Rating autumn’s leaf season: A disappointing display?

Adirondack photographers, artists seek beauty amidst subdued fall colors

By Tim Rowland

After a couple drenching summer rains, Adirondack photographer Carl Heilman watched as the weeks leading into autumn turned bone dry — a bad sign, he suspected, for the upcoming leaf season.

He was right. “I’d give it a four out of 10,” he said of the 2024 autumn leaf season.”When it’s dry day after day the sun curls them up and the color just isn’t there,”

Each Adirondack fall, scientists are asked their theories of what makes a pretty leaf, but it’s the artists and photographers who depend on Adirondack beauty for their livelihoods.

“It’s a little bit dull this year,” said Saranac Lake artist Sandra Hildreth. “It’s still pretty, but the colors are subdued.”

Like hunters in pursuit of a trophy stag, members of the artistic community will crisscross the park in search of either brilliance or some outstanding angle or feature. “I always look for composition first,” said Hildreth, who is active in the region’s plein air scene. “The composition has to be good and interesting before I consider the color.”

Artists, of course, can play on subtle color and unique natural vignettes. “One year I was literally driving around looking for color,” before finding the perfect yellow reflecting in an Adirondack pond, Hildreth said. This year, she believes, the wet summer led to some isolated early color, but then the dry late summer and early fall did its damage.

Wilmington photographer Johnathan Esper agreed. “For the quality of color you need moisture and you need cool nights,” he said. “Without that, you won’t get those reds.”

The season had a false start early because of relatively cool and moist weather, but September was warm and dry. By the time October rolled around the weather became more seasonable, “but it was too little too late to salvage those reds,” Esper said.

Saranac Lake photographer Mark Kurtz said he has enough broad, bold autumn panoramas to last him, but he still takes his camera on fall hikes in case something catches his attention. “I don’t pay a  lot of attention to the conditions, but I do like to go for a hike or a paddle and see what’s out there,” he said. “This year they do seem a little bit dull to me; the colors are there, but they’re just not vibrant.”

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Why the dull leaf season?

Heilman, who takes all theories on fall color with a grain of salt, including his own, says a lack of sunshine, i.e. cloud cover, can also affect the color, usually in a good way.

In the greatest years, like 1997 and 2015, the leaves changed all at once, creating a more brilliant landscape, and Heilman believes the reason might have been cloudy conditions. The West-Central Adirondacks, which typically have more brilliance, also have more clouds, he said.

Light effects color in other ways, meaning it’s not always the leaves’ fault. Going back to color-wheel basics, an overwhelmingly blue sky, Heilman said, can wash out the brilliant yellows of birch and aspen, because blue + yellow = green.

Climate change, which brings with it more humidity and wildflower smoke, can have an effect as well. “If you’re up on a mountaintop there can be enough haze in the air that it dulls the photo,” Kurtz said.

Heidi Gero, an artist based in Au Sable Forks, agreed that moisture, or lack of it, seems to be a leading leaf indicator. “If we don’t have enough rain the leaves are stressed and it affects the color,” she said. 

Still, it’s all relative. “Fall is my favorite time of the year,” said Gero, who likes to play tourist and visit local attractions like the river gorges along the Ausable. “It’s a wonderful time to be in the Adirondacks.”

She looks for pretty and interesting scenes, such as colored leaves under a skim of ice, and imagines what colors she might mix on her palette to create a color that you would only see in nature.

“It gives artists a chance to experiment and appreciate color and textures on another level,” she said.

So in a down year for color, artists just have to try a little harder and be a little creative, which is OK with them. “If it wasn’t challenging, what would be the fun?” Heilman said.