Great Places to Photograph Fall Colors in Ohio

Hi Everyone, well it's that time of year again that all photographers like, Fall Color season and the question always gets asked.... "Where's the best place to take fall color shots?"  I'm going to list some of my favorite spots and I hope you will contribute you're favorite spots as well. Best place to post your favorite spots would be on the Cool Photo Ops Group page on Facebook

The only other question is WHEN to go shooting, every year the leaves peek at different times, you can use this site to see when the best time is to shoot in Ohio

Ohio Fall Color Report

At the bottom of this post I'll have a Google Map with direction to all the sites posted, included will be GPS coordinates in the Decimal Degree format, if you use a different format make sure you convert before entering the info in your GPS.

Conkles Hollow in Hocking Hills

While the whole Hocking Hills State Park is great for fall colors, my favorite place is the rim trail at Conkles Hollow. When you enter Conkle's Hollow head up the stairs on your right to get to the rim trail, there's lots of cool overlooks once you get up there.

 Click on the photo to see more Hocking Hills photos

Mt Jeez

Mt Jeez is located across from Malabar Farms and offers great views of the farm and the valley below, it's located SE of Mansfield
Mt Jeez is located up a gravel road off Pleasant Valley Rd. RT303
GPS: 40.653240, -82.386633

Click the photo to see more of Mt Jeez

Cuyahoga Valley National Park and Cleveland MetroParks

There's lots of great place to take Fall Color photos in the CVNP and Cleveland MetroParks, I'll list a few of my favorites here:

Bridal Veil Falls and Tinker's Creek Gorge Overlook

Get great shots of the Tinker's Creek Gorge then head down the road and get some shots of Bridal Veil Falls


Click the photo to see more of Bridal Veil Falls

Tinker's Creek Nature Preserve

Don't confuse this with the Tinker's Creek Gorge above, this is a totally different park. The parking lot for the nature preserve is pretty small, it might hold about 8 cars and that includes handicap parking. The Seven Ponds hiking trail is great for fall color photos, with all of the ponds you can get some great shots of the leaves reflecting in the water.
Click the photo to see more of Tinker's Creek Nature Preserve

Well there's a few for starters, other great places are Blue Hen Falls, Brandywine Falls, Sylvan Pond, Rocky River Metropark, North and South Chagrin Metroparks and many more.

Here's a Google Map of the sites listed above:


View Fall Color Cool Photo Ops in a larger map

  I'll be posting more fun places to take Fall Color photos on the Cool Photo Ops Facebook Group so be sure and check it out. Everyone is welcome to join in the fun!!!

Cool Photo Op - October Full Moon Rising over Cleveland 10/18 to 10/20

Wanna get a great shot of the full moon rising over Cleveland?  Well you'll have you're chance from October 18th to October 20th. Last Saturday some photographer friends and I got the moon rising over Cleveland from the upper level of Edgewater Park, if you missed out on that Cool Photo Op you might want to meet up with us on one of the days the Full Moon rises over the city in October.

Here a a few shots from last Saturday....



If you'd like to try getting some photos like those then please join us for the October Cool Photo Op of the Full Moon rising over Cleveland, you'll have three chances to get the moon rising over Cleveland from Friday October 18 to Sunday October 20th each day the Moon will rise in a different spot over the city and there are better locations to photograph the moon from depending on the night. Once again we will use the great program The Photographer's Ephemeris to determine where the best location to shoot the Full Moon will be.
This program is great for planning your shoots and the desktop version is free!!!  Anyway lets look at each night and see where we want to shoot the moon from.

Friday 18th
Sunset: 18:40
Moonrise: 18:30

The timing of the sunset to moonrise is perfect on Friday, the sun will set 10 minutes after the moon rises, that means the city will be lit with low evening light as the moon is rising, remember the the moon rise time of 18:30 is at a flat horizon, we will have to wait a few minutes for the moon to appear from behind the tall buildings of downtown. Now where will the best location be???? Well looking at the Photographer's Ephemeris Map the best location would probably be the bluff over Perkin's Beach which is just to the west of Edgewater Park. As you can see from the map below, from Perkins Beach the Moon will rise to the North of the Terminal Tower.  If you wanted you could take some shots from Edgewater like we did last Saturday however the Moon would rise behind the Terminal Tower and by the time we would see it would be to the right of the Tower which is still a nice shot.  I'm going for the Perkin's Beach location on Friday myself.  The light blue line is where the moon will rise.

Location: Perkin's Beach on Friday Night

Saturday
Sunset: 18:39
Moonrise: 19:05

 On Saturday the moon rises about 25 minutes after the sun sets, so the city will be dark except for the lights in the buildings and you can get some cool shots of the Terminal Tower lit up. The Moon will rise further north on Saturday. North of the Key Tower to be exact. Best location on Saturday is from the Bluff in Edgewater where we took the photos from last Saturday. Since the moon rises more North of the city on Saturday we will have more hang time of the moon over the center part of the city. Here's the map:

Location Upper Level of Edgewater Park on Saturday Night

Note: You could also shoot from Perkin's Beach on Saturday, but the moon would rise a little farther North of the City about where City Hall is.

Sunday
Sunset: 18:37
Moonrise 19:44

I look at Sunday as the makeup date if the weather doesn't cooperate on Friday or Saturday. On Sunday the moon will rise a little farther North than it does on Saturday when shooting from the Upper Level of Edgewater Park.

So there you have pick the date and time that's convenient for you, I plan on going on both Friday and Saturday, the lighting and location of the moonrise will be different on both days so you'll get a nice variety of photos if you go both nights.

Moonrise Photo Tips and stuff to bring:

1. A flashlight so you can see what you're doing after the sun sets
2. A remote cable release if you have one
3 A sturdy tripod and DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT RAISING YOUR CENTER POST!!! Raising the center post is very unstable and will cause camera movement, its very windy by the lake and you will be using some long exposures, so you want your camera to be as stable as possible.

For the best quality shoot at low ISO's of 100 or 200, if you want to keep the exposure times down you could go as high as 400 ISO.

I like to get a lot of the building and sometimes the Lake in focus so I like to shoot at an aperture of around F7 or F8, if you close down more you end up with some really long exposure times which would be ok and a still night, but if the wind is blowing it could cause some blurry photos. Shooting at wider apertures or even wide open is ok too, but you'll have less depth of field.

Anyway hope to see a lot of you down by the Lake for this Cool Photo Op!  Everybody is welcome to join in the fun, bring family and friends if you want!

And if you enjoy going on fun casual photo ops like this then check out the Cool Photo Ops Facebook Group, where we post cool places to take photos in Ohio and beyond, everyone is welcome to join in the fun from beginning photographers to more experienced photographers the only prerequisite is Ya Gotta Have Fun!!!!!

Here's a map of shooting locations and where to park:



View Cool Photo Ops Oct Full Moonrise Over Cleveland in a larger map

Full Moon Over Cleveland from Edgewater Park 9/19 to 9/21

Hey Photographers, there will be a Full Moon rising over Cleveland this week, the actual Full Moon will be on Thursday, but will be 99.7% full on Friday and 97% Full on Saturday. So what day is the best to shoot the Full Moon, well that the depends the best time wise is Thursday, but the best location wise is Saturday. Lets look at this using the Photographer's Ephemeris.....

Thursday:
    Sunset is 19:28
    Moonrise is 19:25

     So this is ideal lighting the moon will actually rise a few minutes before the sun sets so you'll get the last rays of the sun lighting the city at the moon rises.  Now for the downside the location of the moonrise will be south of the city as we see below.  The light blue line is where the moon will rise on Thursday

Full Moon Rise on Thursday - moonrise is south of the city.

Friday
   Sunset is 19:27
   Moonrise is 19:58

 The sun will be setting 31 minutes before the moonrises which isn't as good for the lighting as Thurday but the moonrise will move farther north but still be south of the Terminal Tower

Full Moon Rise on Friday - Moon rises closer to the city but south of Terminal Tower

Saturday
    Sunset is 19:25
    Moonrise is 20:33

   Now the moon will rise a little more than an hour after sunset, however this is the day for the best location of the moonrise. The moon will rise on Saturday over Public Square.

Full Moon Rise on Saturday - Moon Rises over Public Square

So there are your Moonrise options, Thursday is the best for the light, but the worst for the moon's location and Saturday is the best for the location of the Moonrise, I think I would go for Saturday for the best photo of the moon over Cleveland. The only other problem is the weather, you sure don't want to go if the sky is cloud covered.

As you can see the Photographer's Ephemeris is a great tool for planning your shoot and the desktop version is FREE, get it here.... The Photographer's Ephemeris  they also have apps for smartphones

Hey Photographers if you like going on fun casual photo ops, then you might want to check out the Cool Photo Ops Facebook Group where we post fun places to take photos in Ohio and beyond. Everyone is welcome to join in the fun.

Next Cool Photo Op is the Ravenna Balloon A-Fair