Best time of the year(month) to photograph New England?

[PhotoAmateur]

I'm planning on taking a trip out East soon and I want to take some
pictures of beautiful New England. I'd like to know exactly when is the
best time to go to photograph the beautiful autumn colors. What month, what
part of the month? September, October? Where to go?
thanks

[photo35744]

October, CT, VT NH Maine

[Michael Warwick]

The first and second week of October. Check out the White Mountains in NH,
the ponds in NH and VT and don't overlook the old graveyards along the way,
some of the oldest, largest maples are in these old graveyards. Get a
gazetteer for these states so you can travel the back roads. Sunrise will
turn the leaves golden...on a clear morning. Overcast days can soften colors
but also can intensive colors especially if shooting with velvia.

[Gary B]

The best way is to follow the local weather casts on the web. They
will give the foliage reports as it starts in the north and travels
south. The fall colors will vary depending on the weather. Some times
they hang in there a long time and other times if it rains at the
wrong time they will dissipate very fast.

[Francis A. Miniter]

There is no bad time once the color changes start, but you should note that
there color shifts first in the north, then in the middle and lastly in the
south, so that you can have northern New England losing the brightest colors as
the middle of the region is in full flush and the southern shores are just
losing their green.
Best places? I am deeply biased. I live in New England (Connecticut) and think
the whole place is good shooting territory any time of year. That said, small
fishing villages from Gloucester, Mass. and north can provide nice sea/land
pictures in autumn. Covered bridges in western Connecticut or western
Massachusetts are good autumn targets. The Old Concord Bridge National Park in
Concord, Mass. provides some excellent views (at any time of year, actually).
Catch the Rocky Hill Ferry crossing the Connecticut River before November for
some excellent scenes. Kent Falls State Park, Kent, Connecticut for a
magnificent waterfalls tumbling through numerous levels of rocks. The winery in
Preston, Connecticut. The center of Litchfield, Connecticut. Mystic,
Connecticut, for a preserved antique port. Wood's Hole on Cape Cod.

One thing I have learned in New England from experience. Vast panoramas of
color may dazzle the eye in large scale, but finding a center of focus to them
is difficult, resulting in many pictures that are more like a pointillist mush.
Keep the focus narrow and use the colors to accent the main object in the
picture.

[Michael Zimmet]

Great subject matter, for sure. But the "peak" of the season varies
from year to year, and also from place to place. One year it may be
the last weekend in September, and the next year it could be the
middle of October. Or it may be at its best in early October in one
place, but not at its best until mid October at another place less
than an hour's drive away.
Plus, some years the colors are really great, while other years have
sort of disappointing colors. (Has to do with rainfall,
temperatures, some other stuff.)

Your best bet is probably to call a local "Fall Foliage Hotline" for
the area you're visiting, shortly before you arrive, and find out
which areas near where you'll be are predicted to be at or near peak
during your time there. A web search, or a phone call to the State
Dept. of Water and Natural Resources, or something like that, can
usually turn up the appropriate phone number. Heck, the information
will probably be available on the web, too. Might even be listed
near the weather forcast in the local newspaper. For that matter, if
you're staying at a country inn, or a bed and breakfast, you could
do a whole lot worse than to ask the innkeeper or the owner of the
B&B to recommend some scenic photo opportunities with good fall
color. (Locals are often invaluable resources.)

In general, northern New England peaks first, and the colors move
south over the next month or so. So if you plan on visiting Maine,
arrive early in the season. If you can't visit until late in the
season, there can be utterly spectacular fall colors as far south as
Virginia. (Probably further south than that, but Virginia's the
furthest south I've ever gone for pics of the fall colors.)

I assume you're aware of the various techniques for getting the best
from the fall leaves? (The most obvious one is using a polarizer or
a warming filter, but also the clever use of early morning fog, of
overcast skies, of a long lens' ability to compress perspective,
etc.) That you're already getting guidebooks/brochures from various
state parks and studying them ahead of time? That sort of thing?

> Where to go?

My top suggestions (and they're almost cliched) would be Vermont
(early in the season), upstate NY (middle of the season), and
Skyline Drive (in Virginia, end of the season). But I've gotten
fantastic fall foliage photos from the Pennsylvania Turnpike, from a
backyard in suburban New Jersey, from just outside of Baltimore,
Maryland, and a lot of other places. It doesn't take much effort to
find great colors, especially in a good year.

Personally, I like combining fall foliage shots with pictures of
waterfalls. There are literally hundreds of falls within a few hours
of here, and many of them are surrounded by trees. I know other
people who are into covered bridges, and like combining fall colors
with covered bridge shots. The point being, a picture of 10,000
colorful trees may be pretty, but a picture of a beautiful waterfall
or an old covered bridge, surrounded by colorful trees, is often
more interesting.

But best of luck to you! (In a good year, at the right time of the
season, the colors can take your breath away. Especially if you're
from a part of the country or the world that doesn't really get much
fall color.)

[Judit Fabian]

The time depends on the place. The further north you go, the sooner the
colors change. It also varies from year-to-year. Two years ago in VT, the
colors were gone by the end of the first week of October, and in Acadia in
ME they did not even start turning yet. Last year colors did not get going
until the 2nd half of October in VT, and they did not get very good. Beware
of the various foliage forecast web sites. I think they just try to attract
tourists, because their "peak color" lasted from the middle of September to
the end of October. I tried to follow their foliage description, and on one
end nothing has started yet, and on the other the leaves were gone. I don't
know about the rest of New England, but the drought that we had in VT for
the last 4-6 weeks will probably result in mediocre foliage this year.
Despite all that I said, if you start the first week of October in the
North, and travel South, you will probably get some good color. (Also take
elevation into consideration. I had very good color in the White Mountains
in NH early October last year).
I hope this will give you an idea that it is hard to predict how the colors
will change.