Which Season Is Your Personal Favourite?

I used to consider summer my absolute favourite without question until I took up photography as a hobby a couple of years ago. I live in a cold temperate climate in a locality that sits right on the 61st northern latitude. Although the climate is warmed considerably by the North Atlantic Current, it is still bitterly cold in the winter. The summer is only four months long and it's defined as the time when deciduous trees have fully grown green leaves on them. Summer is also the main holiday season.

But since becoming an amateur photographer, I've started to see the aesthetic value of all the seasons. My appreciation for the autumn in particular as grown a lot. Late summer and early autumn are the rainiest times of the year when the sky is overcast which is very good for photography. That's because bright sunlight makes for very large differences in the amount of light the highlights and the shadows get. Under such conditions the dynamic range of a normal DSLR proves inadequate and it's also when you get chromatic aberrations if you are not using expensive high-quality lenses. The autumn tends to be much better because of the higher likelihood of overcast skies and also because the sun spends a greater proportion of the day close to the horizon, giving softer light. Most importantly, autumn is a time of bright colours.

The days are very short in the dead of the winter here. The shortest day of the year sees only five and a half hours of daylight. But it's a good thing that you can always use a tripod and go for long exposures.

Here are a few examples of photos taken in different seasons:

Autumn

Winter

Spring

Summer