All four seasons have their own challenges that present themselves when shooting. When thinking about what to shoot during the wintertime, the snow is the most obvious and one of the most captivating things to shoot. When shooting in the snow and during winter, there are several things that one must keep in mind in order to make their photos and videos look good. Snow, in particular, presents many challenges during shooting.
When shooting during the wintertime, you must keep one thing at the forefront of your mind – your camera. Cameras don’t do particularly well in cold weather as most electronics do. Your camera battery will die significantly faster in cold weather. Something that you can do if your battery dies in the cold when you think it shouldn’t have died, is to warm up the battery by rubbing it in your hands and warming it up.
The main reason that snow is so challenging for many to shoot is because of the effect it has on lighting while shooting. The large amounts of snow can lead to overexposure in shots, and the brightness of the snow can lead to washing out of other colors. In order to attempt to control this, you can under-expose your shot. A safe bet is to make it barely noticeably underexposed, and then when editing you can raise the exposure levels during editing. If you shoot a shot that is overexposed in the first place, you can never entirely correct it.
Shooting shots in the snow can be very repetitive and look very similar after a while. In order to make your shots look different and unique, you can use external glass filters on your camera lenses. This leads to the shot looking different and more unique, and can also help correct lighting, similar to how we wear sunglasses when it’s too bright outside. Using external glass filters on your camera lens can lead to your shots looking unique, and help make your shots all look different.
In the wintertime, outside being too bright is one of the main challenges a photographer/videographer faces. By planning ahead and shooting in the early morning and/or late afternoon can really help the brightness levels in your shots. At noon when the sun is at its peak, your shots will be the absolute brightest for obvious reasons. So, shooting before in the afternoon is a safer bet since it will naturally be less bright, minimizing one of the main challenges of shooting during the winter.
What is your favorite thing about shooting with snow?