7 Tips to improve your winter photography

 

The quickest fix for this is to add an exposure compensation of +1 or +2 on your camera, which tells your metering system to take the shot 1 stop brighter. Pow! Your snow is bright and white, your subject has detail and the image pops.

 

For a large part of winter the light is just flat. The grey skies and the white ground create one massive light box with no directional light, detail or contrast.

Thus, during these “flat days” shoot black and white and look for images that have good contrast. If you flick your preview screen to black and white whilst you shoot (if you shoot raw, your images will still come out in color which you edit black and white in post) you can then see if your shot works without relying on colors to pop the subject out from the background or create depth.

There is no going back once you have you walked through fresh snow. Ok, if you are shooting fine art or landscapes for your own enjoyment, then you can clone out the foot prints with photoshop. However, if you are shooting action sports or documenting scenes, then manipulating your image does not give you kudos.

Either way it’s easier to start shooting from far, then work your way closer to your subject.

Using an off camera flash or any other light source behind your subject really pops out the falling snow flakes. It seems a little counter intuitive to light it from the back to highlight the falling snow, however If you light your subject from the front, the falling snow reflects the light which ends up looking like burnt pixels or marks on your lens.  Obviously this is for certain situations that lend themselves to using external light sources, i.e  shooting sports, portraits etc as there are very rare occasions you can find a light source big enough to back light a mountain at the same time being cloudy and dumping snow.

 

Snow is white not yellow (there is an obvious joke here that I will avoid) and usually a tad on the blue side. Adjust your white balance to be a little ‘cool’ in post, thus refelecting that cold ambiance that you felt when standing their capturing your shot.

Shooting raw and adjusting the white ballance in post is a lot quicker and less complicated then spending time figuring out the Kelvin scale on site.

I hope you can use these tips to take awesome winter photos. If you would like to improve your ski and snowboard photography, we have a killer free email course where we walk you through all the parts to getting banger action shots.