The trickiest part of snow photography is getting the correct exposure. The tendency for most cameras is to underexpose these images. Why? Because cameras don?t adapt to their subjects as well as the human eye. When you see a little person in a big field of snow, you focus on the person and your eyes adjust accordingly. Your camera sees a whole bunch of white and a little bit of darker stuff. The average of what the camera sees is very bright, leading it to compensate by cutting down the exposure. Depending on how good your camera?s metering system is, and how much of the frame your subject fills, you can sometimes get good results with default metering. But there are some tips that can help ensure the best exposure every time:

Snow Mode

Many cameras have a "Snow" or "Beach/Snow" scene mode. This mode adjusts for the bright environment around your subjects and the bluish tint that snow pictures tend to have. It is the quickest and easiest way to improve on your camera?s automatic settings.

Now you are in spot metering mode! On some cameras you will have to scroll through a menu, but look for the same icon.

Use of Flash

Another way to compensate for underexposure in snow pictures is to force your flash on. Often snow days have dull and lifeless lighting, which can lead to grey-looking images (fig. a). If you are close enough to your subject, the extra light from the flash will brighten them up and add a bit of colour, accurately portraying their rosy cheeks (fig. b).

A warning about flash and snow photography - using flash in a snow storm will result in a picture that looks like fig. c:

   
fig. a                       fig. b                                      fig. c     

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