Shooting portraits in a snowy environment -- tips?

smoke665 · Dec 8, 2017

Destin said:
Absolutely. The camera is trying to make everything 18% gray so your colors and exposure will be way off if you have any auto controls enabled

Had the same thought on the image. Now explain why my eyes were seeing the same desaturation in real time.

john.margetts · Dec 8, 2017

smoke665 said:
@JonA_CT The other thing I noticed is that the during the snow fall/overcast period, the colors (as seen by the naked eye and the camera) were very desaturated, requiring significant adjustment in post to bring them back. I'm wondering if the extreme "gray overcast" conditions, might have been the cause of that?

Cold causes that. You can see the same effect if you iron coloured cotton - where the hot iron has been will be more saturated than where the iron has not been. Colour saturation is partly temperature dependent.

Derrel · Dec 8, 2017

My experience is that at times, ADDING exposure in snow is a good bet. Buuuuuuut....my experince is that new, modern Nikon cameras with 3D, color-aware and also reflectance aware metering tend to produce VERY accurate snow brightness.

As always though, YMMV...

I use Nikon's 60/40 center-weighted metering quite often. Depends on how you meter things. I do not like spot metering much. Do not use it myself, because I can see what the C-W suggestions and the resulting exposure settings look like on the rear LCD's histogram.

Use the histogram, shoot .NEF, and make adjustments as-needed. My tips? Keep your wits about you, don't get flustered, and realize that the new sensors offer pretty good file recover ability.

My feeling is that wide-angle lenses lead to more bad meter readings than do teles or tele-zooms, due to the wider physical scene area the meter reads with the wider-angle lenses.

JonA_CT · Dec 9, 2017

Wow, so many great responses. Thanks to all -- it sounds like a lot of the things that I would do anyway would help, but I'll be double checking the histogram and I'll be ready to use EC liberally.

Braineack said:
yeah I like purposefully underexposing the environment by a good stop, then adding fill.

these were shot at f/3.5 and 1/800sec: Belle in Snow Wild Virgina Snow Leopard

These were shot in the middle of a bright day -- but overcast. used the SS to knock down the exposure with the f/stop I wanted to use, then added fill to match the real exposure (1 stop above environment) 7" reflector.

no idea how well it'll work on humans

I've never used the HSS option on my flashes. I'll look/play with that today, as it sounds like it'll be very useful.

jcdeboever said:
A pint of schnapps

I prefer Mr. Boston's blackberry brandy, but I like your thinking. Just need to be careful not to drink the full pint all at once...that stuff will knock your ass to the snow while consuming and after.

ronlane said:
SquarePeg said:

I recommend those hand warmers for your pockets and for your clients. Also, don’t take too long - no one looks good with red runny noses.

Click to expand...

Hey @SquarePeg, got an even better idea for that one. Get you some athletic wrist bands and put those hand warmers on palm side of the wrist and hold them in place with the wrist bands. That is where the blood flows through and it actually keeps the hands pretty warm. (I use this for shooting football at the end of the season and sometimes for soccer in the spring.)

Wow, great tip! That makes a lot of sense, and I would have never thought of it. I'll see if I have some thin gloves, but realistically, I end up shooting sans gloves because my hands/fingers are so goddamn big. The ISO and EC buttons are unusable when I'm wearing gloves usually.

snowbear said:
Move everyone indoors.

This is a concept shoot...if it were a family shoot, I'd definitely encourage a move indoors. My friend wrote a concept album and recorded everything himself. He wanted some photos to go with it. Lots of things going on in the lyrics, but essentially it's about a woman who was never allowed to make decisions for herself, and is regretting it at the end of her life. The goal is sparse and flat and desaturated anyways, so I think the snow will only help.

The only trick...our ideas mostly involve our model not being clothed appropriately for the weather. She's been awesome and is a good sport though, so hopefully everything will come together. I just won't have a lot of time to get things right.

The location is the kind of place that I feel could only exist in CT. It's a former sanatorium and mental hospital right on Long Island Sound.

The Seaside (Waterford, Connecticut) - Wikipedia

Essentially, it closed in the early 90s and the state tried to sell it to developers, but between the economy tanking and the significant opposition from local residents because it is sandwiched between quiet residential areas, nothing every really happened. In the last couple of years, they decided just to make it a state park, but unfortunately, there is no plan to save the beautiful Cass Gilbert designed buildings at this time. Really, there's no plan to do much of anything there as the state is broke.

Here are some quick iPhone snapshots (I literally never stopped moving as I was walking around it because it was windy and cold AF) that I took this week to send to the model.

Untitled by jwa04, on Flickr

smoke665 · Dec 9, 2017

@JonA_CT that's an awesome location! Expecting some great shots to be shown here in the near future

JonA_CT · Dec 15, 2017

So the shoot was moved tomorrow -- who knew that models could be flaky? (hah...I've run into this a bunch in the arts...lead singers are also super flaky)

I have a really quick question that some of you might know the answer to...I couldn't figure out how to ask the question to google, haha.

Because it's going to be cold (maybe 35? Maybe.) and my model isn't going to be wearing much clothing for that kind of weather, I'm really tempted to go TTL for my flash. My question is about EC -- when I adjust EC on my camera, is it the same as adjusting the EC on my flash commander? Say I set EC to +2 on the camera to get the scene metered the way I want...will it try to use the flash to get the exposure there, or will it adjust the ambient reading? (which is what I want...)

Braineack · Dec 15, 2017

what does the amount of clothes have to do with TTL? the time potentially saved on adjusting power?

smoke665 · Dec 15, 2017

Personally I would go LPG. As in Shop Remington 16,000-BTU Portable Propane Tank Top Heater at Lowes.com these things put out a ton of "directional" heat.

JonA_CT · Dec 15, 2017

Braineack said:
what does the amount of clothes have to do with TTL? the time potentially saved on adjusting power?

Yes. I don't want to have to mess around with adjusting those settings in vastly different lighting situations we will be in (full sun vs. full shade and like many things in between).

Yes, I need to buy a light meter. But upon further reflection...I could just meter/adjust with her coat on. I was being silly and over thinking the obvious answer.

JonA_CT · Dec 15, 2017

smoke665 said:
Personally I would go LPG. As in Shop Remington 16,000-BTU Portable Propane Tank Top Heater at Lowes.com these things put out a ton of "directional" heat.

I might buy one of those for when I'm brewing beer outside, haha...but it would melt the snow and look weird in this situation.

smoke665 · Dec 15, 2017

JonA_CT said:
but it would melt the snow and look weird in this situation.

Not necessarily as the one I have is an infrared meaning you feel the heat but it doesn't heat the surrounding area and it would be no different in situating it than a light stand

vintagesnaps · Dec 15, 2017

I'd 'adjust' the concept to indoors with fake snow like Smoke's kid and dog portraits!

I'm kidding, I think... but yeah, that's a good idea to get set while the model has on her coat. Have her or you guys bring blankets and allow for a break or two or a few in the car. You might be doing good if she isn't shaking and shivering and unable to hold a pose, I would be!! lol but then I'm someone behind the camera not in front of it.

Of your cell shots I liked the one of the tree. And I think that brick round tower looks interesting, maybe either of those with the ocean in the background and the car warming up in that circular driveway...

Aren't you shooting Raw? or am I missing something? (Which is entirely possible.) I haven't shot JPEGs in a long time but it seems like that's when I had to mess with EC. I mean, if you shoot Raw you can do a certain amount of adjusting later. You sure picked something tricky to try! lol All I can say is you better work fast, she can't stand there freezing waiting for you to putz around with your camera.

Braineack · Dec 15, 2017

read the manual on how your camera handles EC with TTL flash if you really wanna use it.

Check you d600 menus too, there's a setting to change how EC with flash too.

if youre shooting manual, then it's pretty much pointless -- but you can dial up or down the EC on the flash itself...