Photography In The Winter: 8 Great Photo Tips
Posted by TJ Dinsmoor on Mon, Dec 07, 2009 @ 11:05 AM
Just the thought of winter makes people cringe. Who would ever want to go out in the snow and cold to take photos? Winter is a wonderful time for photography and here are some tips to make photography in the cold more successful.
1. Keep your batteries warm. Your camera will work perfectly fine as long as you have functioning batteries. If you are taking photos at night and using long exposure times it would be a good idea to stock up on hand warmers and rubber bands. What you do is take two hand warmers and a rubber band and wrap the hand warmers around where the batteries go. You can also rotate your batteries. Put some batteries in your coat pocket along with a hand warmer and rotate.
2. Keep your camera cold. Sounds crazy, but when continually bring your camera into warm conditions and cool conditions your camera will build up condensation. It is easier to blow snow off of a cold camera than a warm camera as it will just melt.
3. Warm your camera back up slowly. If anyone has glasses and has come into a warm house after being out in the cold knows condensation can build up super easy. Some photographers will just keep their camera gear in their bags. To keep from opening your camera gear up prematurely take your film or memory cards out after shooting photos.
4. Watch your breath. I'm not talking about bad breath, but you should watch that too ;). If you continually exhale on your display under extremely cold conditions it can easily be susceptible to being iced over. This is something that is not really thought of because it just sort of comes natural when you are looking through your viewfinder and are breathing warm air on your display. Best advice is to bring your coat collar up over your mouth to avoid this.
5. Wrap your tripod legs up in insulation. It will make it easy on your hands in the cold conditions and your shoulder if you are walking around a lot during photographing.
Tips For Winter Weddings
6. Use color! Bright and vibrant colors will really stand out in winter because they contrast with the snow.
7. Photographers should advice clients to wear warm winter boots. If the wedding is in the winter you need to have photos taken in the snow. Boots will hide underneath the wedding dress and it will be a great way to celebrate being a winter bride!
8. Your clients should already be prepared to embrace the conditions of a winter wedding. It is OK to wear a coat in some of the pictures or a warm hat. They don't have to wear them in all of the pictures. However, remind them that its all a part of their story, and those elements make it unique and a fun story to tell about what happened on wedding day.
