October is the most photographed month of the fall and the easiest to dump. The light is low, the colors do the styling for you, and there is a costume at the end. The risk is looking like everybody else, which one weird slide fixes.
8 things to shoot in October
1. Leaves, but close. Skip the wide park shot everyone posts. Photograph one leaf on a sleeve, on a windshield, in a puddle.
2. Pumpkin patch or farm. Boots in mud, a wheelbarrow, hands holding the smallest pumpkin. Classic for a reason.
3. Fog. Early fog flattens a street into a painting. Shoot it before it burns off around nine.
4. Costume in progress. Half-finished makeup, a wig on a chair, the mirror check. Usually better than the finished photo.
5. Halloween night. Blurry, high-ISO, dark. Leave the grain alone; the mess is the mood.
6. Candles and lamps. This is the month indoor light gets good again. One warm interior shot breaks up a run of outdoor frames.
7. Soup or bake evidence. Something you cooked because it got cold. Catch the steam if you can.
8. Boots and puddles. Feet-on-ground shots hold a fall set together between the bigger frames.
Splitting the month
October usually needs two posts. Foliage and fog belong to the first three weeks; Halloween is its own thing and gets buried if you bolt it onto the end.
If you only post once, put Halloween last and everything else in date order. The costume slide is a strong ending and a weak opener.
Post the foliage dump before the leaves actually drop in your area. A week late and the photos read as somebody else's autumn.
The general rules about slide count, crop and sequencing live on the main photo dump guide, and 30 photo dump ideas covers themes that are not tied to a month.
October photo dump captions
Short and lowercase works best, and one plain word like the month name helps Instagram place the post. A few that fit October:
- october did that
- leaf enthusiast behavior
- cold hands, warm month
- spooky but make it candid
- fog, soup, sweaters
More, grouped by mood: 100+ photo dump captions.
FAQ
Should Halloween photos be their own post?
If you have more than six good ones, yes. Otherwise close the October dump with them, since the costume slide makes a strong ending.
How do I make fall photos look less generic?
Change the distance. Everyone shoots foliage from twenty feet away, so shoot it from six inches instead, or put a person doing something ordinary in the frame.
More photo dump guides
- Photo dump: what it is and how to make one
- 30 photo dump ideas
- Which photo dump app you need
- 100+ photo dump captions
- Aesthetic photo dump guide
By month
- August photo dump ideas
- September photo dump ideas
- November photo dump ideas
- December photo dump ideas
- January photo dump ideas
By occasion
Get the foliage one up first
Two posts, not one: the fog and the foliage now, the costume at the end of the month.
If the layout is the part that stops you, PSTR assembles the slides from your camera roll and exports them at Instagram sizes. Free on both stores, with the AI layout on iPhone for now and the manual editor on Android.