© Giselle Behrens 2018 – Hoboken alley
Snow days are fun days to take photos, especially in NYC! However its tricky to take photos of white bright snow as its easy to get blown highlights, and for those of us thats important to keep the details in the highlights, this sucks!
A tip for the best way of taking photos of snow, is taking them with a camera that has RAW format capabilities, as with RAW you are usually able to recover up to 2 stops + and 2 stops – of the image in the photo, providing flexibility to bring down those highlights when they are overexposed, and saving your amazing snow pic.
If you don’t have access to a camera with RAW format, for example like me this morning as I only had my iphone 7, there are still ways to take awesome snow pics. First off, turn on your vision goggles and start envisioning which location you want to immortalize with a photo. Consider scenery where there is more of a flat constant light (overcast snowy days are perfect for this as the sky acts like a huge diffuser), and avoid areas with dark shadows and bright snow/highlights, if this is the case, you’ll have to compromise for either exposing for the shadows and blowing out the highlights, or exposing for the highlights and underexposing the shadows.
Once you find a nice location with flat light, tap on the screen of your phone (or select the exposure area with your camera) on the snow, a small square should appear to confirm the auto-exposure area, this will ensure the details in the highlights will be prioritized in the shot. Shadows should be OK as the light is nice, flat and constant.
And voilá, here is your photo ready to edit in your favorite editing program! I actually had a bit of fun editing directly from my iphone, converted it to B&W (as the construction barrels on the left were bright orange and too distracting), and gave it a loop gif effect, nice!
Good luck, stay safe, and have fun today NYC!
Xox
Giselle
PS: Have an opinion? Share it below in the comments!
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