Snow Photography

Maybe slightly too late for this season's ski-iers but worthwhile noting all the same.

Photographing snow scenes can play havoc with your built-in meters. This is because metering systems 'expect' to see a certain white/grey balance in an average picture. Snow scenes massively distort this balance resulting in images that appear 'grey' compared to the actual scene.

The reasons for this are pretty technical and are due to the fact that metering systems optimise scenes for around 17% grey.

The solution is to over-expose your image by a stop or two. Sounds a bit backwards but it's the correct thing to do. Over exposing your snow scene will ensure that the snow appears white as it should do.



If you have an aim and fire camera, many modern oe have a scene mode that you can set to 'snow' that will do the work for you. If you have a digital SLR (DSLR) you can either set the ssene mode to 'snow' or just manually override the meter radings. Personally, I prefer the manual approach as you can play around with different settings and check the results.