The winter season is a great time to take pictures. With a complete change to the environment, there are many great photo opportunities. Depending on where you go, it can be mildly cold or freezing. The following winter photography tips will cover preparation for the cold and your equipment, exposing snow correctly, and other techniques to use.

Cold Weather Preparation

Keep Yourself Warm

Photo by James Jordan

To ensure a successful photo shoot, be sure to plan for the cold. Wear extra layers, waterproof pants, and boots that can traverse through thick snow. Having proper winter clothing will let you stay outdoors for a longer duration.

Keep Your Camera Cold

It is important when you are in cold weather to keep your camera cold. Do not try to warm it up by placing it under your jacket or in a warm location. Moving your camera from a cold to warm temperature quickly will cause condensation. Condensation is a sure way to ruin your camera.

To avoid this from happening be sure to keep your camera at a similar temperature to the outdoors. Also, never blow snow off of your camera as this will cause condensation.

Warm Your Batteries

Photo by Tambako

While your camera should be kept cold, your batteries shouldn’t! Batteries stored in the cold lose their energy quicker. Keeping your batteries warm will help preserve power. You can use hand warmers or keep batteries in pockets close to your body to keep them warm.

Don’t Use the Car Heater

When driving around with your camera, it is a good idea to not use your heater. This can cause condensation when you switch from your heated car to the cold environment. If you’ve clothed yourself properly, the cold car should be tolerable.

Transition Your Camera

When you have to move your camera from different temperatures be sure to ease the transition. Don’t quickly take it from a cold to warm temperature. Instead, try leaving your camera in the camera bag for a few hours. You can also place it in a zip lock bag to slow down the temperature change.

Breath Carefully

When you breath, your mouth releases warm air that will often turn into ice in extreme temperatures. Be sure to not exhale on you camera in cold weather. This can cause condensation. You can also accidentally cover your viewfinder with ice. This is not easy to fix when you’re in freezing weather.

Careful With the Lens Cap

On my first snow shoot I dropped my lens cap in the snow. Then I placed it back on my camera. This caused very bad condensation and my lens couldn’t be cleaned until I returned home. Be very careful with your lens cap. If it gets wet/snow on it, it will cause condensation on your lens.

Exposure Winter Photography Tips

Using Correct White Balance

Photo by Mattharvey 1

During winter photos with snow, white balance is often incorrectly calibrated. Camera sensors will often misread the white balance from the snow. This will cause a grey or blueish look in your photos. The solution is to overexpose your image. You can also try setting your white balance to cloudy or shadow.

Metering The Snow

Photo by Luis Hernandez

Photo by Claudio

Metering the snow is not a simple point and read activity. Most light meters will give an 18 percent gray exposure for snow, turning it from white to blue/grey. The solution is to add 1 or 2 stops of exposure to get the snow white. Using the histogram when photographing snow is a great way to get your results.

Fresh, clean snow is around 90% reflective. Spot metering clean snow is an effective way to get a reading. After you have a reading, adding 2 stops often gets the right exposure.

Snow with more details or side-lighting is less reflective and usually needs no more than 1 1/2 stops of compensation. If the snow is shaded, you won’t need to raise the exposure as much. During overcast days the exposure shouldn’t be raised more than 2 stops.

Other Winter Photography Tips

Illuminated by the Moon

Photo by Joseph De Palma

Winter photography at night is made much easier with snow. A full moon will illuminate the entire landscape if it is covered in snow.

Shoot From Above

Photo by Ragner Jensen

During winter the storms and cold weather tend to reduce the air pollution in the environment. As a result, the skies are clearer. This makes for great aerial and scenic photography.