Cascade, Barry, and Coxe Glaciers, Prince William Sound, Alaska
Exposure compensation is one of the most important keys to good exposures, great images, and the best colors your digital camera is capable of producing. Knowing your camera’s snow exposure latitude is one of the keys to using exposure compensation in a winter scene. It is different for every camera model. You won’t find it in your camera’s manual but it is easy to determine with a simple test.
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 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 you get a black, silhouetted skyline. In winter you have the possibility of including the highly reflective snow. For many photographers winter is their favorite time of year to photograph the night sky.
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 your camera’s auto 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 and the camera owner didn’t know how to use exposure compensation. The solution is quite simple provided you know what to do.
Color Exposure Latitude Test for a Canon 7D.
Testing your camera’s color exposure latitude is a key to getting good color in your digital photographs. This is a sequel to The Best Colors Come From the Best Exposures. I would suggest you read that article first.
Gretag-Macbeth ColorChecker
This has to be one of the best kept photographic secrets: The more accurate your exposures are, the better your colors will be. Why? If your exposures are off, the colors in your photograph will shift in different directions. You can correct the exposure in post processing, but you can’t correct the color shifts. Since the colors shift in different directions, if you try to correct one color (as you will see below), the other colors will get even worse.
RGB Histogram (upper right) and Luminance Histogram (lower right).
If your camera offers both RGB and luminance histograms, choose RGB. An RGB histogram is one of your most valuable exposure tools. A luminance histogram can lead to bad exposures and poor colors.
Lara Fabian “Likes” my post.
If you write on your FB photography page about a famous Belgian singer (32 million records sold world wide and the best-selling Belgian female artist of all time), it is important to think about what you write. You never know when Lara Fabian might show up, read your post, and like it.
CWR Website The Film from Shervin Communications on Vimeo.
Life (and great photography) is about inspiration as much as it is about information. Whatever it is that moves you to do things is just as important as knowing how to do it. If you aren’t inspired, all the information in the world won’t help you very much. But if you are sufficiently inspired, you will move heaven and earth to find the information you need. It is about vision! This 22 minute video is about finding the kind of vision that inspires your life and your photography.
“The House on Pines Street” before and after color grading.
The colors you see in the movie theater are not the original colors that came out of the movie camera. It is rare that we get to see clips from a movie before they have been color graded. This is your chance. The difference is dramatic and impressive, as you will see in the video clips below.
Silent Night, Moraine Park
Snow glistens in the last light of dusk.
Distant clouds glow with the fading light from the sun, long since set.
O’Haver Lake and Mt. Ouray, Colorado.
As I asked at the end of Part One in this two article series, “Why am I so attached to Mt. Ouray (and O’Haver Lake)?” The answer is simple. They have been part of my life for a long time.
Mt. Ouray and the southern end of the Sawatch Range from somewhere east of Villa Grove, Colorado
Recently, two of my friends were flying from southern Colorado to Denver. They snapped this cell phone photo from their airplane and posted it online. I was quite taken with this photo for several reasons. My friends are two remarkable people, I love the Colorado Rockies, and Mt. Ouray (on the left) is special in my life.
Bryce Canyon After An Overnight Snowstorm
Cold and snow can cause a lot of damage to your camera gear. The simple steps in this article could save you hundreds of dollars in repair bills.
I’ve been doing photography for a long time, but I admit it, comments like these on my FB page still make my day.
Last Light on El Capitan, Yosemite National Park
Update: December 18, 2015. This series was revised and expanded last winter (January through March 2015) and I will update it again beginning in January 2016, but for some of you winter is NOW, so I am re-posting this set of links so you have them now.
Update: January 9, 2016. As of today five of articles have been revised and updated from last year’s versions. I have also written several new articles that are related to this series and included links. Over the next few days I will revise and update the rest of the articles. Stay tuned.
In addition to all of the usual photographic challenges, winter provides some extra complications, especially in terms of metering. So I began my series of articles on winter photography. This year I revised three prior articles and added six new ones. They will help you meet the unique challenges of winter photography. So read the articles, get out there, have fun, and create some stunning images!
Many Faces. Click to see a much larger version.
My initial mission was to get a “normal” portrait of my four year old grandson in front of the Christmas tree. As often happens with young children, things went a little differently than I expected.
O’Haver Lake, Mt. Ouray, Colorado.
You have heard it said a lot, and maybe said it yourself: “This picture doesn’t do it justice.” That is often true and for several reasons. One is that digital cameras do not capture reality. No matter how fancy or inexpensive, digital cameras simply do not capture what your eyes see. That is also true with film cameras. All color photographic films have different color characteristics. Some have better reds, others have better greens or blues. Some are more saturated and others less saturated. But none of them are totally color realistic. Why don’t cameras give you realistic images and what can you do about it?
Note: This article has been updated here.
Kristina
Kristina, a professional model based in L.A., wanted to schedule a photo shoot when she was in Ohio. She arrived right before I left Ohio on a trip, so we had only one day to work together. It was a bright, sunny day and bright sunlight is usually too harsh for good portraits, so we worked as much as possible in shady locations.
Sandy Hook Elementary, Newtown Connecticut, December 14, 2012.
Sarah, Downtown Columbus
Nine years ago this evening, Sarah and I headed for downtown Columbus to do a Christmas photo shoot. We set up with the skyline in the background and I clicked the shutter for this image at 5:55 pm. I deliberately waited until the clock on my computer said 5:55 to post this article.
Posted December 13, 2015. Updated January 25, 2020.
Flash, Off-Camera vs On-Camera
Off-camera flash can provide more pleasing light and a much more dramatic photograph than on-camera flash. Using two off-camera flash units provides even more dramatic lighting possibilities.
Warren Stevens, Magic 106.3
Off-camera flash is so useful because it gives you a different look from the millions of photos that are taken with the flash on the camera. The light can come from any direction you choose, no matter where your camera is, and the latest technology makes automatic flash exposure quick and reliable.
Warren Stevens, Magic 106.3, Columbus, Ohio.
If I am using flash for an environmental portrait, I usually prefer having the flash off of the camera. In this portrait of Warren Stevens (program director and mid-day air personality at Magic 106.3 FM in Columbus), the flash is above Warren and to his right, providing a nice semi side-lit photograph. On camera flash is flat and even. Getting the flash off of the camera and moving it to the side provides more shape and texture to the subject.
Forget-Me-Nots, Thorne-Swift Nature Preserve, Michigan
There are several ways to do closeup photography. Closeup filters, extension tubes, and macro lenses are the most commonly used options. Each of them have advantages and disadvantages.
This is the last photo of a photo shoot that should have gone a little longer. But my camera broke. So many people kid about “if you take my picture it will break your camera” that I was tempted to say to her “You broke my camera!”