Daily Photo – Snow at Pukehiki Library

Five Things to Think About When Photographing Snow

A few emails have arrived asking for some tips on photographing snow, particularly from people who aren’t necessarily out there with a camera every day, but who suddenly find themselves surrounded by a winter wonderland with the family in tow and want to come home with a few good photographs.

So, while this isn’t quite my usual sort of post, I thought I’d put together a few things that might help.

Why is my beautiful white snow grey?

This is probably the most common problem. You look out at a landscape covered in beautiful, clean, white snow, take a photograph and discover that your camera has decided the snow should be a rather miserable shade of grey.

The reason is that your camera is trying to be clever. It sees all that bright snow and thinks there’s far too much light, so it darkens the whole photograph. If you’re using a phone, try tapping on the snow and then sliding the exposure control slightly brighter. If you’re using a camera with manual controls, try increasing your exposure compensation a little.

The important thing is to check the photograph afterwards. If the snow looks grey, brighten it up. If it starts looking like a glowing white sheet with no detail at all, you’ve probably gone too far.

Why does everyone look so dark?

This is another common one, especially when you’re photographing the family standing in front of a large snowy landscape. The camera sees all that bright white snow, exposes for it and leaves the people looking rather like silhouettes.

If you can, position your family so they’re facing towards the light (but be carefully to not have them facing directly into it as everyone will be squinting) rather than having the brightest part of the sky behind them. Your phone’s setting can also help balance the bright snow with the darker faces.

And don’t be afraid of using the flash. Yes, I know, you’re standing outside in broad daylight and it seems completely unnecessary, but a little flash can add some light to people’s faces and make a surprisingly big difference. Photographers will often use flasgh outside in daylight, even if it’s just a little for the eyes!

Why does my snow photograph look so boring?

This is perhaps the biggest challenge of all. Snow can look absolutely magical when you’re standing in it, but photographs have an annoying habit of reducing all that magic to a large white expanse.

The answer is to look for something that breaks up all that whiteness. A person standing in the landscape, a row of trees, a fence disappearing into the distance, a brightly coloured jacket or even a set of footprints can give the photograph some shape and, importantly, a sense of scale.

If you’re photographing the family, don’t necessarily line everyone up and tell them to smile. Photograph them making a snowman, throwing snowballs or trudging through the snow. The snow is the setting. What your family is doing in it is the story.

Where did all the snowflakes go?

If it’s actually snowing, you might expect your photograph to be filled with beautiful, delicate snowflakes. Instead, you look at the result and wonder where they’ve all gone.

Snowflakes can be surprisingly difficult to photograph, especially with a phone. They can be almost invisible against a bright background.

Try finding a darker background, such as trees or a building, which will make the falling snow much easier to see. If you’re photographing children running around, jumping or throwing snowballs, use your phone’s burst or action mode if it has one. With a camera, a faster shutter speed will help freeze all that activity.

Of course, you could also embrace the blur. Sometimes a slightly blurred photograph of a child charging through the snow tells you far more about the day than a technically perfect photograph ever could.

Don’t forget that your camera is getting cold and wet

This is the one that can turn a lovely day in the snow into a very expensive trip to the camera shop.

Snow and cameras aren’t necessarily natural friends. Keep an eye on moisture getting onto your lens and, if you’re using a camera, remember that batteries don’t particularly enjoy the cold. Keeping a spare battery in an inside pocket can be a very good idea.

The other thing to remember is condensation. If you’ve been outside in the cold and then bring your camera straight into a warm house, moisture can form inside and around it. If possible, put the camera into a sealed bag before going inside and allow it to warm up gradually.

Bonus Tip: Take Lots of Photographs

Allow yourself to play! Try different settings, different angles, different focal lengths and different ways of using the light. Don’t just take one or two photographs and then move on. Take twenty. Take fifty. Take a hundred if you want to. Once you’re finished, you can always go back through them and delete the ones you don’t want.

If you take two photographs, you’ve got a fairly slim chance of getting exactly the photograph you’re hoping for. Take twenty, however, and your odds of finding a good one are suddenly much better. And if you’re running out of space on your digital memory, have a quick look through the images and delete a few of the obvious rejects.

As an example, I took nearly forty photographs of this particular tree in the Strath Taieri, moving around to all sorts of different positions, trying different focal lengths and making adjustments to the exposure and the way I was working with the light. I wanted to make sure I had the photograph I was looking for. By the time I’d finished, I was fairly cold, but fortunately the car’s heating was more than sufficient to warm me up again.

And that’s really the beauty of digital photography. You can experiment, make mistakes and try again. The only thing it costs you is a little time, and perhaps a few gigabytes of storage.

And finally, probably my best piece of advice is this: don’t spend the entire day worrying about getting the perfect photograph.

Enjoy the snow.