We got a somewhat unexpected blizzard this past Sunday that left a few inches of snow covering everything. With this being such a rare event around here, I, like millions of other southerners grabbed my camera and headed outside. I had a few hours because it started melting as soon as the sun came up and by 5:00 PM it was almost all gone.
Taking pictures in the snow is not easy. I had some successes and some abysmal failures, but all photographers know that nobody else ever sees your failures.
Here are a few that came out pretty good. I'll share a few tips that may or may not help next time you decide to take a "snow day"
Click on any picture for a larger image:
I took the above shot with a wide angle lens, I did a few things that helped it turn out pretty good. I like the bush in the foreground as scale reinforcement, sometimes in a wide angle shot everything gets "lost" in all the space, so if you can include a foreground object it can help. Also the sun through the branches was nice. The dog also adds scale.
Get close to your subject. Snow and ice can be very interesting close-up subjects. These were taken with a 100mm macro lens.
Pay attention to white balance. If your camera has automatic white balance, sometimes, snow, or white sand can mess with its mind and give you some weird results. I played with some different settings and found direct sun to be the best setting. Several of these were shot on different settings and are a little too blue. This could easily be fixed in Photoshop, but why not save yourself the trouble and get it perfect in camera?
Don't always trust your camera's auto setting. Consider going manual and expose for the subject that you really want to see. I loved the way this tree was lit by the sun, but it didn't stand out enough with auto. I exposed for the tree manually and the rest fell into place.
Keep an eye out for interesting shapes made more interesting by the snow. This is a piece of lattice on my deck that reminded me of a honeycomb.
Or the juxtaposition of this Japanese lantern, lit by the rising sun, hanging from my deck, in front of the winter wonderland created by the snowy trees in the background.
No matter what the weather conditions are where you live, I'll bet there are plenty of opportunities for some great picture taking.
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