If it snows are you ready to get the right exposure?
When winter time comes there is always a possibility that snow will come at some point and when it does you should be ready to photograph this seasonal beauty.
Most people will walk through their neighborhood snapping photographs and that is great. Others will travel out of their comfort zone areas and head for the mountains or other mother nature terrains and hike or ski or both.
The one thing that you can not get away from is the fact that your camera does not understand snow. It understands gray, not white or black. Just 12% gray. I know. All the books say 18%. Work with me.
So what happens to the white snow. It comes out gray, sometimes bluish, but not white. What do you have to do to make that snow white.
Exposure Compensation
The fastest and easiest way to get that snow to be white is to use exposure compensation. Most cameras have some way of accomplishing this either with a dial on the camera itself or in the menus of the cameras. ((Check your instruction manual)).
Usually by setting the exposure compensation to +1 or +2 as a starting point should do the job of making the snow white.
Use a gray card
A little more advanced method is using a gray card. The best gray cards that will last you and maintain their gray color are made by
WHIBAL and is available here
AT THIS STORE.
Put your camera in aperture priority mode.
Put the gray card in front of your lens, filling the frame and make sure the light hitting the card is the same as the light hitting the snow.
Take the picture of the gray card and remember the exposure the camera selected.
Now you have a couple of choices. Go to manual mode and dial in the settings from your gray card shot . The camera will tell you that you are incorrect. Forget what the camera says. Take the picture.
No matter what you do in photography, proper exposure is the one crucial element that will make or break your image. Understanding exposure is a reading and a practice combination. Practice, practice, practice.
Now for those cameras that don't have the ability to do what I am talking about above ie. some point and shoot cameras there is more than likely a scene selection and one of those are either going to be like beach or snow. Try that and it may help get white white.
Don't forget about polarizing filters. Now they will cause an under exposure but will get rid of glare. So if you are making manual changes to your cameras like under and over control, then you are more than likely looking at over exposing by about 3 to 4 stops......
Maybe we'll get a a couple of days of snow for you to experiment with. So far in our Maryland, Washington DC and Virginia region the snow has been pretty sparse.
