I’m not done with photography, no, but I am done with worrying about getting out to capture the Autumn colours. Oh sure, I might still get a few more shots before the leaves have all dropped off, but I’m not going to deliberately make an effort to drive around looking for that perfect composition.
This image is a panorama consisting of five vertical shots taken with my iPhone 17 Pro Max. I used the 100 mm Telephoto camera at 48MP and rather than shoot in ProRAW, I shot in HEIC with the AMBER Photograph Style, which gave me a head start with the editing process. I didn’t need to worry that it wasn’t a RAW file because the exposure was very close to perfect. And, of course, I locked focus and exposure before shooting the sequence to ensure the stitching process worked flawlessly. I ruined a pano last year – one that would have been my best of 2024 – because I failed to do that.
The edit was done in Luminar Neo on my Mac. There are no elements that have been cloned out; this is just as it was. There’s a feature in that program called Mystic that, when applied correctly, can give an image a sense of depth. I use that feature with just about every image I edit on the Mac. I’ve also applied the new Light Depth adjustment that is part of the Fall Update. It’s definitely a game changer for landscape edits. I could have done the edit on my iPhone, but I wouldn’t have been able to use these two features and it just wouldn’t have had the same impact.
I’ve seen and heard when a photographer is asked to show the “best” photo they’ve ever taken. Well folks, I dare say you might just be looking at mine. For now.
McMillan Media 
We don’t have autumn colours here in Changsha. We do have one university on the outskirts of the city which has the right sort of trees but none lining the streets or the parks. Jealous haha!!!
It’s a shame you don’t have as many trees, Will, but you do have a lot of things I don’t have here, like trains, buses, architecture. For those things, I am also jealous. 🙂