If you're anything like me, you're super excited about all this gorgeous snow!  And if you're not like me, you're at least enjoying your hot chocolate and fireplace... so it's not all bad, right?!  Either way though, if you have kids you will find yourself out in the snow at some point this weekend!  Those little buggers just love the white stuff and, inevitably, always do something photo worthy.  But a funny thing happens when you take pictures in the snow - all your pictures look depressing and gray.  

Let me let you in on a secret: you can fix that.  And it's easy.

It has NOTHING to do with what kind of camera you have; after all, a computer can't write an amazing novel without an author.  Right?!  Same thing with your camera.  YOU are in charge of your photos and YOU are the boss.  Say it with me, "I am the BOSS!"  Feels good doesn't it?!

I'll be teaching you MANY more tricks at my Intro to Photography course on January 25th called, "Dear Camera, You're Not the Boss of Me!"  If you find this tutorial helpful, but sure to click and "like" Immerse Photography on Facebook and then register for either my beginner or intermediate photography course by clicking here!

First of all, here's the technical side of what's going on (I'll explain the easy stuff later).  Your camera always tries to balance the amount of black, white, and gray in your pictures.  When it sees a lot of snow, it assumes your scene is really bright and tries to darken it for you.  Well, what your camera doesn't know is that you WANT your picture to look bright and white!  So we have to be the boss of our camera in this situation and tell it what to do!  We have to tell our cameras, "Hey, I want my picture to be bright!  Work with me!"  So we're going to overexpose our images by changing just a few little settings.

Some cameras have a "snow" scene (check out your manual or google it).  If you've got one of those snow modes, use it!  If not, look for the over/under expose button on your camera. Move the "exposure" until it reads +2 (see pix).  Now take a picture.  Just right?  Great!  Have fun!  Too bright?  Lower the exposure to +1.  Keep taking test pictures until your snow looks white AND your colors don't look washed out.  Once you have found the perfect exposure, you're good to go!

Just be sure to use that wrist strap so you don't drop your camera in the snow.  Because sometimes your kids will run into you while they're sledding.  And then you'll drop your camera.  And then you'll cry.  I'm not saying that I've done it... this is all just completely true hypothetically speaking.

Check out these shots to see some examples.  I took the dark pictures with my big girl camera set on auto.  WAY too dark!  To make my white look right, I turned my camera to aperture priority mode and over exposed by +1.7 to get the brighter image.  (You can also do this in manual and shutter priority modes - check your manual for more info).  Please know that all of these images are straight out of camera and have NOT been edited in any way.

This is not smoke and mirrors people!  It actually works and YOU can do it too!

One very important thing to remember: turn your exposure back to 0 when you're finished! otherwise the next time you use your camera EVERYTHING will be overexposed!

Good luck and have fun with your new skills!  If you found this tutorial insightful, please SHARE the link on your Facebook page and tell your friends!  Also, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see some before and after shots of your snow photos!  Email them to me at [email protected] and earn $10 off your workshop tuition!  See you in class!

xoxo,
Cyrissa

PS - there are only 12 of 24 seats left in the workshops.... so don't wait to register!