Snow Flurry With Madison

One thing to note, Blogger messed this photo up. To view the photo accurately, look at it here.

It finally snowed in Bozeman today. After almost a month of warm temperatures and basically all the snow turning to mush, there's fresh snow!

I had to shot in it of course. Snow is such a lovely reflector, and when that's combined with a cloudy day you get the softest, most beautiful light in the natural world.

Shooting in snow poses one big problem. Exposure. The reading your camera takes off the snow will be way off. This is because snow is white, and the camera doesn't know this. When taking a meter reading, the camera tries to makes the average value in the scene to be medium grey. So if all that is in the frame is snow...well you can see the problem.

When any kind of priority or automatic mode, you're going to come out with very dark pictures. The snow will be a grey and bleh. You're subject will be dark and deathly looking. We don't want that.

To correct this, there are two methods. The first is too shoot with exposure compensation. This tells your camera to over expose the scene an amount determined by you. Usually you can get away with this in a pinch but I wouldn't bet on it. The easiest and most reliable way to shoot in snow is just go manual. With DSLR's today, you can check your exposure as many times you want until you have it exactly right. Why fight the little mind of the camera when you could just use your own?

For today, it was a cloudy day and snowing pretty hard. So despite the greyness of the sky, light was reflecting everywhere and it was actually pretty bright. I took an initial reading off the meter in my camera, and then fiddled with the setting from there. The camera usually gets you pretty close to the right exposure.

I like to shoot at wide apertures, and today I chose f2.2. Lower than that can it's hard to focus with a moving subject, and any higher it just have too much background.

At ISO100, I ended up using a shutter speed of 1/400. This was exposed for the subjects face, not the background.

One thing to note, Blogger messed this photo up. To view the photo accurately, look at it here. The eye's aren't actually black..I promise. 

In Lr I did quite a bit. Mainly I adjusted clarity and saturation in the hair. And of course the eyes. I over do the eyes for most people, but it's my photo so why make it if you don't like it? 

I softened her skin and got rid of some of the shadows. I also made her lips more colorful. All of these adjustments are really basic. 

So there you have it. A photo taken with all natural light, and one that I actually retouched to improve skin quality, lips, etc. I don't usually do that much, but since today was already different, why not? 

See you tomorrow.