A few days ago I travelled over to Gloucestershire to attend a one day autumn colours workshop at Westonbirt Arboretum run by Light & Land and led by award winning photographer Andy Farrer. It was a good day at a lovely, colourful location with a nice group of people. Weather was a bit grey but at least it didn’t pour down!

I’m used to walking in woodland where the trees are quite dense, but Westonbirt is more open with plenty of space between the trees. This threw me at first, so it took a little time to get “in the zone” as it were. Also, it is much more colourful than I’m used to, especially with the Acers, they had some fabulous variety and richness of colour!

As well as capturing classic images of autumn foliage, I wanted to experiment a bit more with creative photography, using blur, multiple exposures and camera movement. This is something I’ve gradually been trying more of recently, having become a bit entrenched with my usual ICM shots of trees that I’ve been producing for a few years.

This is one area of photography where Fuji X system mirrorless cameras are at a disadvantage when compared to some Canon and Nikon DSLRs (and maybe other makes/models of mirrorless camera I’m not familiar with). These other cameras allow many images to be combined in-camera with several blending modes, whereas Fuji only allow two images with a very simple “average” blending mode. So, to compensate for that shortfall, you need to take several individual exposures and combine in Photoshop (or similar software).

This is a collection of traditional “classic” style autumn images made on the day:

And here are the more artistic “creative” images (with notes on technique):

(click any image above to view in a gallery with EXIF data)

Some of these I’m very happy with and others probably need a bit more practice. You’ll notice some of the “classic” and “creative” images show the same scene. I leave it up to you to decide which you prefer!

Many thanks to Andy for his advice on the day.

All images were made with the Fujifilm X-T1, using the following lenses:

• XF 14mm f2.8
• XF 35mm f/1.4
• XF 60mm f2.4 macro
• XF 50-140mm f/2.8

Click here for current deals on electronics at Amazon.co.uk

Disclaimer: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. This means I might receive a small commission if you purchase from Amazon after clicking these links. This does not involve any extra cost to you. I use these links to help offset the cost of running my website.