Who does not like the visual of a beautiful snowfall? The beauty of winter is beyond explanation and is hard to capture with a camera. It can convey romantic and creepy feelings at the very same time. A limitless area Those photographers who have enough passion to take up the challenge of winter photography will get the most complex images focusing on the cold. But it is not very simple to roam around in winter with a camera. In other words, behind a captivating photo of winter landscapes, there involve enormous struggles and strain. How to make this effective in maximizing creativity? Here we give some tips to have a look for getting the best results with winter landscape photography.
Handling Cold Wheather
Before getting started, make sure that you are physically fit to handle the cold weather. Wear warm clothes sufficient enough to bring enough heat to the body. When shooting outdoor, for specific purposes like real estate photography, unexpected rain or wind may occur, and be ready to confront it at any time. Don’t forget to wear gloves, a cap, and a jacket. Always make yourself warm. Remember, only a healthy body can invoke a creative mind. Let us move forward.
1- Adjusting the Exposure
The most important thing in capturing a vast area covered in snow is, adjusting the exposure to capture color. Since most of the place will include white shade, color balance will become a challenge. The exposure compensation is better to set it for +.3 or +.7, otherwise, the images will bring grey color instead of white. Photo editing may fail to solve this.
2- Warm Up the Batteries
Low temperatures can make your batteries run low. More precisely, it will run empty 60-70% faster than usual times. To avoid that, keep a spare battery and keep it warmer. You can take multiple spare batteries and keep them somewhere warmer. You can also keep a spare in inner pockets, closer to the body, allowing them to have the body heat.
3- Use Negative Space Effectively
When focusing on winter landscapes, there may have a vast area covered in snow, which confuses you where to focus. Here, effectively utilizing the negative space or empty space will let the image have more depth. It is creatively challenging to compose the image with the available objects present in the frame. You can bring people into landscapes and emphasize the width and depth of the area.
4- Don’t Ignore Sunrise and Sunset
As we already said, the major color component in capturing winter images is white. But in the evening and morning times, we get a beautiful blend of reddish shade that can bring absolute beauty to the photographs. During winter, the sun rises late and sets earlier. It enables photographers to spend less time capturing them at the same time.
5- Beauty of the Snowfall
The most attractive visual of winter is no doubt- the snowfall. A telephoto lens is the best suit to capture this. You can use a 200mm lens with a focal length of 70 mm and try to shoot at a shallow aperture. To capture movement, set it for faster shutter speeds.
6- Don’t Forget to Bring a Snow Cover
A snow cover will protect the camera from unexpected wind or rainfall. It is always good to keep the camera dry during the shoot. If it gets exposed to snow or water in any case, don’t risk removing it with your gloves. Instead, bring it indoors and wrap it with a dry cloth for a couple of hours.
7- Be Careful with the Frost
The temperature variations of various landscapes will make frost in your lens. It will last for some time, and you may miss some beautiful visuals in the meantime. It can also happen in the middle of a time lapse sequence. You can use battery chargers to warm it up or put a chemically activated band warmer around the lens barrel.
8- Use Tripods
Using a tripod in winter photography can become effective as it helps to slow you down. As a result, you get more time to focus on distant or static objects. In addition, holding the camera with a hand makes the hands colder since heat transfers from the hand to the camera. Also, tripods will help to get rid of moisture too.
9- Try to Use Photo Friendly Gloves
Using the usual gloves can become a headache in landscape photography during the wintertime. The thickness of usual gloves may become a hurdle for you to click the right moment at the right time. On the other hand, photo-friendly gloves are thin thermal fabric around the fingertips. It helps you have a better grip.
10- Allow the Camera to Adjust to the Conditions
For extreme weather conditions, it is not preferred to take the camera directly to the spot and take a couple of clicks. Instead, allow the camera to adjust to the temperature and weather for a while and study the functioning. Look for color and explore the unending beauty of winter with it. For sure, it can only be experienced but cannot be studied from texts.
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