Iconic Photographs

Photographing in the snow.

This image may not be the best example of a successful snow scene, but it will serve to demonstrate what results are possible. This was taken at about mid-day under cloudy skies at 1/100 sec and f4.0 with white balance in auto mode.  As can be clearly seen, the snow is a little dark in color, but at least I avoided the blueish cast so often attained when not paying enough attention to EV in this kind of situation.

Photographing snow on a cloudy day, as was the conditions for the image above, is the easiest to work in, as the “Cloudy” setting on a digital camera will produce a quite acceptable image. But adjusting the EV by -0.7 or -1.0 may make a noticeable improvement.

But photographing snow on a sunny day when the sky could be blue and the snow a vivid white is a much more difficult exercise and white balance becomes more important.  In this situation, it is necessary for the white balance to be set using the Manual or Custom mode by pointing the camera to a white patch of snow and setting the balance, thus achieving a correct rendering of colors.  Make sure the snow patch is clean with no shadows!  Do not over-expose and use the histogram to confirm this.

Since digital photographs do not cost anything (after equipment purchase and before printing),  results can be instantly viewed and criticized.  So it pays to experiment with different settings.

Now all we need is a little snow!

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