Snow is the the theme of this landscape photography vlog. I travel to Roseberry Topping in North Yorkshire to make the most of some winter conditions and talk about how I capture landscapes in the snow.
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Snow Challenges
Landscape photography in the snow can present some genuine challenges. Firstly the cold causes problems and in this shoot pretty much all my gear stopped functioning by the end of the day. It seems obvious to say, but snow is wet. It just doesn’t feel wet when it is falling out of the sky. The snow had been falling on me, my gear and my bag all day and, by the end, everything was wet to the core.
Technical Challenges
Secondly there are the technical challenges to shooting in snow. This mainly comes in the form of exposure and white balance. When shooting in the snow the highlights created by the light reflecting off the snow can really confuse the camera’s meter. Putting your camera into manual mode is a must. Using the LCD and Histogram in Liveview will then help you get in right place with exposure. I always shoot in RAW which gives me a large amount of adjustment to exposure in post-production. With white balance, cameras often tend to capture snow with a very blue tint. You see this a lot on TV and it can be used purposefully to add to the cold feeling of the scene. However, have you ever seen blue snow? Again, shooting in RAW provides full control of white balance in post production and I always aim to bring my images to match the scene I visualised at the time ie with white snow. In the last shot of the day the snow had a slightly yellow, orange warm glow to it when it was bathed in the evening sun.
Location, Location, Location
In the video I also talk about shooting from the same location on numerous occasions. I am often asked how I find locations and do I run out of places to shoot. I am a big fan of returning to the same place and capturing an image of it over and over again. Capturing a scene in the different seasons, in different weather, in different light will produce very different photographs and the one you make on the 15th time of asking might be the one that really pops and gains attention.
Happy New Year
Finally I’d just like to wish you a very happy new year. I hope good things happen to you in 2018 and I look forward to running into you out in the landscape. Thank you so much for subscribing, watching, commenting and sharing. It means a lot.