Photographing Snow

There’s a suggestion that floats around camera clubs that digital sensors, automatic meters, point-and-shoot cameras tend to render snow as a grey-ish colour. Hmm.

Click through the image and watch this film about Michael Kenna at work in Japan:

What did you think?

Now try this.

Good eye.

Good eye is more important than worrying about grey. Flow, getting into the zone, is really where we all want to be. Of course if you’re worrying about technical aspects, or how cold you are, it’ll be much harder to achieve.

Eight tips for photographing snow that will help you get into flow.

1. Waterproof boots with some good ski trousers that have anklet skirts you can tuck into them, will keep your feet warm. Wear a hat, too. And fingerless mittens or good gloves you can take off and put back on regularly. Be physically comfortable. Don’t rush out the door at the first sign of a few flakes, prepare yourself.

2. Take a tripod, or at least a beanbag to sit your camera on, and learn to use it properly. There’s a right and a wrong way to erect a tripod so that the legs are safe, and that’ll be even more important when you can’t see the ground through a few inches of snow. Or you can make a quickfire beanbag with a plastic ziplock and a few cups of lentils.

3. The light at the beginning of the day is more likely to stay steadily even than light at the end of the day, when it will fade fast, so choose an early morning, get ready to go about an hour before daybreak so that you maximise your time in the best light. In the UK, if it’s snowy it’s likely also to be blustery. A calm spell of freshly blanketed stuff won’t ever last long, so grab it while you can. Take a cable release to minimise the effect of camera shake from the shutter, and weight things down.

4. If you want everything to be in focus, start at a minimum of F8 or F11 and chose shutter speed from there. Bracket. That means do several exposures at different shutter speeds, maybe as much as 2 or 3 seconds, depending on the strength of the available light. If your camera has an integrated meter, and most of them do, use it as a guide. like everything else, it’s a tool. Shoot a few frames at 2 stops above what it indicates: you’ll see later if that works for you and for those lighting conditions. Shoot a few frames at 1 and 2 stops under, too.

5. If you want to go technical, point your camera at something grey, a patch of concrete, or your jersey, the back of a well tanned hand will do, or even a patch of grass. We’re aiming for an 18% (or 12%) grey, or a field approximation thereof. Use that as a starting point for working out exposure, not the glittering white expanse before you. Metering ambient light is a pretty hit-and-miss affair anyway, especially in high contrast situations like mid-July and blankets of snow.

6. Michael Kenna suggests a faster shutter speed to collect visible snowflakes, and a slower shutter speed to achieve a milky misty effect. Do both, see what works for you. Photography is an art, not a science.

7. Take a friend, an assistant, a collaborator, or go alone. Solo works best for achieving flow, unless you know each other well enough to enjoy your silences.

8. If you can’t get outside, for whatever reason, fling open a window or a door. Climb the stairs of your office building; get out onto a roof.

The darkroom is calling: negatives from the winter of 2007 and 2008 need printing. This one, for example:

It’s a commission, inkjet printed on museum rag: low contrast, almost dusty. It will be great to see how it looks with some rich blacks and yes, we’ll see how grey that snow is, too.

Enjoy this week’s weather, and please post links to your own snow photographs in the comments. We’re all loaded up with Tri-X 400 and ready for daybreak.

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