The winter months are full of fun outdoors. And like any time of year, it can be tempting to want to pull out your camera and take some pics of what’s happening. But, when trying to photograph events taking place in the snow, such as skiing, snowboarding, sledding, and skating, it can sometimes result in overblown or washed out pics.
This is because all that snow is reflecting light, essentially washing out your images before you even take them. It is possible, though, to take great pictures even in the snowiest conditions, as long as you plan ahead.
Set Your White Balance
Cameras don’t see in colors the way that people do. So, when they come up against a lot of snow in their field, they assume that the color is actually gray. To compensate for all this gray, a lot of cameras will add blue to your image. This is what can sometimes make a photo taken on a snowy day have a strange blue cast to it.
The way around this is to set your camera’s white balance up before you start snapping. Just adjust it to around 6,500 Kelvin to adjust for your camera’s tendency to blue things up, and you’re good to go.
Overexpose
It may sound a little silly with all of that bright light bouncing around, but another way to compensate for your camera’s seeing the snow as grey is to overexpose your image just slightly. If you’re not taking a photo of a person, and are trying for a nature scene instead, go ahead and set your exposure just a hair longer than you would ordinarily to help whiten up the snow in your image.
Shoot in RAW
Sometimes no matter how many precautions you take, you end up needing to color correct later. The easiest way to do this is to shoot your images in RAW, rather than having them convert straight to a .jpg. This gives you an advantage when it comes to balancing things later, and lets you pull out shadows and highlights a little bit easier, particularly if they got lost in all the snow-generated light.
Keep an Extra Battery
You may not know it, but you aren’t the only one out there feeling the cold. Your camera’s battery will be feeling it as well, and it will react by losing its charge a lot faster than normal. So, you may not get in a full day’s worth of photography like you had planned. Make sure you have a second battery at hand, and that you take some steps to keep it warm in order to ensure that you can capture all the images you had planned.
Get More Out of Your Winter Photography
Just because it’s cold outside doesn’t mean you need to give up your hobby. Use these tips to get more out of your cold weather and snowy photography, and keep taking great shots all year long.
and remember ... have fun out there!