Fall Activities With Kids in Nashville — and How to Photograph the Fun

Fall in Middle Tennessee is basically designed for children. There are pumpkins to carry, corn mazes to get lost in, miniature trains to ride, costumes to wear, animals to meet and approximately 700 opportunities for someone to become sticky.

It’s also a wonderful time to photograph your kids. Not because you need a perfectly coordinated fall outfit and a child smiling beside a pumpkin. Quite the opposite. The photographs you’ll love later may be the ones of your toddler trying to lift a pumpkin roughly the same size they are. Your six-year-old disappearing into a corn maze. Your child in the Halloween costume they refused to take off for three straight days.

I’ve gathered some of my favorite fall activities with kids in Nashville and Middle Tennessee for 2026 — along with a few professional photographer tricks for capturing the fun while you’re there.

Visit a Nashville Pumpkin Patch — But Don’t Make the Pumpkin the Point

Pumpkin patches give us just about everything we could want for fall photographs: color, texture, open space and children who actually have something interesting to do. In Davidson County, the Nashville Fall Festival in Bellevue runs September 18 through November 1 with a corn maze, pumpkin patch, hayrides, a petting zoo, live music and even a seven-acre sunflower field.

Williamson County families can visit Gentry Farm in Franklin, a historic working farm whose fall activities are especially geared toward toddlers and elementary-age children.

In Rutherford County, Lucky Ladd Farms in Eagleville begins its Fall Harvest Festival September 16 with pumpkins, a corn maze and plenty of farm activities. Walden Pumpkin Farm in Smyrna is another longtime local option for classic fall fun.

And in Maury County, Hidden Bee Pumpkin Patch in Columbia opens September 19 with pumpkins, rescue farm animals, hayrides and a maze.

Photo Tip: Photograph What They’re Doing

This is one of the easiest ways to make better photographs of children: Stop asking them to stop. Instead of saying, “Stand by that pumpkin and smile,” photograph your child searching for one. Photograph the serious inspection. The attempt to pick up one that’s far too heavy. The little hands wrapped around the stem. The wagon they’re determined to pull themselves. And yes, take one smiling-at-the-camera picture for Grandma. Then leave them alone. The photographs that tell the story of childhood usually happen after we stop interrupting it.

Get Lost in a Corn Maze

Corn mazes are almost unfairly good for photographs. At the Nashville Fall Festival, Lucky Ladd Farms and several other Middle Tennessee fall farms, kids can disappear between towering rows of corn while parents attempt to pretend they know where they’re going.

Photo Tip: Get Down to Their Level

Adults naturally photograph children from adult height. Try crouching down instead. Suddenly the corn looks enormous. The path feels like an adventure. You’re photographing the world closer to the way your child experiences it. This works far beyond corn mazes. At a pumpkin patch, festival, playground or even in your own backyard, changing your height can completely change the story in the photograph.

Spend a Day at Cheekwood Harvest in Nashville

Cheekwood Harvest returns September 19 through November 1 this year, transforming the gardens with thousands of pumpkins, a scarecrow trail, Pumpkin Village and a new Marigold River created from thousands of blooms. It’s beautiful. It’s also exactly the kind of place where parents can accidentally spend the entire outing trying to manufacture beautiful pictures. Don’t.

Photo Tip: Look for the Story, Not Just the Face

Your child doesn’t need to look at you for a photograph to matter. Photograph them walking beneath the trees. Looking at a scarecrow. Running toward something they’ve discovered. Holding your partner’s hand. Standing very small in a very big garden. Some of my favorite childhood photographs don’t show a child’s face at all. Many don’t show a smiling child. A photograph can tell us who they were without asking them to perform for it.

Ride the Miniature Trains at Maury County Park

This one is wonderfully different.

The Mid-South Live Steamers Fall Meet runs September 24–26 at Maury County Park in Columbia, when families can ride miniature trains around one of the country’s largest miniature railroad tracks. The rides are free and open to the public. For a train-obsessed little kid, this may qualify as the greatest day of their natural life.

Photo Tip: Photograph the Anticipation

We tend to wait for the Big Thing. The train ride. The birthday candles. The pumpkin. The costume. But watch what happens right before it. The bouncing. The staring. The hand clutching yours while they wait. The enormous eyes when the train first appears. Anticipation is part of the story, too. Sometimes it’s the best part.

Take the Kids to a Fall Festival

There are plenty to choose from around Middle Tennessee this year.

Kidsville Family Festival comes to Nashville’s Centennial Park on September 26 with music, crafts, games, face painting, food trucks and character meet-and-greets.

Downtown Columbia’s Fall Fest-themed First Fridays takes place October 2 with live music, vendors, food trucks and family activities.

Franklin’s enormous PumpkinFest expands to two days this year, October 24–25, with children’s activities, arts and crafts, entertainment and costume contests along Main Street.

And Murfreesboro’s 50th Annual Harvest Days at Cannonsburgh Village takes place October 24 with demonstrations, handmade crafts, music, clogging and blacksmithing.

Photo Tip: Find Better Light Before You Find a Better Background

Fall festivals can be tricky to photograph because they’re often held in the middle of the day. Before worrying about the perfect background, look at your child’s face. If the sun is creating dark eye sockets and harsh shadows, move. The edge of a building, a vendor tent, a large tree or another patch of open shade can make an enormous difference. You don’t need to understand complicated photography terminology. You just need to start noticing light.

Let Little Kids Explore Nature

Not every fall outing needs to be a giant festival.

Maury County’s Timber Tots program is designed for children roughly ages 2–5 and combines sensory play, a nature-themed story and a craft. The September 17 program explores forest animals, with another fall program scheduled for October 15.

Murfreesboro’s Wilderness Station also offers nature programming throughout the season, including its Wild Rumpus on October 14 with a storybook hiking trail, animals, fall games and pumpkin painting.

These smaller experiences may actually give you better opportunities to photograph your child than the enormous festivals do.

Photo Tip: Photograph the Details

Not every picture needs a face. Photograph the muddy shoes. The tiny hand holding an acorn. The leaf collection. The curls at the back of their neck. The paint-covered fingers. The beloved stuffed animal that somehow came along. Years from now, those details can carry an astonishing amount of memory.

Photograph Halloween Before Everyone Loses Their Minds

There are plenty of Halloween activities around Middle Tennessee, including Cannonsburgh Village After Dark October 16–17 and Murfreesboro’s Barfield Bash October 23–24.

Columbia’s Haunting in the District brings family trick-or-treating to downtown Columbia on Halloween night.

And, of course, there is trick-or-treating in your own neighborhood.

Photo Tip: Take the Costume Pictures First

Do yourself a favor. Photograph the costume before trick-or-treating begins. Find decent light. Take a few photographs of the whole costume. Get some details. Take the picture with siblings. Then release the children. From that point forward, photograph Halloween as it actually happens. The sprinting. The candy negotiations. The glow sticks. The increasingly crooked costume. The child who got tired and ended up on Dad’s shoulders. The chocolate-covered face at the end of the night. Perfect is highly overrated.

Don’t Forget the Ordinary Fall Days

You don’t actually need to go anywhere. Some of the photographs your children will treasure someday may happen at home. Carving a pumpkin. Making cookies. Decorating the porch. Jumping in leaves. Reading on the couch. Wearing Halloween pajamas at breakfast. Dragging a blanket into the backyard because apparently that’s where blankets live now.

These are the pictures that formed the idea behind my Everyday Childhood project: learning to notice and photograph the ordinary pieces of childhood while you’re still living them.

Photo Tip: Don’t Clean Everything Up

You are documenting a life, not photographing a furniture catalog. The toys can stay. The half-finished pumpkin can stay. The boots by the door can stay. Sometimes the clutter is part of the story. Twenty years from now, you may be surprised by what you miss.

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How Do You Take Better Fall Pictures of Your Kids?

If you remember nothing else, remember this: Don’t make the photograph more important than the experience.

Let your child explore. Watch for good light. Get down to their level. Photograph little details. Take pictures when they aren’t looking at you. And don’t delete every photograph without a perfect smile. Children have serious faces. Curious faces. Suspicious faces. Wild faces. Completely ridiculous faces. They’re all part of the person you’re trying to remember.

Put the Phone Down Sometimes, Too

I am a photographer, and I absolutely believe parents should photograph their own children. A lot. Your phone should be full of ordinary Tuesdays, crooked Halloween costumes, pumpkin-patch dirt and blurry evidence of children who refused to stop moving.

But you should also exist in your family’s photographs. Every so often, it’s worth handing the job to someone else. There’s a difference between documenting childhood as you’re living it and intentionally creating artwork from this season of your family’s story. I think families deserve both.

Brown Bunny Photography creates artistic newborn, baby and childhood portraits for families throughout Nashville and Middle Tennessee — including Davidson, Williamson, Maury and Rutherford counties.

When you’re ready to step out from behind the camera and into the story, let’s tell theirs together.