How to Photograph Winter Scenes

Too many great winter scenes are never photographed Unfortunately a lot of great winter images are never shot. The reason for this is the unpleasant cold and sometime wet weather conditions keeping photographers inside. Another reason is the technical aspects. Photographing winter scenes is challenging and often the images is exposed wrong giving a too dark and dull image. Both the weather conditions and the technical parts fortunately can be dealt with. Know how to photograph winter scenes and you will soon be shooting great winter images.

Proper clothing for a cold winter day First and very important when you go out for winter photography is to use proper warm clothing. Wear appropriate winter shoes with good grip on snow and ice, because you do not want to fall. Good footwear not only keeps you warm, but you will also be able to climb difficult winter trail for better vantage points. You will also need a pair of warm gloves preferably a slim type because you will need to operate the cameras settings.

Know your camera and take control Winter photography is as mentioned challenging, but by knowing the right tricks it can easily be coped with. The most important is to take control of your camera and use manual settings. Learn how you use your cameras manual exposure settings as well as the exposure compensation. Read the camera manual before you go out because you do not want to fiddle with the setting in the cold.

Protect your equipment Make sure that your camera is protected from snow and water. Put the camera in a large Ziploc bag and cut a hole for the lens. Condense on the camera lens is a common problem when photographing outside in cold weather. Most important is to avoid warming and cooling your camera because this will cause condensation. In the case you get snow on your camera or lens, don’t try to blow the snow off with your breath as this will certainly cause condense. The condense will disappear with time so be patient and do not try to wipe it off.

Cold is tough for the batteries Most cameras will work fine in very cold temperatures. The big challenge is the batteries which is not as durable in cold conditions as in the warm. Differently from the camera and lenses, the battery should be kept as warm as possible at all times. You can do this by keeping them in the car if you have one or inside your warm clothes near to the body. Keeping an extra battery is also a good advise when shooting in cold weather. Nothing is more frustrating than running out of batteries when you have the perfect subject in sight.

How to expose in snow and bright light conditions In snow photography most of the landscape is white or extremely bright. A camera meter is designed to evaluate lights and darks, average them and give you a neutral grey or middle tone neutral reading. In snow photography the meter is fooled to think it is measuring lights and darks and then giving a neutral grey reading. As most of the frame is white or very bright in snow conditions the meter will underexpose and the snow will end up grey and not white.

Most of us want the snow to appear white. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to prevent the snow getting grey. You will need to overexpose from the meter reading. A good idea is to switch the camera to Manual mode and shoot the images overexposed. Alternatively you can use the camera exposure compensation. The amount of overexposure necessary varies depending on the lighting conditions and how white you want the snow to look. As a rule of thumb you can try with 1 – 2 1/2 stops. A great thing with digital cameras is the possibilities of viewing the image on the LCD immediately. Use the LCD and make corrections.

As soon you master how to expose when shooting winter scenes you will find a lot of potential winter motives. Why not shoot frozen ice, frozen waterfalls, even a grey winter sky can be a nice motive converted to black and white. Snow and ice has a lot of textures and patterns so pick up your macro lens and go exploring.