How to Photograph a Winter Landscape

Shadow In The Snow

Winter is a wonderful season in which to make pictures with your camera, especially if you reside in a place that receives an occasional snowstorm. Snow transforms the outdoor landscape into a whole new world, filled with new visual scenes that did not exist before. Being outdoors when the sun first casts its rays on a fresh snowfall is a photographer’s joy, but even without a winter storm, many changes occur during the winter that are well worth capturing with a camera.

Instructions

1. Explore the new lighting conditions that winter produces. Take a walk outdoors just after sunrise or just before sunset and notice how quickly the sun rises and sets. Colorful sunsets still occur during winter but generally they are less pronounced than in summer. You might want to make a picture with the silhouettes of bare trees against the background of a subdued winter sunset.

2. Explore the world of dormant, winter vegetation. In winter, deciduous trees drop their leaves and grass turns brown. All of this provides an opportunity for creating a good winter picture. The forest floor with its cover of dormant plants and old fall leaves also might produce a nice image.

3. Take a picture of ice. Before there is snow, there is bound to be ice. Search out those icy places and use the fascinating swirled patterns of ice as a foreground for your overall picture. Or you can go completely two-dimensional and zoom in on the ice patterns.

4. Take a picture of ice. Before there is snow, there is bound to be ice. Search out those icy places and use the fascinating swirled patterns of ice as a foreground for your overall picture. Or you can go completely two-dimensional and zoom in on the ice patterns.

5. Explore the world of winter shadows on the snow. Winter objects in general and trees in particular, cast wonderful shadows that can create marvelous pictures. The more time you spend out and about, the more interesting possibilities you will find for your pictures.

Tips & Warnings

• Keep your camera warm. If the temperatures are really cold, you might want to keep the camera under your coat, when it is not in use.

• Digital cameras seem to be more sensitive to the cold than film cameras.

• Beware of frozen bodies of water. They can become treacherous if you try and walk across one that is not completely frozen. A frozen lake is best photographed from the shoreline.