Expose yourself more – snow photography tips

Yes, I mean it.  You need more exposure!

With winter in full force in much of the world, I thought I’d give you a reminder about the pitfalls of winter photography and a few snow photography tips that have really helped me.

It’s really go nothing to do with what you might think – cold weather, howling wind, frost etc., but more that snow is one of the MOST reflective subjects you’ll ever photograph. Recalling my high school biology, I think it reflects something like 98% of the light that falls on it.

Snow Photography Tips #1:

Your first snow photography tip consist of first, understanding EXPOSURE in a highly reflective environment.  But shooting in snow, again it’s not what you might think.  Out intuition tells us that if there is too much light we should underexpose, to compensate right?

Not for snow and other highly reflective subjects. Think about this for a moment: are all your snow photos  a little grey looking? What colour is the actual snow in  your photo? It’s blazing white in real life, so why is is grey in your picture? Are skin tones of people in your photos a little blueish – and I don’t mean blue as in frozen!

What’s happening is your light meter is being tricked by the brightness. The most important photographic tip is to understand this metering concept. Your light meter is programmed to average out the scene to give you a “normal” exposure under normal light conditions.  Average in a camera equated to the amount of light reflected by a surface that is about 18% grey.

Hey! Isn’t that about the shade of the snow in your photos?! I think we’re on to something here 🙂

So, to compensate for this need of your camera to average things  out, we need to OVEREXPOSE 1.5 to two stops extra exposure to ensure the snow appears pure white.

Try it!  Some more advances point & shoot cameras will have a snow mode or a beach mode.  Try these and note the difference in your images. SEE MORE OF MY SHOW PHOTOGRPAHY TIPS HERE.