Snow is in the headlines, closing schools in the UK, disrupting holiday travel plans on both sides of the Atlantic over Christmas. It seems that snow is just a logistical nuisance, a trick played on us by fickle weather. Kids love snow though, they see it as the magical thing it is, offering us hundreds of opportunities for play, and with its own ephemeral beauty. Next time it snows, grab your camera and your kids and take the time to see snow through their eyes. Snow can be so beautiful and when you look at it through your lens you are bound to get some great photos, maybe even some wonderful art photos that you can put onto canvas to decorate your home.
Snowy scenes have their own mystique, a special atmosphere that makes even familiar landscapes interesting and special. Snow transforms the everyday streets of your town, turning it into a mysterious fairyland. The dullest scene sparkles with a blanket of snow. Capturing a snowy scene on camera gives you the chance to produce gorgeous art landscape photos that will look great blown up large on canvas to decorate your home with throughout the year.
You might want to concentrate on taking landscapes when a new snowfall is still pristine and unmarked, early in the morning, when a few rays of sun break through the clouds and turn icicles to diamonds. Or photograph your kids playing in the snow. Place them as small figures in the landscape to set the scene and then take plenty of photos of them close-up too. Gloved hands making snowballs, cheeks glowing in the cold air, frosty breath curling around them, the exhilaration of a toboggan ride.
The biggest problem with photographing snow is that the camera meter is tricked by so much white and can give you completely the wrong exposure. Plus on a sunny day all the reflections and shadows can look blue and the white balance is thrown out. To help get great snow photos try some of the following:
• Some digital cameras have a winter or snow setting to help get the right exposure.
• On cloudy days you can use the automatic cloudy setting, available on many digital cameras to get the correct white balance, but you may still need to experiment with the exposure to get a good image.
• Try using spot metering to get the correct exposure, centering it on a patch of clean snow.
• Or start off by taking a set of photos where you use the +1/-1 exposure compensation button at half stop intervals until you get a photo that looks just right. Either bracket all your photos over three half stops, or just set your camera to the +/- setting that looks the best on your test shot. But keep an eye on the images you take, as you may need to adjust the setting in brighter or more shadowy settings.
• Of course you can still adjust the color and exposure later in Photoshop, but it helps to get as good an original image as possible, especially when you want to enlarge the picture to put onto canvas.
Last of all, keep yourself, your kids and your camera warm when you are photographing in the snow. Cold can stop the batteries working and create condensation to fog up the lens, so keep the camera close to your body and wrap up warm.
Mum and Photographer
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