In the day-to-day study, work or life, many people have written to take photos, right, shooting snow is the hobby of many photographers, so how to shoot snow? Below I have compiled a list of tips for shooting snow for your reference!
The right time
Don't think that the first keyword we put forward is nonsense, you will not take for granted that we are talking about the right time to shoot is when it snows? This is where you need to learn to think like a photographer: when throughout the snowy time period will the light be favorable for shooting?
When snowflakes cover the ground, the cover will be reflected by the sun from many angles, so we should avoid the sun when it is too harsh, and choose a sunny morning around sunrise or in the evening, when the scattered light is more able to capture the texture and layers of snow.
Practical equipment
The temperature in the snowy environment is low, so it is recommended that you consider bringing a professional and reliable DSLR. The choice of lenses for shooting landscapes is dominated by telephoto and wide-angle. In addition to this, it is often necessary to carry equipment such as tripods, polarizers, hoods, and so on.
Temperature below freezing
"Below freezing" is the best temperature for taking close-ups of snow crystals, and in the middle of winter in the north it's time to get ready to look for these little things. We can find out a lot about the formation of snow crystals from Baidu, Sogou and other search engines. We can find a lot of information about the formation of snow crystals from search engines like Baidu and Sogou. All you need to remember is that shooting crystals requires a cold environment with as little wind as possible, lots of water vapor, and temperatures below freezing.
White balance in snow
Professional photographers habitually check their camera's white balance settings before shooting snowy landscapes, and if your camera is still set to the usual "auto white balance", you're missing out. If your camera is still set on the regular "Auto White Balance", then you're missing the boat! The pictures you get in this mode will be "full of blues"!
If your camera doesn't have the ability to manually set white balance, or you're not yet proficient at doing so, then you can just select the "Snowy/Cloudy" auto white balance mode at this point; if you're already proficient with your camera, you can customize your white balance according to the settings of your different cameras, by pointing to the "Pure White Snow" mode. If you're already comfortable with your camera, you can customize the white balance for pure white snow to set the correct white balance for your environment.
Split metering
Do you often get "white on white" pictures? Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with your camera, the problem is that it's using an "auto exposure mode" that doesn't work! In such a high-contrast scene, in order to reflect both the dark and the light, you can meter separately, and then combine them to get a more accurate exposure.
"Background" contrast
When we shoot in snowy weather, you will find that from the foreground to the background are white, which reflects the level of the picture, you often need to add some jumps in the foreground, or the background of the color to form a contrast.
Backlighting and Side Backlighting
When shooting, you can boldly utilize some backlighting and side backlighting to depict the scene, even when shooting distant views of the sky and mountains on the ground, and they can create a far-reaching atmosphere.
Avoiding condensation
Photographic equipment is all the photographer's heart and soul, due to the low temperatures of snowy shoots, moisture condensation is prone to occur when we take the camera from cold to warmer places, which at this point will make the camera temporarily disabled and unable to shoot, so try to avoid this situation.
Giving up the flash
When photographing snow crystals, we need to give up using the flash to make the crystals more luminous and textured, in order to avoid melting the snowflakes due to the hot temperatures emitted by the flash being too close to the tiny crystals.
Appropriate foreground
The choice of foreground in a snowy landscape is very important for the photographer to create an atmosphere. Due to the special nature of the snow scene is difficult to level, the use of hanging ice tree branches, or paved with thick snow on the road, flowers, buildings, etc. as the foreground of the shooting, you can increase the spatial depth, improve the expressive power of the snow scene, making the whole picture more rich in connotations, but also like the example of the same as the picture to make a shape border to make the scene more moody, so that it is not because of snowy white sky and make the viewer have a
These are the most important things you can do to make your work more interesting.
Snowflakes
When we shoot snowflakes in the sky, when they are close to the lens, and we choose to focus on the background area far behind the snowflakes, then you will get a snowflake blob of images.
Beware of vapor
Have you ever noticed that your own exhaled vapor sometimes makes the camera lens hazy when you're shooting with the viewfinder in cold weather? So you'd better carry a lens cloth with you to clean your camera at all times. And of course, it's best to wear a mask when you're shooting!
Polarizers
Something to make the sky bluer and the clouds whiter? That's right! When you take pictures of snowy landscapes, it's a good idea to bring along this great companion - a polarizer. With a polarizer, the exposure compensation needs to be reduced by 1/4 to 1/3 of what it was before the polarizer was added.
Snowflakes under the microscope
Hooker, a British scientist, was the first to see snow crystals under a microscope. And these snowflake crystals photographed by a microscope became rare works of art in the world. If you have a microscope with 100,000x magnification, you can also try to take a picture of the crystals with your camera.
Shadows to create a sense of hierarchy
Winter is soft but lacking in detail, to break the blandness, the use of shadows to make the white picture in the light and dark to create a balance, the shadow modeling can also make the scene suddenly add a sense of three-dimensionality.
Face Exposure
①, choose a time when the light is not too strong to shoot, so that the subject's face and the background exposure is moderate when the light is smooth;
②, bracketed exposure;
③, the light is strong, use the backlight to shoot, the darker part of the light rely on the fill light.
Shoot a little scene
We are busy shooting the snow in the vast and majestic, it may be worthwhile to share some of the sight in the eyes of the small scene, the lovely snowman, ice crystals on the window, covered with snow chairs and so on is a great winter subject matter.
HDR compositing
HDR compositing is the best way to solve this problem when you want to capture the colorful light of the evening sun through the white trees in strong backlighting, but you can't always get the darker details in the shadows, and the brighter details near the sun in the sky are well represented.
We only need three exposures in this light: under, normal, and over, and then we just need to combine the three exposures to get a beautiful evening snow picture with vivid details!
Shutter Selection
When taking pictures of snowflakes with people in the frame, a shutter speed of 1/60s or less can freeze the snowflakes into lines, while a shutter speed of 1/80s to 1/120s can record the snowflakes as they fly; if there are people walking around, the above shutter speeds can also be used to keep people out of the snow. The shutter speed can also keep the characters from blurring.