How to photograph winter

How to photograph snow

• Despite the current big freeze, reliable snowfall each winter is a thing of the past in the UK. So, as photographers, we need to make the most of it when it does arrive! There’s a wealth of different pictures out there. You’ll need to head out early in order to capture fresh, clean, footprint-free snowfall. Getting out early also means you can make the most of the magical light at dawn – the contrast of warm, golden skies and cool, blue-ish snow makes for powerful pictures. Make sure your camera is prepared for the cold, and that you've charged the battery the night before.

• Stark white skies and snow-covered scenes can create eerie, atmospheric, high-key shots which look great in black and white. You don't have to try and squeeze everything into the scene for impact – less is often more. Use a mid-range zoom lens to isolate interesting trees, snow-covered rooflines, strongly defined statues and other graphic elements in a scene against a clean white sky. If the white area dominates in the photograph, make sure you check for underexposure after taking a test shot (see below). You can also recreate the high-key effect for your snow shots in Photoshop.

• You don’t have to just shoot a snow-covered scenic or cityscape. Think outside the box to make memorable pictures. Snow is a marvellous blank canvas, perfect for framing objects emerging from it. Also, look for splashes of colour to frame against a backdrop of clean snow. Red objects create a winning combination with white, so look out for post boxes, traditional telephone boxes and road signs.

• If it's snowing, experiment with various shutter speeds for different effects. A slow shutter speed will allow the movement of the snow to be recorded, causing the attractive 'streaking' effect often seen in winter shots. Work in Shutter Priority mode to enable you to try different settings quickly. The actual shutter speed you need will depend on the the conditions – if there's barely a breath of wind, you may be looking in the region of 1/15 sec or slower. If it's blowing a gale, look for faster shutter speeds.

• Think twice about using flash if it is snowing. The light will hit falling snowflakes close the the flash and create distracting out-of-focus bright spots. This effect could be worked into a creative shot though...

• Winter is a time of low, raking sunlight, which can bring out the texture in snow – get down low to make the most of it. Low sunlight also means long shadows – use them to lead the viewer from the foreground to the subject and add depth to the shot. Shadows on snow can make interesting abstract pictures in their own right. Position yourself so that you and your tripod aren't casting shadows across the picture – stand in an existing shadow so that your outline is hidden.

• When you use rectangular filters (eg, Lee, Cokin, Singh-Ray), there may not be enough space to include a lens hood in order to prevent lens flare. Use your hand instead or, ideally, compose your picture then use your body to shade the lens once the camera is on a tripod. Expect hazy, low contrast pictures if you do neither.

 

Getting snow exposures right
The key thing to remember when shooting snow is that it can throw camera meters and autoexposure systems into a spin. It essentially boils down to this: your camera wants to make everything a mid-tone value. Rather than measuring the light hitting the scene in front of it, it measures the light reflected by it. If everything's nice and mid-toned (a grey car parked on a green field), no problem. But what about a dark scene, such as a black cat in a coal cellar? The camera wants to make it mid-toned, so the shot looks washed out. And those brilliant white snow scenes you're shooting? Same idea – the camera wants to make it mid-toned, so the shot is underexposed, and ends up flat and grey.

To bring back the brightness to a snow scene you're likely to have to help the camera along. Here are three techniques that all have the same result – white snow, rather than grey:

1. Meter off the snow and 'overexpose'
By metering off a bright area of snow and dialling in positive exposure compensation, you'll bring back its whiteness. First, focus on the subject, then zoom into a bright area of snow in the scene. Use the exposure compensation (+/-) button to add anywhere between + 2/3 to + 1 2/3 EV, depending on the brightness of the snow – the brighter it appears, the more you need to add. Then, take a meter reading and press the autoexposure lock (AE-L) button. Alternatively, switch to Manual exposure mode and just dial in the correct 'overexposure' aperture and shutter speed combination.

2. Meter off a mid-tone and 'underexpose'
Instead of metering the snow, lock in a meter reading taken off a mid-tone value in the scene – such as a grey rock, building or pavement, if any are visible! There's no need to dial in any positive exposure compensation here – with no highlights to fool the camera's metering system into underexposure, the snow will automatically be rendered bright. You may in fact have to dial in a little underexposure to stop any highlights in the snow from 'clipping' (being rendered as burned-out, detail-free areas). Check the histogram – if the graph touches the right-hand side, use the exposure compensation button to dial in anywhere between -1/3 to -1 EV from the initial midtone meter reading.

3. The easy way – just use the histogram
In the days of film, it was important to be precise with the exposure of a snow scene – mistakes could be costly and infuriating! It's just as important to get it right in-camera with digital, but having a histogram takes much of the confusion away. If the shot doesn't rely on split-second timing, simply point the camera at the scene, take a test shot and check the histogram. Is the graph simply humped around the centre of the histogram? Add a little positive exposure compensation to bring back the brightness. Does the graph appear to fall off the right-hand edge? Add some negative exposure compensation.

The amount of bright snow in this shot has caused the camera to underexpose – the right of the histogram is bare.

Dialling in 2/3 of positive exposure compensation has brightened the whites without losing detail.

Camera manufacturers use different metering systems and exposure algorithms in their DSLRs, with more expensive models offering increasing sophistication. You may find that you need very little or no exposure compensation at all for a snow scene. You may in fact find that your camera is so good at 'opening up' to bring back the brightness of a snow scene, that you have to dial in a little negative exposure to stop the highlights blowing! Get to know your camera and how it reacts to scenes with different light levels and degrees of snow cover. Shoot in RAW rather than JPEG as well, to enable you to fine-tune the exposure later.