For those who love photography, the winter season can offer truly magical settings. Familiar landscapes are often transformed by snow and ice, yet these conditions can also be challenging, with harsh lighting, fluctuating temperatures, and some rather unique technical hurdles. Capturing the best images can be tricky, but the beauty of these wintry scenes makes the effort worthwhile.
Winter Photography Tips and Tricks
Due to the often-treacherous conditions, it is vitally important that you take steps to protect both yourself and your gear. Here are some handy tips to help you do just that.
When it is extremely cold outside, the adverse weather can quickly drain lithium-ion batteries. It is therefore worth keeping them in a pocket close to your body heat and only placing them into your camera when you are ready to shoot a scene.
Condensation is another issue that needs to be managed. When you move from the cold outdoors into a much warmer indoor space, condensation can form both inside and outside your camera, which can be very damaging. To prevent this, place your camera and lenses inside a sealed plastic bag before going back into your house or office from outside. Then allow your gear to warm up slowly to room temperature while still inside the bag. This will stop moisture from settling on the cold surfaces.
As for yourself, it goes without saying—though it’s always worth repeating—that you should dress appropriately for the weather conditions outside. Insulated boots, a thick and comfortable pair of gloves, and possibly mittens that fold back to expose your fingers are all sensible and worthwhile considerations. And don’t forget plenty of warm layers — I strongly recommend insulated ones.
When taking photos outside in winter, one of the biggest challenges is getting the exposure right. In most situations, you’ll want to achieve bright, properly exposed whites, especially when photographing snow. To do this, you need to use exposure compensation and add between 0.7 and 1.5 stops of light. It is also crucial to shoot in RAW, as the RAW format gives you far more flexibility during post-processing. You’ll be able to recover details in bright highlights and dark shadows without degrading the image quality — something that is much harder to achieve with JPEGs.
A great time to take photos in winter is during what is often referred to as the golden hour. This is the period shortly after sunrise or just before sunset, when the sun sits low in the sky. At this time of day, the sunlight is soft and warm, creating beautifully atmospheric images. In the UK, during this time of year, the low angle of the sun often means that the golden hour may actually be shorter than a full sixty minutes.
When taking your photos, it can be beneficial to get very close to your subject to capture the intricate details of winter textures — such as frost patterns on glass, the sharp edges of icicles, and the smooth curves of a snowdrift.