Trees, Dolomites, Italy
Fujifilm GFX100S II, GF500mm F5.6 R LM OIS WR, f8 @ 1/125 second, ISO 160

There are no guarantees when it comes to the seasons. If you're a skier, you like to have fresh snow - so if you're a skier, you don't want to come skiing with me and my wife. When we arrive at a ski resort, all you can hear in the pubs is that it's the worst season for snow in living memory. On the other hand, my daughter seemed to do quite well in Japan this year with the most snow they'd seen in half a century!

So, there are gambles when it comes to the weather and on our photo tour to Italy last year, we were hitting the Dolomites in the north east of Italy in mid October, which generally speaking is prime time for the colour in the trees. However, I didn't emphasise this to our photographers because, you simply don't know. However, the good news about travelling at this time is that the trees change colour at different times depending on the local climate and the altitude they're in. So, if one location is still a little green, you could be luckier around the corner up a thousand feet or so.

Last year, we had lots of colour. We were lucky! Generally speaking, there's a mix of evergreen and deciduous trees, so a patchwork of orange on a green ground, but then there will be clutches of trees as seen here where it's simply a riot of warm colour. 

This photo looks like it is taken late in the day, but this is due more to my choice of exposure in post-production, rather than how it looked to the eye in the mid-afternoon. I find that the richness of reds and oranges really shines through as you move further down inside the colour gamut. And there's nothing wrong with a few shadows to keep the viewer guessing. I like the silhouetted evergreens in the foreground, just visible in the darkness and also hiding the green hue which would otherwise create an unwanted colour contrast. 

There's so much that can be done to interpret our photos in post-production, even if it's just a simple exposure adjustment. If you're interested, I've just released a new series of tutorial movies where I run through 10 travel photos, showing step by step how they were processed in Lightroom. If you're interested, you can see more on the Better Photography Education website. 

And Tony Hewitt and I have just announced our Italian road trip in October this year, which you can also find on the Better Photography website under the Photo Tours menu.