Its snow time!

Photographs of snow scenes are usually disappointing. Instead of lovely white snow we get cold grey porridge. Why and what can we do to improve our snow photos?

Well, we really need the sun to shine on snow to make it sparkle. Trouble is that the snow has often melted by the time the sun comes out to play. Never mind - we can still get rid of that awful grey stuff and get white snow back into our pictures as nature intended.

Our cameras when set on automatic exposure will correctly expose for a mid-grey tone. So they turn that lovely white snow into grey porridge. So what can we do?

1 We can help by setting our camera to its snow/beach setting, but that will make only a slight improvement

2 We can change the exposure compensating facility inside our camera to over expose by two stops. I hate doing that because I always forget to reset it and then everything else comes out over exposed. So I don't fiddle with the camera settings

3 We can take our photos and correct them on our computer. You don't need Photoshop or Paintshop to do this. All you are going to dois to correct (not enhance) your contrast to get ACCURATE exposure.

4 Using your camera's uploading software, your Microsoft Photo Editor or any of the freebies mentioned by others - you can click on the OneStep photo improver and see how that helps.

5 Perhaps you will want to stop there, but it will be even better to manually lighten the light parts of your photo and darken the dark parts. So you set the darkest tone to black instead of dark grey and the lightest to white instead of light grey. That's all there is to it. You can see the changes on screen and you just click OK when you think it looks right.

This first photo shows the scene as the camera saw it when set to "Snow". It would be even greyer if set on your everyday setting.


This is the same photo after I have set the darkest tone to black and the lightest tone to white.


Can you see the difference? Which do you prefer? This is about correcting what the camera failed to do - it is NOT enhancing. The choice is yours - you can have natural beautiful white snow or stick with cold grey porridge.

 

big difference hb and that picture is really nice, lets see some more of your lovely snow scenes.

 

Quite a difference HB! No snow here to experiment with but a good tip for when it comes I have a few old snow pics I could fiddle with though.

 

Very good, Shiney. It's not the colour you need to change, but the light/dark contrast. Even without adjusting the contrast, you have got two super photos with bright snow. A scene with lots of darker shapes like yours will help because the camera measures the overall shade. A picture of all snow like a field with no trees would be the worst in terms of overall dull greyness.

 

very nice pictures shiney well done

 

PS I think that the Microsoft Photo Editor comes with Microsoft Office. It was already installed on my computer when I bought it so perhaps not everyone will have it. Plenty of freebies though.

 

Hi Shiney - if you download Picassa [free from Google] this will give you some basic photo editing equipment - and a good photo album organising system too...

lovely photos!

 

Shiney,so love your snow scene,which would look good as a Christmas Card.I also like the plant with the red berries,captured both of them very well :D

 

Lovely snowy pics Shiney

 

I dont think the colours are garish Shiney - atmospheric Its a lovely photo I think.