Photographs in the snow...

AtuspidsGoddess · Mar 7, 2011

...I live in MN and right now it is not very pretty out...what with the dead looking trees and the snow outside. So when a friend of mine wanted to do a shoot of her little girl outside...I didn't know what to expect. I'd never done a shoot in the snow before but I figured, if it's gonna be white outside, lets put her in a red jacket...that might be a nice contrast!...turns out it wasn't as easy as I had thought it would be...

Anyone have any tips on shooting outside under natural lighting in the snow? I didn't account for all the light that would be bouncing off the snow and so a lot of the shots were very...white....not to mention I could hardly see the screen after each shot at all...eyes adjusting from bright white to colors on the LCD. whew! It was an overcast sky...about 1 in the afternoon...no sun.

Here's some samples of what I got.

Post processing for one of the shots...I'd like to be able to get as close to the post processing image as possible out of camera...how can I cut down on my PP time?

She didn't like the cold.

AtuspidsGoddess · Mar 9, 2011

*BUMP* for the pros

benhasajeep · Mar 9, 2011

Do you have your exif information? Or do you know what metering mode you were in? I am leaning towards the camera metering the red coat as the majority of the scene and setting the camera for the majority red scene. Because of this it set or had you set a slower shutter than should have been used. Or a combination of settings to produce an overexposed shot (top and middle pics). You can combat this with a couple methods. For me the easiest is exposure compensation. Using the historgram, or looking at the pic on the screen, if you notice everything so bright / over exposed. When you retake the shot, use exposure compensation to adjust your next shot to a faster shutter, smaller aperature, or both (deppends on what mode your in). The bottom pic seems to be exposed correctly. Normally lots of light and white snow will cause under exposure, camera will try to make the scene grey instead of white. But with so much red in the frame the meter was confused a bit. Meters are very good these days, but not foolproof. Reason there are controls to over ride them.

tirediron · Mar 9, 2011

As with your infant photographs, your settings are causing at least part of the problem. Once again, 1/15 of a second? Always try and acheive a minimum shutter speed of 1/60 of a second for hand-held shots, and 1/125 when shooting portraiture so as to nullify any slight subject or camera movement. This is what has induced the softness into your images. I think Ben is correct in his assessment.

I would suggest some reading on exposure, light-meters, and other fun subjects. Here are some excellent tutorials which may better help you understand how the whole process of determining exposure works.