Autumn is such a fleeting season. The majestic colours invite admiring looks with ease, but doesn’t it often feel like it all ends rather too soon? Like the setting sun, annual flora gives us one last flash of colour before retreating into the dark winter months. But if you plan it right, you can capture nature’s final dance of the year in glorious splendour.
This is the story of how this autumnal image was photographed by Iain Masterton, a freelance photographer from Scotland specialising in news, drone and travel.
The following words are from Iain:
I previously visited one of my favourite annual haunts at – a very popular woodland area with waterfalls in Perthshire. This time I took off for in the near Aviemore. Lots of original natural woodland up there.
I travel and sleep in my roof tent which saves on overheads and allows a lot of flexibility in where to stay. So I headed to my usual overnight location at a car park on the way to the Cairngorms chairlift. After paying £10 online, IÌýsettled in to cook dinner in the howling wind.
A little later, a park ranger turns up to tell me this parking area is only for motorhomes and I had to leave. As you can imagine I wasn’t happy. I ended up driving down the mountain in the dark looking for a new camping spot.
I headed over to a car park at Loch an Eilein (near the little island in the picture) and found it empty so I stayed there. This put me in prime location for a sunny morning and early start to find some colourful autumn leaves. I wandered over to the little island with my Mavic Mini 3 Pro drone. There’s a pier there I knew I could take-off from.
Because the sun is low at this time of year and the Cairngorm mountains are in the way, the sun was a long time away from illuminating the island. So I took the drone high up and hovered over the Island. This is normally a good technique to get dramatic images…shooting straight down.ÌýAnd I was amazed at how it looked. I actually took a snap of my controller screen to record it.
AsÌýthere was no direct sun, there were no shadows too. The trees were yellow and the loch was still blue which reflected the clouds overhead. Even the shape of the islandÌýhas a pleasing form. I took many compositions – probably too many – horizontal, vertical, and some leaving space for copy.
Happy with this, I changed theÌýbattery and took some wider shots of the surrounding landscape until the sun rose high enough to illuminate the island. However, the whole scene changed completely when the sun shone on it. Gone were the subtle colours, blue water and the trees turned a golden hue. Nevertheless, I shot the same compositions as before.Ìý
I prefer the earlier pale yellowÌýand blue colours however, and got a couple published in The Sunday Telegraph and The Observer the next day. Feeling happy with myself, I headed home down the A9.