Cascade, Barry, and Coxe Glaciers, Prince William Sound, Alaska
The “snow exposure latitude” for every camera is different. You won’t find it in your camera’s manual but it is easy to determine with a do-it-yourself test. Why does it matter? If you don’t know the snow exposure latitude for your camera and how to apply apply it to your images, the color and quality of your winter photos will suffer.
Bryce Canyon After An Overnight Snowstorm
Cold and snow can cause a lot of damage to your camera gear. Something as simple as shooting outside and taking your camera inside your house or car can cause hidden damage that won’t show up until days or weeks later. The simple steps in this article could save you hundreds of dollars in repair bills.
Twilight, Rocky Mountain National Park. Sirius, Canis Major, Orion, Taurus, the Hyades star cluster, and the Pleiades star cluster are all visible in the fading light. Click for a larger version.
You can photograph the night sky year around, but winter brings an added bonus: SNOW! When you don’t have the benefit of moonlight, most of the year land forms a dark to black silhouetted skyline against the night sky. In winter you have the possibility of including the highly reflective snow. You can see both in this photo. Any place not covered with snow is very dark to black. Having reflective snow is why winter is the favorite time of year for a lot of photographers to go out and photograph the night sky.
Snow Hummocks, Merced River
Just like metering daytime winter scenes, the key to metering evening winter scenes is knowing what to meter and deciding how much exposure compensation to use.
Cougar
Most wildlife are medium to dark in tone, making them a challenge to meter properly in the bright, white tones of winter. If you trust one of your camera’s automatic exposure modes, the odds are good you won’t get the best exposure. If you switch over to manual exposure and make the right decisions, you can get great exposures and better quality photos (more about that later).
Elk in the Snow, Horseshoe Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Metering dark toned wildlife in the snow is a major exposure challenge. It is usually best to avoid large “burned out” areas (washed out, featureless white) in a nature or landscape photograph, but with properly exposed snow, the wildlife can be so dark as to lose all texture. On other hand, metering for the wildlife can burn out the snow. So what do you do?
Kristina in the Snow
The white snow in a winter scene can and often does fool a camera meter into underexposing a portrait, so here are the steps to take to get the right exposure. I throw in a few portrait suggestions too.
Mount Hunter from a Bush Plane. Denali National Park. Alaska.
Metering for scenes with a lot of snow can be tricky since the bright snow fools the camera meter. I see a lot of winter photos with gray snow, which means the camera meter did exactly what it was designed to do. The solution is quite simple provided you know what to do.
Last Light on El Capitan, Yosemite National Park
In addition to all of the usual photographic challenges, winter provides some extra complications, especially in terms of metering. So I began this series of articles on winter photography. Check out the links below. The articles will help you meet the unique challenges of winter photography. So get out there, have fun, and create some great winter images!
I was teaching a photography class at Graceland University in Lamoni Iowa. We were doing an exposure exercise and I needed a white subject like a polar bear or a mountain goat.
Western Scrub-Jay, Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife, Fremont California. January 9, 2014.
I was at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Fremont California. It is one of my favorite photo locations in the Bay Area. Continue reading
Southwest Colorado in the Fall.
Come spend four exciting days on a total immersion photo safari in beautiful southwest Colorado. Colorado is magnificent in the fall as the aspen turn gold. The safari is September 27-30, 2019. Registration is limited and this photo safari is filling up. Detail are here.
Are you ready to take your nature and wildlife photography to the next level? Are you ready to learn the professional secrets that make the difference between good images and great images? Are you ready for a high intensity, action packed, total immersion photography weekend? Come to Park of the Pines on beautiful Lake Charlevoix June 7-10, 2019.
Ryan, Tennis, Fort Irwin California
I have two favorite first place photos for January 5. Both were taken in Fort Irwin California. It was cold and snowy when we left Ohio, but much nicer in California’s Mojave Desert. This is our grandson Ryan playing tennis.
Night Sky and Milky Way over the Mojave Desert, Fort Irwin California. December 3, 2013. 10:05 pm.
My favorite photo for this date was taken in the Mojave Desert, about two miles southwest of Fort Irwin California. The photo was taken looking northwest. The Andromeda Galaxy is directly over the power poles about half way up the photo. The Pleiades are at the upper left corner of the photograph.
How can this be? 3400 photos in my “favorite photos” folder and not one of them was taken on January 1. What was I doing? Oh, I get it. I was watching bowl games.
Favorite Photos, December. Click for a larger version.
Here are my favorite photos for the month of December. The story behind this “favorite photos by date” project is here.
Family Christmas, West Point, New York. December 31, 2005.
If you have been following this series recently, you have figured out we celebrate Christmas on most any date, and sometimes several dates. With family spread out across the country in six different states, we travel to them and they travel to us in different combinations every year. One year we had 4 Christmases spread out between December 25 and late January.
Last Light on El Capitan, Yosemite National Park, California. December 30, 1990.
In my “favorite photos” folder the photos for today’s date are a mix of landscape and family pictures. I have two first choices for today’s favorite photo. The first was taken in Yosemite National Park.
Bird Reflections, Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Fremont California. Dec 28, 1990.
We were in Fremont California visiting family over the holidays. As I sometimes do when we are there, I head out early in the morning to go to the local wildlife refuge. This image is my favorite that morning, my favorite for this date, and one of my all time favorite wildlife images.
Sunny in the Car, Galena Ohio. December 27, 2016.
There are only two photos in my “favorite photos” folder for December 27. They were taken within seconds of each other and this is the best of the two. Continue reading
Silent Night, Moraine Park, Colorado
Snow glistens in the last light of dusk.
Distant clouds glow with the fading light from the sun, long since set.
Janae and Candle, Nebraska. Christmas 1980.
My favorite photo for this date is actually two photos. The first is a photo of our daughter looking at a Christmas candle.
Family portrait, Lamoni, Iowa. December 21, 2016.
I have two favorite photos for this date. The first is a family photo from two years ago.
Kristina in the Snow
The white snow in a winter scene can and often does fool a camera meter into underexposing a portrait, so here are the steps to take to get the right exposure. I throw in a few portrait suggestions too.
Selina, Downtown Columbus Ohio. Windchill 4°.
You would think a windchill of 4° Fahrenheit (-16°C) would be too cold for a photo shoot, but not with some models. We booked this January shoot weeks in advance so we knew it would be cold, but we had no idea how cold until the day arrived. Here’s the story behind this image and how to work with a model when it is so cold.
Kristina at Christmas
On Christmas eve I found myself doing Christmas portraits for Kristina’s portfolio. She is a friend of mine who is a model and actress in L.A.. There isn’t a lot of space in my studio when the Christmas tree is up so I had to improvise a bit with the lighting and I needed to get the right mix of flash and ambient light for the look I wanted.
Christmas Lights, Easton Shopping Center, Columbus, OH
‘Tis the season and there are a lot of Christmas lights out there to photograph. It is fun and easy, and with a few tricks up your sleeve there are creative things you can do. Many of these techniques can be used on other lights throughout the year, so this is a good time to practice your skills for photographing lights.
Sunny, Columbus Ohio. December 18, 2017.
There are only two photos in my favorite photos folder for December 18, and both come from walks with our dog Sunny. The first photo is at the end of our walk a year ago today and he is looking up at me with an “I want something look”. Probably he wants a treat. This is my favorite photo for this date.
Kroger Panorama. Graceland Shopping Center, Columbus Ohio. November 12, 2013. Click for a larger version.
I’ve done a lot of commercial panoramas for clients as diverse as KOA Campgrounds and Crown Plaza Hotels. When I am on a commercial assignment I follow all the right steps and use all the right equipment. For the Kroger pano above I did everything right.
But there are times when you are doing your own thing and decide at the last minute you want to try a pano. You might get lucky trying to do a handheld panorama. I will tell you how to increase your odds of getting a good handheld pano.