Tips for Winter Photography

Winter can be a great time for outdoor photography, but there are some things you need to consider that you don’t have to worry about during the rest of the year. Here are some tips to make your winter shooting successful.

1. White Balance. Most of the time the camera will be able to determine the correct white balance or color cast to apply to your photo. Snowy conditions can fool the camera and make that more difficult. Try manually setting the white balance to “sunny or daylight”, “cloudy”, or “shade” depending on the conditions. If you shoot in RAW mode you will be able to adjust the white balance later using a photo editing package.

2. Exposure. Modern digital cameras want to set the exposure so that the scene averages to a mid-gray tone. When much of your photo contains bright white snow, the camera will lower the exposure to make that white snow gray. Use spot metering and measure something other than snow or use exposure compensation to add one to two stops (EV) of light. Most cameras can do this. Check your manual for specific instructions.  Be sure to watch your tone curve to know if you are exposing correctly. A properly exposed photo with lots of snow will have a tone curve that is bunched up on the right side.

3. Flash. If you use your flash when it’s snowing the snowflakes will show up as bright white spots. You can avoid this by turning off the flash, using a tripod, and taking a long exposure. Depending on your exposure time the snow will show up as streaks or not show up at all with a very long exposure, like the photo to the right. Experiment with the shutter speed to get the effect you want.

4. Condensation. When you bring a cold camera inside a warm building or car condensation may form on the lens. If you take that camera back outside that condensation may turn to ice! You can avoid the condensation pitfalls by avoiding taking your camera between warm and cold environments. If you’re getting in and out of your car, keep the car interior temps cool. If you want to take it inside a warm place try sealing the camera and lenses in a big zip lock bag while you are still outdoors. That will keep the warm moist air away from your camera until it warms up.

5. Batteries. Cold temps can zap a camera battery. They will function better if they are kept warm. Keep your spare batteries in an inside pocket where your body heat will keep them warm until you need them. Make sure they are fully charged before heading out into the cold.


7. Shoot during “The Golden Hour” just before sunset and just after sunrise. The low angle of the sunlight will emphasis the texture in the snow on the ground.   It you shoot near noon then the snow may appear to be solid white.

6. Fingers. Pressing little buttons on your camera can be nearly impossible when it’s very cold. Either your fingers are numb and you can’t feel the buttons or your bulky gloves make it very difficult to hit the right button. You might try special gloves that allow you to stick your thumb and forefinger
out of the gloves to shoot then pull them back in. A couple examples are Pho-Tog Gloves or Shooting Gloves. Check out the Adorama buying guide.

Of course, you need to be safe while out shooting in the winter.   Make sure you layer up to stay warm.   You'll want to have good water proof footwear to keep your feet dry and warm.  Last year I purchased at set of Yaktrak to add to my boots when hiking on snow or ice.   Winter is also a great time to use hiking poles for extra stability.

With a little preparation you can have a great time photographing in the winter.

eBook Review - Rabari - Encounters With The Nomadic Tribe

If you read my earlier post about my photography library you know I love books about photography.  I have books about composition, technical aspects, printing, Lightroom, HDR, and many others.   Recently I've been buying electronic eBooks.   These books are typically not printed in hard copy format but are books in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format that can be read on a PC, MAC, iPAD, or Smart Phone.  It makes taking your library along with you on a photo outing much easier.  Because there is no printing or distribution costs these eBooks are typically cheaper than hard copy books.   Most are also shorter than normal books.  I'm really not sure why.

This week I got a copy of Rabari - Encounters With the Nomadic Tribe by Mitchell Kanashkevich.  This is part of The Insider Series on Travel Documentary Photography by LightStalking.   The title suggests it is a travel book but it's really a book about photography that just happens to use the author's four month long travels in this region of India for the examples. 

Here's the table of contents for the book:

After a brief introduction to the project, the equipment (surprisingly affordable) and the work flow, the author goes into details about each of 10 different photos from the project.  For each photo, he discusses background information, objectives for that particular photo, the light, the moment and/or pose, the composition, the "Biggest Challenge" and how me managed it, and the what/why of post processing.

The author provides great insight into what was going through his mind when he was working on that particular photo. Reading these well written descriptions is like being with him on the photo shoot and having him tell you what he's doing and why.

One thing I was surprised to learn was how little equipment he used.   He didn't have high end cameras, lenses, or elaborate artificial lights.   Instead he relied on a 5-in-one reflector for his lighting.   He describes the conditions he was shooting in and includes diagrams showing where the subject, light source and camera were located.

I found his description of the biggest challenge with each situation and how he overcame it to be instructive.  While I may never run into that exact challenge, his approach to solving the problems was educational as I learned things I will be able to apply later.

He uses a combination of Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop to edit his photos.   In the book he talks about what adjustments he made to the photo and how he made the adjustments.  The book is more about the photography and is less about post-processing. He includes before and after versions of the photo.

Reading this book was entertaining and informative.  The photos reached out and grabbed me right off.   You can see why Mitchell Kanashkevic is a successful  travel and documentary photographer.  I recommend this book for amateurs as well as professional photographers.

Rabari – Encounters With the Nomadic Tribe is available for download for the special Christmas release price of $19.95 when you apply the special launch discount code “HAPPYXMAS” until Dec 25th.  Go online and buy a copy.   There's no waiting for shipment so you can start reading right away.

What Are You Thankful For?

"Now thank we all our God" is a Christian hymn written around 1636 by Martin Rinkart (1586–1649).  Rinkart was a Lutheran minister who came to Eilenburg, Saxony at the beginning of the Thirty years war. The walled city of Eilenberg became the refuge for political and military fugitives, but the result was overcrowding, deadly pestilence and famine.   During the height of a severe plague in 1637, Rinkart was the only surviving pastor, conducting as many as 50 funerals in a day.  He performed more than 4000 funerals in that year, including his wife's.

Rinkart wrote this hymn at the end of the Thir­ty Years’ War  for a grand cel­e­bra­tion ser­vice. 

Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!

All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given;
The Son and Him Who reigns with Them in highest Heaven;
The one eternal God, whom earth and Heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.

It is amazing that, af­ter such mis­e­ry, he was able to write this hymn of thanksgiving.

This time of year we are quick to tell others "Happy Thanksgiving" without giving much thought to what we are thankful for.  If Rinkart could thank God after such hardship you and I should be thanking Him continuously for all the blessings he has given us.

What are you thankful for?

I've just ordered the biggest print I've ever made

For some time I've wanted to create a large pano print to hang over the living room couch.  I have a framed print there now but it's just not big enough.   I'm talking about something about 4 feet wide!

To print something that large takes some preparation.   A single 18 Megapixel photo cropped down wouldn't have the printed resolution I was looking for.  I needed to take several images and stitch them together to create a wide pano.   I wanted a landscape scene that would look good with the colors in the couch.  I had made several attempts but never cared for what I got.  Either the light was not good, the colors didn't match, the scene was not great or the stitch didn't work.  On a recent photo workshop I had the conditions I was looking for.

I wanted to the pano to be wide enough to give me some flexibility for cropping to print.  I decided to make a series of 7 images.   In this case I was looking into a sunrise and the range of light was going to be more extreme than my digital camera sensor was going to be able to handle.  I needed to take three different exposures at each point in the arc to capture the full range of light so I could blend them together later using HDR software.   That meant I had to take 21 images!   The sun was coming up and the light was changing so I wouldn't get a lot of chances at this.   To make the stitch come out I set the camera exposure on manual, exposure bracketing -1EV, 0EV and +1EV, aperture at f/14, ISO at 100 and set to daylight white balance, removed the polarizer filter, and made sure the camera and tripod were level.  These are all things I learned the hard way on the other failed attempts.

When I got home I found I had what I had been hoping for.  I ran each set of three bracketed images through the Nik HDR Efex software to create seven new single HDR images using saved the settings so I could process each set exactly the same.   I then used Hugin pano stitching software to create a final image that was wide enough to fill 4 feet.  The end result could have gone up to 6 1/2 feet wide without having to scale up!

For printing I wanted to create a Triptych, which is three prints hung side by side.  In this case I wanted to create the appearance of looking out windows to a beautiful landscape.   Enter Groupon codes for 16x20 gallery wrapped canvas prints from Canvas on Demand (I'm getting hooked on Groupon).  I divided my photo into three 16x20 panels and placed my order.   It's going to be a while before I get my prints, but when hung on the wall the should look something like this

I'm real happy with the way this came out and can't wait to see the actual prints.  Check back in a few weeks for the end results.

Are you ready for Winter?

It snowed in Kingsport Tennessee today!   The temps were still in the 40's so no one was worried about accumulation on the roads.  Snowing before Thanksgiving is a bit early for us but it does remind me that winter is not to far off.

Ready for Winter?

Seems like just a couple weeks ago we were enjoying the fall colors.  Recently I put together a calendar with some of my favorite photos from the past year.  Here's the calendar page for November 2012.

I really like the quote I found for this photo.   I can look at this photo and remember what autumn was like just a few weeks ago.  Fall just does not last long enough.

Right now we are in that in between time where the fall colors are gone and everything is either brown or grey.   In a few weeks we may have some snow accumulation, which can be a beautiful time to go out and enjoy God's gift of snow.   I can hardly wait.

If you are interested in buying a copy of my calendar you can send me an email at r.siggins@charter.net.   The calendars are $15 each and all the profit goes to Hope Haven Ministries of Kingsport.  You can see some of the photos used in the calendar by clicking here

Whew! I'm done.

I have been home for four weeks now since my trip to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont and I just now finished editing and posting my favorite photos from that trip.   People ask me how many photos I took and to be honest, I don't know.    I'm pretty aggressive when it comes to deleting images after I have loaded them on my computer.   This time I didn't count before I started deleting.   I will say it's the first time I used every memory card I have, which is quite a few.

The good news is I spent the four weeks narrowing down to 36 from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and 59 from Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.   Considering I was gone for 16 days and most of those were spent it a photography workshop, that's a really small number of photos. 

I always shoot in RAW mode.  Unlike when shooting in JPEG format where the camera does a lot of automatic adjustments, shooting in RAW means every photo has to be edited.   I spent a lot of time on my edits trying to make them the best I can.

I didn't edit my photos in the same order I took them.  I worked on the most promising ones first and made my way down to the questionable photos last.  Most of the last ones I worked on got deleted.  The very last photo I edited did not look promising.  It was from a spot known for sunsets, but we got there too late for sunset.   There were no puffy clouds in the sky to catch the remaining sunset light and it was getting pretty dark.  Most of our group didn't bother to walk out to this spot.   Imaging my surprise when I came out with this image from that spot.

Heaven's Bench, Vermont

I took three exposures (1/5 second to 2.0 seconds) to capture the entire range of light and then blended them together using Nik HDR Efex Pro software.  I used Lightroom 3 to add the finishing touches.

This spot is a wide grass covered hill with views that go on forever.  The interesting thing is there is a mountain bike trail that runs through it.  You can see the path on the left side.  Nothing like the mountain bike trails here in Tennessee.

Take a look at all my photos from this trip by clicking these links.  Once the page loads click the slideshow button, sit back and enjoy.

• Nova Scotia & New Brunswick - June and I traveling on our own.
• Maine, New Hampshire & Vermont - Photo Workshop

Reflections of Fall

A shot I enjoy getting is window reflections.   If I position my camera just right I can get some really cool subjects reflecting in the windows.   If the window happens to be in an old building with a lot of character then the window frame and walls can really focus attention on the reflections.   Here's three I've done.

 

 

 

 

 

Harper's Ferry, West Virginia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cradle of Forestry, North Carolina

 

 

 

 

 

Church Windows Somewhere in New England

I got the church on a recent photography workshop.  We chris-crossed across Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont so many times I lost track of exactly which state we were in.   It's in one of those three.

All three of these shots just happen to have been taken in the fall.   The Harper's Ferry shot was October 2010 and the other two were October 2011.   I like the texture of the walls in the first two and the horizontal lines in the last one.

A polarizing filter is not necessary for window reflections but it can be used to adjust how much reflection you want in the window.  In the Harper's Ferry photo I wanted to be able to see inside the building and see the reflections.  I adjusted the filter to get the balance I was looking for.  In the second two I wanted all the color and light I could get in the reflections. 

If you try these shots, just make sure you watch for unwanted elements in the reflections, such as buildings, lights, people or even yourself!

The fall color is pretty close to gone for this year, but I'm going to enjoy these for a while longer.