Posted on our “Celebrating Senior Shutterbugs” Facebook group by Larry Beemer:

Live Photography Classes in 24 Cities

Since 2006, Digital Photo Academy has offered hands-on photography workshops in 24 cities across North America.

Access the live cities page on our website to explore upcoming photo workshops in your area. Elevate your photography skills with help from our experienced instructors in interactive sessions!

Click here to see what former students have to say—we’ve gotten over 1,200 testimonials from past workshops!


Our Social Media

Connect, share, and spread cheer! Join our Facebook groups to participate in our monthly prize contests in collaboration with Finerworks.

Facebook Groups:

Celebrating Senior Shutterbugs” and “Digital Photo Academy Community

Main Pages:


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