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During the later weeks of autumn the oaks begin to take the show, along with a few other late-turning species. There were patches of sun this day, and I wanted to capture some of the light variations on the foliage. I used a Schneider B+W Kaesemann circular polarizer to darken the sky and to remove some of the specular reflections from the foliage. The cost of using the polarizer, of course, is the light loss, which can amount to almost 2 stops. I didn't want the quickly moving clouds to change during the exposure, so a slight compromise in foreground sharpness was sacrificed by using a larger aperture. The resulting exposure time was 1/4 second, preserving the sharpness of the clouds. Waiting for a moment with both sunlight on the distant colorful hillside, framed by the shadow on the near foliage, the exposure was made.