Ooo..ooo..Snow..Snow!

"Hooray, the snow is here!", I thought a couple of weeks ago, which in hindsight seems a tad masochistic. It snowed, and snowed here in Central Scotland, we got the deepest snow in decades and all traffic and transport cmae to a standstill for about 10 days.

Beautiful it was though! Wonderful for landscape photography (if I could have travelled past the end of my street). When the snow falls, landscapes that were previously cluttered and busy are wonderfully simplified. Shapes become apparent and colour is removed from the scene -you have to think about your landscapes in an entirely different way. However, good lessons are learned, we should always to try to see the simplified compositions and then work to make them simple in the frame. Last year I took this image (I'm sure I've shared it before). It was of a rather boring scene that became full of simplicity and balance once the snow fell - and it's won or done well in several competitions to back that up.

But shooting in the snow is not easy - modern camears that work out exposures for you get muddled by all the white and underexpose terribly. This is because cameras try to balance every image to 18% grey and when all the scene is white, anything other than white becomes very dark . This is a very simplistic explanation but trust me, auto focus gets it wrong in the snow. You need to lengthen your exposure times from that which the camera tells you (which seems back to front to my mind) - but by how much? Well there are three methods I know of, here they are:

1) Buy an 18% grey photographers card and take your exposure from that. It reflects 18% grey back to your camear in whatever lighting you are in and should equalise your exposure nicely. Personally I find this a bit of a faff (ie too fiddly).

2) Take the picture but note what your cameras reading is. Then take it again with a higher ISO, larger aperture or slower shutter speed. Review in the viewfinders histogram (note that looking at the display will be difficult as you are outdoors in bright reflected light, so the histogram is essential). repeat, untill you happen upon the correct exposure. It's hit or miss and can take some time to get it right. Which is a bother if the snow fox has tun off by the time you get the exposure right.

3) This is my favourite. Because it's easy. And I'm a lazy person. Set your camera to spot focus. zoom in (or go close to), a subject that is in the same light as your target, fill the frame with this and take an exposure reading off it. so if you have a person to photograph, you can take a reading from your own hand, so long as both are in the same light. Dial that setting into the camera on manual and start snapping away. It works a treat, you don't have to think or take anything with you and your exposure will beperfect every time.

Of course you can cheat a bit too. Take it in RAW and you can adjust it on the PC afterwards. but try to get it as close as possible in camera - it will save you work and it will avoid you bringing noise into the image.

Here's an image of young Oscar closing in on his prey (the treat in my hand) - he's moving at high speed and I needed to be quick. The only way to do this was to have set the exposure in advance. I had zoomed in on his fur earlier on our walk and noted the exposure reading and set them in the camera. It worked well and let me adjust for a high shutter speed (by raising the ISO as I sped up the shutter speed or by widening the aperture)

Finally, sometimes it's fun to play with the electric lights of winter or the "incorrect" settings of your camera. I took this (fairly uninspiring compositionally) image, with just the default camera settings, but see how the blue tint of evening on snow and the yellow tint of the sodium lights gave me a fantastic lighting contrast of orange and blue (jsut like CSI Miami does in nearly every frame - had you noticed that? Even carrot-top Horatio Cane nearly always wears blue to fit into the shows colour schemes.)

Photography in the snow can be challenging with lighting and exposure and even getting to your subjects but it can also be very rewarding and reshapes the landscape. Thsi last image is of a churned up muddy field near my house that normally has absolutely no focal point or interest (in my view) - snow and lighting makes all the difference.