One of the most difficult yet rewarding seasons for outdoor and landscape photography is during the winter months. It’s tough to beat the look of a freshly fallen blanket of snow. It has a way of simplifying a scene thus creating a very minimalistic composition, but it’s not all roses. Winter photography comes with a unique set of challenges that you have to solve for in order to capture these beautifully frosty images.
Personal Comfort
The problem I encountered on my first few attempts at winter landscape photography is that I grossly under estimated how cold I would get once I arrived at my location and I stopped moving around. This frigid stationary down time while I waited for the “good light” to arrive is something I didn’t appropriately prepare for. I now focus on the “warmth pyramid” of my head, hands and feet. Paying extra attention to these areas will ensure a much more enjoyable and most importantly safe experience while on-location. There’s nothing worse than losing basic dexterity in your frozen fingers while attempting to manipulate tiny dials on your camera.
Cold Gear Care
One of the biggest issues associated with cold weather photography has to do with rapid battery drain. What I’ve found works best is to keep your batteries stored in an internal pocket of your jacket ideally as close to your body as possible in order to keep your batteries warm. This will ensure that when the time comes to place a battery in your camera that it’s not already drained well below 100% due to the cold weather conditions.
However, it’s not all about the batteries, another big issue has to do with your gear after your shoot. You want to pay extra special attention to your camera and lens once you return to your car or home. Your gear will be extremely cold after your shoot and you want to ensure that you don’t introduce condensation build up from warming your gear up to quickly. I always place my camera and lens in a ziplock bag while outside, seal it up and place it in my camera bag before I return to my car or home. I then leave it there for an hour or so in order to bring the temperature of my camera up slowly, thus avoiding any chance for moisture to build on the electronic components of my camera and/or lens.
Camera Settings
Now that you’re comfortable and your gear is cared for, the next issue you may encounter has to do with the struggle of properly exposing snow. A good best practice to get into is to always overexpose your winter photos by a stop or so while paying extra attention to your histogram to ensure you’re not clipping your highlights. Even if your camera’s metering system is indicating a proper exposure, you want to consult the histogram to confirm how much further you can actually push the exposure level of your image. Ideally, you want your snow to be white and not underexposed and grey.
Post - Processing
White balance and exposure are generally the most difficult issues associated with post processing a winter scene. White balance can be tricky due to the reflective nature of snow. Depending if it’s a clear blue sky day or if it’s overcast, the snow in your image can either take on a blue color cast or a gray / yellowish look. Either way, you want to correct this as part of your editing workflow while also correcting for any underexposed areas of your scene.
Winter is definitely one of my favorite seasons for landscape photography, but it does present a unique set of challenges that no other season has. The end result however is absolutely worth the frigid temperatures, early sunrise wake up, and the additional steps required to capture this seasons beauty.
Mark