Fall Photography in Washington: My Favorite Locations and How I Photograph Them

Fall is one of my favorite seasons to photograph in Washington. Between the red huckleberry covering the mountain slopes, golden larches in the North Cascades, colorful maples around Seattle, and brilliant foliage lining rivers and waterfalls, there is no shortage of subjects.

But great fall color doesn’t automatically make a great photograph.

I’ve learned that some of my favorite fall images weren’t successful simply because I showed up at the right place during peak color. Each one required something else. Sometimes it was waiting for better light. Sometimes it was choosing a different lens, getting lower, slowing down my shutter speed, or looking past the obvious composition.

So rather than make another list of the best places to see fall color in Washington, I thought I’d share some of my favorite places to photograph it, along with the one thing I think made the biggest difference in getting the shot.

Naches Peak Loop / Mount Rainier National Park: Create Depth with Layers

The Naches Peak Loop is one of my favorite places for fall photography at Mount Rainier. In fall, the meadows and hillsides come alive with reds, oranges, and yellows, while evergreens provide contrast and Mount Rainier rises above it all.

With so much going on, the challenge isn’t finding something beautiful to photograph. It’s figuring out how to organize all of it into a composition.

One of the things I look for here is depth.

In a wide-angle composition, I like to find a strong foreground and then build layers through the photograph. A trail or colorful patch of foliage can bring you into the scene, followed by evergreen trees or a valley in the middle distance, and finally Mount Rainier in the background. Instead of the mountain and fall color competing for attention, each becomes part of a larger landscape.

For example, in this shot of a meadow with Mount Rainier in the background, we have some near evergreen trees and fall foliage in the foreground. Our eye flows into the mid ground, where we have more colorful foliage in the distance along with these evergreens along the hillside. Those evergreens form a leading line to lead our eye right to the centerpiece in the background, Mount Rainier. The haze on the mountain and the shadows of the trees help to increase the sense of depth, as if we can almost step into the scene.

A telephoto lens can create depth in a completely different way. By narrowing the field of view and compressing the landscape, distant ridges, trees, and the mountain appear closer together. Those overlapping layers can make the landscape feel almost stacked from front to back.

For example, in this shot of a section of the Naches Peak Loop trail, I’m using golden foliage in the foreground to frame the bottom of the image. I’m using a wide aperture with a long focal length. This results in a very shallow depth of field: meaning, only a small portion of the scene will be in focus. My focus distance is set at the evergreens, so with a shallow depth of field, this creates a soft blur on the foliage in the foreground. This blurring can add to the sense of depth in a photo.

Both approaches accomplish the same thing in very different ways. They give the eye somewhere to travel.

The lesson: Look for layers

When I’m surrounded by incredible fall color, it’s tempting to point the camera toward the brightest patch of red or yellow and start shooting. But color alone isn’t always enough. I look for foreground, mid ground, and background elements that give the color somewhere to exist within the larger landscape.

Don’t Forget the Light

There’s another lesson I’ve learned from photographing this area: the same landscape can look completely different depending on the time of day.

A scene photographed under stronger daytime light can certainly document the fall color, but when the sun gets lower, the landscape starts to change. Warm light can catch the edges of the trees and create rim lighting that makes them seem to glow against the darker forest. That light can provide separation between all those layers and add another dimension to the photograph.

Look at the difference between these two photos, taken in approximately the same location, but at different times of day. The first image is shot mid day. The sun is directly overhead and somewhat south. There are some shadows on the north side of the evergreens, but otherwise all layers have equal, flat lighting. We don’t see haze around the mountain. The second shot is during golden hour. The sun is much lower on the horizon. The trees cast much more prominent shadows, adding to the sense of depth. The sun also back lights the trees and foliage, giving it a beautiful glow with rim lighting. Since the sun is low on the horizon, it has to pass through much more layers of atmosphere to get to our eye, making haze visible. All this adds to the depth and drama of the scene.

So even when I’ve found a composition I like, I try not to assume I’ve already seen it at its best. Sometimes the composition is only half of the equation. The other half is waiting to see what the light does with it.

Kubota Garden: Look Beyond the Obvious Composition

Kubota Garden in Seattle is completely different from photographing a huge mountain landscape. In some ways, I think that makes it more challenging. In peak fall color, there can be something interesting everywhere you look. Brilliant Japanese maples overlap with twisting branches, moss-covered trees, pathways, ponds, and layers upon layers of foliage. When everything is beautiful, composition becomes more important, not less.

Instead of trying to fit the entire garden into a photograph, I like to look for smaller scenes and details.

A single colorful leaf can become the subject. Using a wider aperture can separate it from a softer background, removing many of the distractions around it and allowing something very small to command attention.

Branches can also become part of the composition rather than something to work around. I look for their shapes and the direction they move through the frame. A curving branch can act as a leading line, drawing your eye toward a colorful leaf or another part of the scene.

Sometimes those branches can even become the frame itself. One of my favorite compositions from Kubota uses the surrounding tree as a natural frame around the brilliant fall color beyond it. Instead of eliminating the darker foreground branches, I used them to create a window into the scene.

And sometimes the solution is simply changing where the camera is.

Getting low and shooting wide can completely change the appearance of a familiar tree. Looking upward exaggerates the twisting shapes of the trunk and branches and allows the canopy to fill the frame. Add a sun star peeking through those branches, and suddenly a tree that hundreds of people may have walked past becomes something entirely different.

The lesson: Don’t just photograph the color

Look for shapes, lines, individual details, natural frames, and unusual perspectives. When a location is overflowing with beautiful subjects, isolating one idea can often create a stronger photograph than trying to capture everything.

Highway 2: Keep Exploring

Highway 2 is one of my favorite places to photograph fall color because sometimes the best locations aren’t really known ahead of time. Many of my photographs along this route have come from simply noticing something interesting while driving, pulling over to investigate, or continuing farther along a river instead of stopping at the most obvious viewpoint. I’ve found that it pays to keep exploring even after I’ve found what seems like a good spot.

This shot of aspen trees was right along the roadside. I didn’t stop at the first stand of trees, but kept looking until I found a grouping with the most uniformity, with a regular pattern of white bark interspersed with yellow foliage. It can look ordinary or cluttered when viewing the entire scene, but zooming in with a telephoto lens removes distractions and keeps the focus on the beauty of the color and pattern.

The Tumwater Canyon Bridge is another example. From the near side of the bridge, I could see plenty of fall color, but the river itself was fairly flat and didn’t add much to the composition. Instead of settling for that view, I crossed the bridge and continued hiking along the river. From the other side, I found sections where the water rippled and curled around rocks. Suddenly the river wasn’t just empty space between two colorful banks. The movement of the water became part of the composition, creating lines and patterns that helped lead the eye through the photograph.

Some of my favorite fall compositions along Highway 2 have happened this way. I might spot a flash of red or gold from the road, but that’s usually just the starting point. I’ll look for a way down to the river, walk farther than the obvious viewpoint, or explore in both directions to see how the relationship between the water, rocks, trees, and fall color changes.

Sometimes I find reflections. Sometimes it’s moving water. Sometimes a bridge or another man-made element gives structure to all that color. And sometimes I don’t find anything at all.

But I wouldn’t have made many of these photographs if I’d stopped at the first viewpoint and assumed that was the shot. The variety of scenes I’ve found along Highway 2 is part of what makes it such an enjoyable place for me to photograph fall.

The lesson: The first view isn’t necessarily the best view

If something catches your eye, stop and investigate. Walk a little farther. Look behind you. Cross the bridge. Follow the river.

Sometimes moving a few hundred yards can turn a scene that doesn’t quite work into one of the best compositions of the day.

Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park: Soft Light Makes the Color

Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park in Renton is a very different kind of fall photography location. The brilliant red trees lining the road can create an incredible tunnel of color. They’re also not exactly a secret. This can be a VERY busy location.

For me, the solution is as much about choosing when to go as it is about composition. I prefer an early morning on a cloudy or rainy weekday. Going early helps with the crowds, but the light is just as important. Bright sunlight filtering through trees can create extreme contrast, with bright patches of sky and foliage next to very dark shadows. That can make an otherwise beautiful scene surprisingly difficult to photograph. Cloud cover acts like a giant softbox. The light becomes much more even, allowing the saturated reds of the trees to become the focus of the photograph without competing with bright highlights and deep shadows. Rain can be even better. Wet pavement and fallen leaves become richer in color, and the road itself can help lead the viewer through the canopy. Consider bringing a CPL (circular polarized filter) if you’d like to cut any reflections on the wet pavement or leaves.

The lesson: Bad weather can be great photography weather

If you’re photographing fall foliage, don’t automatically dismiss a gray or rainy forecast. Sometimes those are exactly the conditions that allow the color to look its best. And at a popular location, an early rainy weekday has another significant advantage: fewer people.

Lower Lewis River Falls: Let the Water Move

Fall color and waterfalls are one of my favorite combinations.

At Lower Lewis River Falls, the bright yellow foliage provides a wonderful contrast to the darker forest and the white water of the falls. But for me, the important photographic decision here is shutter speed. I love using longer exposures for moving water. A longer shutter speed records the movement of the water over time rather than freezing an instant. The individual splashes and droplets begin to blend together, creating soft, flowing lines over the rocks and falls.

The exact shutter speed I choose depends on the water itself. I’m looking at how quickly it’s moving and how much texture I want to retain. I don’t necessarily want the water to become a completely featureless white blur. I want enough movement to emphasize its flow. That movement also creates a wonderful contrast with the stationary landscape around it. The rocks, trees, and fall foliage remain defined while the water moves through them.

Of course, longer exposures also mean a tripod becomes essential. If there’s enough light that I can’t get the shutter speed as slow as I’d like, I’ll use a neutral density filter to reduce the amount of light entering the camera.

The lesson: Think about how you want movement to look

Shutter speed isn’t simply an exposure setting. It’s a creative decision.

When water is an important part of a fall composition, I think about whether freezing it or allowing it to move will better convey what attracted me to the scene in the first place. At Lower Lewis River Falls, that movement is a huge part of the photograph.

Cedar Creek Grist Mill: Focus Stack for Near-to-Far Sharpness

Cedar Creek Grist Mill is one of those locations that seems almost designed for fall photography. The historic wooden mill, creek, waterfall, and surrounding forest give you a lot of elements to work with. But one of my favorite compositions here introduced a technical problem.

I wanted to include a colorful fallen maple leaf very close to the camera while keeping the mill and the rest of the scene sharp in the distance. The leaf was placed on a beam of the bridge (yes, I put it there!), and the beam leads your eye to the mill. This leading line and the depth of foreground to background makes for an intriguing composition.

Even at a relatively small aperture, there are limits to how much depth of field you can capture in a single photograph. When an important foreground subject is extremely close to the lens, keeping both it and a distant background critically sharp can be impossible. That’s where focus stacking comes in.

Instead of making one exposure, I photograph the same composition several times while changing the focus point. One image might be focused on the foreground leaf, another farther into the scene, and another on the distant mill. I can then blend the sharp portions of those exposures together in post-processing. The result is a photograph with far more apparent depth of field than I could have achieved with a single exposure.

The lesson: Get close to your foreground

A strong foreground can completely change a landscape composition, and you don’t have to avoid getting close simply because depth of field becomes difficult. When the composition needs both an extremely close foreground and a sharp background, focus stacking gives me the freedom to create the composition I want rather than letting the limitations of a single exposure dictate it.

Mazama Ridge / Mount Rainier National Park: Don’t Leave Great Conditions to Chance

Fall color in the mountains doesn’t last long. Peak color can vary from year to year, and then there’s the weather. You can arrive at exactly the right time for the foliage only to find a cloudless sky, thick fog hiding the mountain, or conditions that simply aren’t doing anything interesting. Obviously, I can’t control any of that. What I can control is how carefully I plan.

As fall approaches, I watch recent trail reports and photographs on AllTrails to see how the color is progressing. I’m also watching weather forecasts closely, particularly when there is the potential for interesting clouds. The goal isn’t necessarily a perfectly clear day. In fact, that’s often not what I want. Clouds can catch the color of sunrise or sunset, cast moving light across the mountainsides, reveal and conceal portions of Mount Rainier, and add drama to a scene that might otherwise be dominated by a large empty sky. When great fall color and great light happen at the same time, the result can be spectacular.

The lesson: The photograph starts before you leave home

Planning can’t guarantee a great photograph. Nature has made that very clear to me many times. But fall is short, and the best conditions can be even shorter. Watching the progression of the color, checking recent reports, studying forecasts, and being ready to go when things begin lining up dramatically increases my chances of being there when everything comes together.

Moulton Falls Bridge: When One Exposure Isn’t Enough

Moulton Falls combines several things I love to photograph in fall: a beautiful bridge, colorful foliage, rocks, and moving water. It can also create an interesting technical problem.

I might want a longer exposure to smooth the water and show its movement. But if there’s even a slight breeze, the leaves are moving too. Now I have two parts of the photograph doing exactly the opposite of what I want. I want the water to move during the exposure, but I want the foliage to remain sharp. One solution is an exposure blend.

I’ll make a longer exposure to capture the water the way I want it. Then I’ll make a faster exposure that freezes the movement of the leaves. Because the camera remains in exactly the same position on the tripod, I can combine the two exposures later, using the long exposure for the water and the faster exposure for the foliage. The finished photograph can then represent the scene more closely to how I envisioned it.

The lesson: You don’t always have to compromise

Sometimes a scene asks for two completely different camera settings.

Rather than choosing between beautifully flowing water and sharp fall foliage, I can photograph each element in the way that works best and combine the exposures afterward.

Great Fall Color Is Only the Beginning

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from photographing fall in Washington, it’s that finding great color is only the beginning. Once I’m there, I’m still asking the same questions I would at any other time of year. Where is the light? What is my subject? How can I create depth? Is there a simpler composition? What happens if I move farther down the trail? Would a different focal length completely change the scene? Is the weather I was hoping to avoid actually going to make a better photograph?

Fall just gives us an especially colorful set of ingredients to work with.

And because those conditions don’t last long, sometimes the most important thing is being ready when everything comes together.

See More Fall Photography in Washington

Check out my Autumn Landscapes gallery to see more fall photography in Washington and Oregon.