How to Take Pictures in the Snow

As I write this bonus blog it's -5 degrees in Colorado Springs.  Depending on where you live in our community you've received between an inch or more of snow in the past few days.  We might not like the cold but we love the fresh covering of white snow that is spread like a carpet over the landscape.  We want others to share in the beauty, so we find our camera, step outside and snap a few pics, but when we upload them to our computer they seem dark and grey.

Here is a simple trick to brighten your snow pics so that they look more like what you see.

The following picture was shot with my point and shoot Canon SX700 HS.  I left my camera on program mode, a mode that most of us use.  This is what the camera captured.

Notice how dark and grey the picture appears.  This is not what I saw when I looked out my back door. So, what can you do to brighten the picture in camera so that it's more appealing?  There is one simple trick, though it will probably mean digging into your owner manual to discover how to change this setting on your camera.

Most cameras have the ability to adjust the exposure.  It's called exposure compensation and it's not hard to adjust.  After you discover how to adjust your exposure compensation set the exposure for plus 1. The picture below is the result of making this adjustment in my camera. (Both pictures are straight out of my camera with no post production).

Taking a couple of minutes to figure out how to set your camera's exposure compensation will give you a winter of better pictures.