Don't be afraid of the fog. He often gives autumn and winter pictures a special, mysterious touch. When the sun breaks through, the fog can shimmer from pale blue to golden yellow. It is best to take photos with backlighting and turn off the autofocus. You should also control the exposure manually. Pictures with a long exposure time, but then from a tripod to avoid a high ISO setting, are often very nice.
As soft as the light is in the morning and in the evening, the sun can shine strong in autumn and winter at noon and lead to hard shadows. Use this time for a walk in the forest. There the midday hours are exactly the right time to catch brightly colored leaves. This looks all the more powerful in the glistening light.
The concept of the blue hour describes the special coloration of the sky during the twilight period after sunset and before nightfall. The light breaks in the atmosphere, this creates the special color, by the way, also at dawn. In photography, the blue hour is used frequently and with pleasure, not only because of the beguiling blue sky. Compared to recordings in absolute darkness, the surroundings are still slightly lighted and visible at the blue hour. The different color temperatures (blue of the sky, orange of the light bulbs, turquoise of the fluorescent tubes) often make such photos unusually colorful.
You will not often find perfect lighting conditions in autumn and winter, so there is a good chance that you will have to rework. In RAW format you can lighten areas that are too dark, repair shadows or correct eroded skies and correct parts of the image that are too dark much more easily than with JPGs.
The most important equipment for photos in the dark season is the tripod. This allows you - see above - to work with long focal lengths and long exposures. It also helps to prevent image noise, which would arise if you were taking photos by hand and would necessarily have to set a high ISO for this.