Tips for Shooting in Snow
Tips for taking pictures in the snow or on raining, overcast days
One of the best ways to capture snow is to shoot in black and white. The grey, overcast skies don’t look very good in color, but make for a smooth white back drop to whatever interesting thing you want to put in front of it.
These 3 photos were taken in a historic blizzard in Eastern Nebraska where the skies dropped over 18” of powder.
Most cameras have the ability to simulate styles in the view finder or in the captured image. Turning on Monochrome is a great way to shoot in the snow or on overcast days because you’ll be able to see exactly what the final image could look like. A whole new world of light is opened up to you once this is turned on and you can stop caring about colors and simply enjoy shooting with light.
As long as you are shooting in RAW, you still have the ability to change it back to color once you’re back at the computer editing the photo. The only thing that is permanently black and white is the JPEG if you’re taking it with the RAW and the preview sidecar image associated with the RAW file. I highly recommend giving this a try.
On Canon cameras this setting is called Picture Style. On Sony cameras it is called Creative Style. Fuji is pictured above.
By getting low, you are able to put more blowing snow between you and the darks of the photo which enhances the of depth in a shot. The blacks get progressively lighter in this photo moving from outside toward center due to the build of up blowing snow.
Look for stand alone objects to highlight, or lowlight I suppose in this case. They’ll look great printed out on white canvas.
Falling or blowing snow can enhance the mood even more by giving the photo a natural grain.