Autumn Colour at Bridehead, Littlebredy, Dorset.

Autumn began well this year.  October was settled, warm and still.  Ideal conditions for doing autumnal photographs at Bridehead gardens at Littlebredy in Dorset.  The garden is one of those hidden gems of Dorset which is not well known to those who are not local.  Within it there is a man made lake and from it flows the river Bride, which cascades down a man made waterfall over the lake's dam.  A maple tree sits next to the waterfall and during autumn the its leaves carpet the area around it.  Due to the weather being so calm during October this year, the leaves scattered evenly across the lawn making a colourful foreground.  Due to its location the sun never shines on this area during the autumn and winter months due to it being shaded by a wall of trees.  This makes getting an exposure quite tricky as the sky behind the Maple tree is so much brighter.  Use of a 2 stop ND grad was required across the top half of the image to even out the light levels to get a proper exposure. An exposure of a couple of seconds was then used to capture the image, which then gave the water tumbling down the waterfall  a milky look.

Photographed with a Nikon D800 + Nikon 16-35 F4 AFS lens and Lee 0.6ND grad.