How to take awesome autumn photos

Photographers, bloggers and other creators can learn by exploring camera settings of great autumn photos on the web. Here’s how.

It’s that time of year again. As the leaves of trees and shrubs are turning various shades of red, yellow, purple, black, orange, and brown in the northern hemisphere, the annual exchange of autumn photos on social media has begun! 

Autumn (or fall) foliage is so spectacular that in some parts of Canada and the United States tourists travel for miles to get some “leaf peeping”. 

But how do photographers take those awesome autumn pictures that make everyone go “wow”?

One way to find out is to learn from the camera settings of great autumn photos you find on the web. Great photographers are always curious to see what other great photographers are doing, right? 😜

Good news! In Vivaldi Browser we have built-in a fancy little feature, Image Properties, that lets you see the image properties of photos on the web. With just one click, you can learn how a photo was taken!

How to access Image Properties

In Vivaldi browser, navigate to an image you like on the web and right-click on it. Select Image Properties from the context menu. You’ll see details based on the image metadata, displayed in a sidebar.

Currently, Image Properties in Vivaldi can display:

  • Filename and URL
  • Camera make and model
  • Aperture, ISO and exposure
  • Focal length
  • White balance mode
  • Luminance, RGB and individual channel histogram
  • Dimensions (in pixels) and megapixel count
  • Size (in bytes)
  • Colorspace used
  • GPS coordinates (and lookup link)
  • Copyright
  • Date and time
  • JPEG orientation
  • Software used to create the file

The amount of detail you see in Image Properties is as good as the metadata in the image. Many sites will remove metadata as part of their image optimization steps. On other occasions, the photo app would do this. For example, if you optimize an image for the web (e.g. use “Save for Web” in Photoshop), most metadata will be stripped. 

Fortunately, several specialist photography sites preserve image metadata and let you explore camera settings. We recommend FStoppers and Pixabey for learning how to take great autumn photos on the web. 

And if you need some guidance on what to look out for in a photo, study the examples in this article by Vivaldi designer Henrik Helmers. He covers useful things such as what to read into the choice of exposure and ISO, looking at color and luminance histograms, as well as equipment. 

Share your autumn images with us!

We often hear from photographers, photo bloggers, and enthusiasts who use Image Properties in their daily work. 

Share your autumn images with us on the forum and social media (Instagram, Twitter and Facebook) using the hashtag #VivaldiBrowserAutumn!

Make sure you own the rights to the photos. On Instagram, we’ll share them in Stories. We’ll also pick the best and use them to illustrate our upcoming autumn Snapshots. Please note that they need to be of high enough resolution and in a suitable format. We’ll make sure to credit you! 🏆

And if you are reading this in the southern hemisphere, you’ll have to wait until April or May to take part. 😜

All images are by Pixabey

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