If you've been thinking about booking a portrait session, autumn is the answer.

Not because spring and summer aren't beautiful. They are, and the light in a Scottish summer is extraordinary in its own way. But autumn gives you something the other seasons don't. It gives you the golden hour at a civilised time of day, arriving earlier and lower and warmer every week from August through to October, until the light is doing things that make even the most ordinary field look like a painting.

The quality of October light.

By October in Scotland, the sun is clearing the horizon at a low angle and staying low all day. At 3pm it's already heading toward dusk. The shadows are long and directional. The colours in the landscape, the browning bracken, the turning leaves, the particular orange-gold of Scottish autumn grass, work with that light to create a warmth that no filter or editing can fully replicate.

I've photographed in many seasons and many latitudes. October in central Scotland is where I'd choose to be with a camera, every time.

What it does for animals.

Dogs look extraordinary in autumn light. The warm tones complement almost every coat colour, the chestnut spaniels, the golden retrievers, the dark chocolate Labradors, the silver-grey lurchers. The low sun picks out texture in fur in a way that flat summer light doesn't. A dog mid-run through fallen leaves in October afternoon light is one of the most beautiful things I know how to photograph.

Horses are even more dramatic. A grey horse backlit by an October sunset becomes something otherworldly, the silver coat catching the gold, the mane lifted in a breeze that the lens holds in a single frozen second. I have photographs from autumn sessions that clients tell me they look at every day. I believe them. I'd look at them every day too.

The yard in autumn.

There's also something particular about the equine world in autumn. The shows are winding down. The pressure of the competition season is lifting. The horses are coming in earlier, the evenings at the yard are quieter, and the relationship between horse and owner shifts slightly, less performance, more companionship.

That shift shows in photographs. The autumn yard session, with the horse relaxed and the owner present without an agenda, produces a different quality of image to the summer show-day photograph. More honest. More settled. More like the relationship actually is on an ordinary Tuesday evening.

The autumn session gives you the relationship as it actually is not performed for the occasion just present.

Book the autumn session.

Autumn is also the season when people start thinking about Christmas, about the gifts they want to give, the things they want to mark before the year ends. A portrait session in October gives you the images in time for Christmas, the prints in time for the wall, the album in time to give to someone who will love it.

The discovery call is free, twenty minutes, and where we figure out whether the timing is right. For most people who've been thinking about it, autumn is exactly the right time.

The light is waiting. Come and find it.

With muddy boots and a full heart,

Jules x