Photo-Recipes

Photographing Snow: 4 Steps to Success

Me Ra Koh

I’m so excited to share Photographing Snow: 4 Steps to Success with you because these steps are all about composition!  My heart goes out to all our readers who are getting hit with snow!  Instead of rubbing it in with Photo-Recipes inspired by California or Texas sun, let’s talk about photo tips for snow.

Photo-Recipe-  Photographing Snow: 4 Steps to Success

Are you surrounded by snow and overcast clouds?  Do you feel like the white snow isn’t even a pretty white but more of a dirty white?  Do you long for days of sun to capture creative light in your photos?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, I’ve got a treat for you.  Here is what we can do when we feel surrounded by white and are stuck with “blah” looking snow photos.

If the Rule of Thirds ever helped creative composition, it certainly does in the snow. Your kids are playing outside, and you grab your camera to take a picture. But your picture feels pretty blah. Here’s a BLAH looking photo for you!  LOL!  What makes this photo feel blah?

The “blah-ness” comes from a number of things.  The snow doesn’t look so white anymore.  The clouds are hiding the sun, so your lighting looks bleak.  These are both things we can’t control, but there is one element we can.  Composition.

The lack of composition in the above photo makes me feel “blah”. Let’s take it apart. The kids are in the center, tons of white snow surrounding them and…random bench…tree…blah.  The problem, the photo’s story doesn’t draw our interest in.

Found 4 steps to success when photographing snow from Me Ra Koh, the Photo Mom!

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  1. Tammy Snyder says:

    Thank you so much for thinking of us here in the northeast and not teasing us with photos of warm sunny photos or even beach photos. The first half of winter has been tough this year with some sort of snow precip every week. Here in southeastern Pennsylvania, we are ice covered. It is beautiful and I can’t wait for the sun to come out for it to become spectacular! I plan on email you a picture from this photo-recipe.

  2. Christina says:

    I love it, going to South Dakota next week and doing a family photo shoot there and it is snowing now so I am pretty sure there will be snow when I go!! This was perfect 😉
    Thanks Me Ra

  3. Me Ra says:

    yeah! Glad this is helpful to you! We LOVE our East Coast readers and feel for how crazy your winter has been! Hang in there! I hope today and tomorrow warm your creative spirits, like hot coco on a snowy day!
    xoxo,
    m

  4. Lynde says:

    I would LOVE to know how to get a shot of footprints in the snow! i was trying to get shot last week of some mountain lion prints while i was in WY and it was seemingly impossible because there was pretty much no contrast (cue counting crows song here) in white snow…a tiny bit of shadow. thoughts?? aside from spritzing some kool aid? 😀 they were sooooo awesome that i wanted to share the paw prints. you could even see the pads and claw marks!

    cheers!

  5. Rhonda says:

    I love when you post photo recipes. We don’t live in the snow but we don’t live far from it either & the kids have been begging us to take them.

  6. WHOOT WHOOT! East Coast in the house!! Hee hee.. *thinks* …East coast is in the house cuz its too snowy and cold outside!
    Thank you Me Ra, love the snow-photo hints!

  7. Pat Bresnihan says:

    How do you get the buttery background while shooting with a 5.6 apperture? I thought the apperture needs to be much lower. Do you use a portrail lense. I have the Sony Alpha camera. Love it.