Nature Photography How To

The winter landscape is full of great photo opportunities, despite the challenges of snow, cold weather, and often-gloomy skies. But shooting this time of year requires a different approach if you want to capture truly dazzling images.

The video below is for those of you willing to accept the challenge of cold-weather outdoor photography, and demonstrates how to get the job done. Toma Bonciu is one of our favorite landscape/travel photographers, and in this quick nine-minute tutorial he reveals his favorite seven tips for improving your landscape photography during winter.

Bonciu’s first tip has to do with the fact than most winter scenes are covered in snow, which means you can’t trust your camera’s light meter to provide an accurate reading—regardless of the exposure mode you use. In this regard, Bonciu explains the degree to which you must overexpose images so that bright white snow isn’t rendered as a dirty gray.

Bonciu also discusses the peculiarity of shooting sunrise and sunset photos in winter when sunlight reflecting off the snow often results in unusual pink, purple, or red tonal values. He also describes how to adjust your camera’s White Balance setting to compensate for a blue tint in the snow.

As always, Bonciu has a few compositional tips to impart, like taking advantage of negative space and areas of contrast. He also demonstrates how to add impact to an image by finding a splash of color in a snow-covered scene. These and Bonciu’s other suggestions will encourage you to look at winter landscapes in a whole different light, and help you capture some truly stunning images.

You can find more great advice on Bonciu’s YouTube channel, and be sure to check out yesterday’s tutorial, with a foolproof Lightroom trick for making dull landscape photos come alive.