I am a MWAC (mom with a camera) and proud of it!! I know my children are growing up too fast and want to capture our family life, our everyday-crazy life from potty to prom (ok not quite but I did take and adorable potty pic of the baby but it’s because the light was great…I swear you can barely notice she’s on a potty).
With the onslaught of winter weather and more snow falling today I thought I would share some tips for snow photos which believe or not can be tricky! Have you noticed that your fun outside snow shots look extra dark and the snow looks more gray than white? Does your child look a tinge blue? That’s because the camera is reading the blinding white snow and thinks “ohh too much light I better make your subject (in this case the snow) darker.”
If you own a DSLR
You can adjust the exposure compensation up (usually moving it from 0 to +1 will do it). If you don’t know how to do this check the manual (or if you shoot Nikon post a comment and I will try to help). If you bump the exposure compensation up too mush it will look too white, too blown out. Here are two pictures, one with camera read exposure (gray) and one by bumping the exposure compensation.
without exposure compensation
*with* exposure compensation
First of many point and shoots offer a lot of manual setting that most people don’t explore. So my first piece of advice would be to read that little manual. If reading isn’t your thing just start by pressing the menu button and see what the offerings look like. Some point and shoots even offer a winter or snow mode (how great is that!!)
My point and shoot, which is about a fours years old, does not have any manual options I use two methods to achieve better snow pics. The first is to use the flash, yup sounds crazy but don’t forget the flash adds light to image so in the case is takes the darker gray to more acceptable white. There are limitations as a flash is only good for a very short distance -5 to 8 feet range so remember to double check distance when using the flash. The second method is to cheat is post processing. I use a combination of lightroom and Photoshop but you should be able to lighten the photos in Picasa or another free editing software.
Cameras and Cold Weather
Cameras don’t really like the cold, especially lenses and batteries. When you bring your camera indoors after being outside let it sit without using till it warms up to room temperature. I don’t really take too many precautions with my camera in the snow…bad I know. I remind my son snowballs are ok for Mom’s head, not the camera.
One last thing….Remember don’t spend all your time documenting….pulling the sleigh, building the snowman, and sneak snowball attacks are part of the Mommy Job Description so get in the action too!
Stacey
