Taking Photos in the Snow
Taking photographs in a largely white landscape is a challenging task. Not only does the reflective nature of snow play havoc with one’s light meter, but it also requires one to use one’s imagination to find interesting compositions. Over these past few months I’ve been in such a predicament, and as such have come up with a few pointers for those who may find themselves in the same.
1. Take Spare Batteries (and Keep Them Warm!)
If shooting with a DSLR, Compact or any other system that allows you to change batteries, it’s a good idea to take spares and keep them warm. Cold weather causes batteries to drain faster than normal inside the camera and even when not in use, they’ll still lose their charge.
To mitigate this from happening, and to save yourself from running out of battery power at a key Kodak Moment, you’re going to want to carry spare batteries. I would advise that you keep them in an inside pocket as close to your body as possible as your body heat will help protect them from discharging and keep you shooting for longer, and you should also keep your spares warm in this way too until you need them.
2. Wear Warm Winter Woolies
This should seem obvious, but sometimes even the obvious needs stating. Even if the sun is shining, you should remember that you are in a frozen tundra, and taking photographs is not the most active of occupations. The secret to staying warm, but not overheating, is layers. Start with thermal base layers and then build up until you have something that is ideally water and windproof. I’ve been caught out numerous times with just a long-sleeved t-shirt and fleece, only for it to tart snowing and before I know it I’m cold and wet, and regretting that I hiked out so far to get the perfect shot. If you can, avoid wearing cotton, as if it gets wet from either rain or snow or if you are sweating you’ll get cold very quickly. Synthetic fleeces or wool are a better option.
3. Bring the Right Gear
If travelling to a cold and snowy place, you’re going to want to bring a camera which allows you to capture those wide, sweeping panoramas of the mountains, and at the same time get you up close and personal with the flora and fauna you may encounter.
Most importantly, you’re going to want to travel light, as there is nothing worse than lugging around multiple lenses and camera bodies, so if you’re using an interchangeable-lens camera, bring a good travel lens with you. Whatever system you use, whether it be an interchangeable lens camera or a bridge or compact camera, be sure that you have enough focal length to capture a range of scenes.
A longtime Sony user, I have always been fond of the e-mount 18-105mm and when I’m not carrying my DSLR, I tend to use Sony’s compact RX100 or even my iPhone. The former gives me almost as much range as the E-Mount does, but in a much smaller body and the results are very similar in quality, whereas with Apple’s latest camera developments (ProRaw and Nightmode, for example) the iPhone can give me equally beautiful shots, so long as they’re destined for Instagram or the like. But then, I’m an old soul and like to use a view finder when composing my images and so more often than not wind up using the RX100.
4. Mobile Photography Accessories
Sometimes I find myself without an actual camera, however - either because I didn’t charge it or because I simply left it in my bag. Recently, I have discovered the virtues of Moment’s series of third-party lenses for the iPhone and these in themselves have opened up a myriad of compositional opportunities. So much, that sometimes I’ve left my camera behind on purpose. Taking up very little space (in fact, I can put them in my jeans pockets) I can carry a wide, telephoto and anamorphic lens with me on a shoot, providing more than enough reach, crop and aspect for almost any scene I encounter. And, since the photos are on my phone, I can edit them as and when using the mobile Lightroom app. For me, this has been real game-changer!
5. Use a Good Camera Case
This isn’t just a cold weather photography tip, but when you’re out in any sort of unpredictable conditions, a good camera bag is a must. It will protect your gear until you’re ready to use it. You want something that is purpose designed to be a camera bag, as it will have the necessary amount of padding to protect your gear. You also want a bag that offers some level of protection against the elements. When it’s cold, this is usually snow, which will brush off, but a bag with a waterproof cover is a good investment nonetheless.
I’ve been using Lowepro camera-bags for years and find they are a solid investment. They come in all shapes and sizes, from messenger and sling bags to full on carry-ons and depending on your requirements you are sure to find one that fits your needs.
6. Invest in a Good Tripod
I’m already a big proponent of using a tripod to help you improve your photography in general and it’s no different for winter photography – especially if you’re out at night trying to capture the night skies. That low level of light is going to need you to use long exposures and the only way to do that is by ensuring your camera is rock-steady – something you can’t do with your hands.
A good tripod is a worthy investment and there are plenty of options available, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the excellent range of options from Manfrotto. They’ve been my go-to travel tripods for a number of years and they offer a great balance between price, portability and functionality.
If you’re travelling light, it could also be a good idea to invest in a monopod. While less expensive than a traditional tripod, monopods can offer the same degree of stability – just be sure to find one that gives you the options to attach feet! Another bonus of a monopod is that they can double as walking sticks – which can be especially useful when hiking through the frozen tundra.
7. Bring a Lens Hood (if you can)
If using a DSLR with an interchangeable lens, it’s a good idea to bring a lens hood when shooting in the mountains. Though perhaps not suitable if shooting at dusk, or when there is not much light (as your sensor will need as much light as possible to enter the lens so as to measure a well-exposed image), a lens hood will protect your glass from glare on sunny days, and may even keep snowflakes from landing on the lens if it’s snowing.
8. Use the Right Settings
Snow makes for beautiful winter photography opportunities, but it can also wreak havoc on your camera’s exposure meter, resulting in images that are under-exposed or darker than you would expect. This is because all the glare from the snow confuses your camera, causing it to read the light in the scene wrong. If you are shooting snowy scenes, especially if the weather is less than ideal, one of my top winter photography tips is to compensate by increasing your camera’s exposure by around 1 stop – the exact amount will vary depending on the amount of snow and light.
When taking the shot, you’ll need to check how dark the image is by checking the preview on your camera’s screen. It is also a good idea to activate the histogram (if your camera allows that feature) and check for the highlights on the right. If the chart peaks too much, your image will be over exposed; too much on the left, and you will want to compensate the shadows and darker areas of the image by adjusting your settings accordingly. Working with exposure compensation (and taking full control of your camera) is something that comes with practice but in essence, you need to find the exposure compensation function on your camera, which usually looks like a “+/-“ button. It may also be accessible from inside your camera menu system.
Once you’ve found it, set it to “+1”. This means that the camera will allow twice as much light in versus not using exposure compensation and should get your pictures looking brighter and truer to the scene as your eye sees it.
9. Composition and Framing
I like my images to tell some sort of story, rather than just being ordinary travel snaps, and so I will generally use compositional rules and/or framing when capturing a photograph. While those I tend to gravitate towards are the Rule of Thirds, the Fibonacci Spiral or Golden Triangles, there are plenty of composition rules out there (take a look at this link from the Art of Photography for an in-depth look at photography composition: https://youtu.be/a-3zOuqaUBY) and it’s worth experimenting with them so as to give your images some meaning. If you’re shooting a panorama, say, what is the main subject of the panorama? Is it the shape of the mountains? Perhaps the light hitting the snow or the shadow in the trees? Is it the colour of the mountains at sunset or sunrise? Whatever your motive for shooting the image, try to focus on why the vista has caught your eye. To use the rule of thirds, for example, try to find something in the foreground you can frame so as to give your image some depth and perspective. Perhaps there’s an interesting tree or a bench that you could incorporate into the final composition. Move around to find an angle that works best for you.
10. Shoot in RAW
This should’t really be a tip, but I do find that by shooting in RAW I can better edit my photos in post. As before, I mentioned the camera’s light meter can get confused with the amount of light hitting the sensor, and sometimes photos will come out either over or underexposed. If shooting as a Jpg, the final image is compressed, meaning you will have limited options when editing your photographs, whereas Raw images will retain all the information captured by the sensor.
You do have to bear in mind, however, that with that extra information comes more memory, so make sure you have a big enough SD Card to fit those images on to (I find that 64 GB gives me approximately 2000 shots at 30 mb each on my Sony RX100). An iPhone 12 Pro’s RAW image comes in at about 25mb, so again, be sure that you have enough space. When I’m done with a shoot, I upload all my images to Adobe’s Creative Cloud (and Google Photos automatically does the same) so that they’re backed up for future use. Once they’re safely in the cloud, I delete the raw images from my phone giving me more space for the next shoot.