Nikon’s Professional Snow Photography Tips

Here are some helpful hints from Nikon on how to make your snow images look as good as your skiing.

General Tips

1. Take a spare battery in the snow, as the cooler conditions can drastically reduce battery life. Keep your batteries warm by keeping them within your inside pockets, this will prolong your battery life while in cold conditions.
2. Experiment shooting in morning, noon and night. Use the different shades of light to add more feeling to your photos. Remember – There is no such thing as bad light, it's just how you use it!
3. Often the best images will be taken before 10am in the morning and after 2pm in the afternoon. In the Australian ski resorts you will be traditionally shooting back lit images in the afternoon, so this is where you can really get creative. Just remember to take a lot of images as it can be hit and miss, but you should certainly be able to pull out some gems by trial and error.
4. When shooting, make sure you are standing upright so you can jump out of the way of reckless skiers. Try and use a longer lens to stay further away from the action until you are comfortable you know how well your subject can ski or board.
5. Don't take your camera out off the snow and into a warm room or restaurant as it will immediately fog up. Either leave it inside your unopened camera bag or place it in a sealed plastic bag before entering a warmer environment.
6. When shooting portraits get in close, don't just rely on your zoom, the more detail in your picture, the more interesting it will be. For close up portraits (closer than 3 metres) use a flash as the face will come out dark in such bright conditions.
7. Capture the whole story! Think about the composition by adding trees and people to make the shot more interesting.
8. Its wise to buy some thin gloves when shooting in the cold a lot.
9. Never leave your camera in the car overnight.
10. Try and store you camera in a dry, warm cupboard or top of a wardrobe away from direct heat over night.

COOLPIX users

1. Using COOLPIX, put it in sun/ snow modes or even sports mode to capture fast moving subjects.
2. Try COOLPIX movie mode with sound. It will create a great movie if you are brave enough to ski whilst holding your COOLPIX.
3. Experiment with panning, by shooting the subject sharp while the background is thrown into a blur, you can create a greater feeling of speed and action.
   

DSLR users

1. Use a low ISO setting to compensate for the bright conditions and glare of the white snow.
2. Using a DSLR, increase exposure compensation by +1 this will brighten snow from grey to white.
3. Create a greater feeling of speed and action, start at a shutter speed of 1/125th sec and slow it down from there. The key is to make sure that the central focus point stays on the same place on the persons face.
4. When using a DSLR camera, always take off the lens with the camera facing down, as this will limit the amount of dust or specs from metal wear that would otherwise fall onto the sensor when disengaging or engaging a lens.

Happy snow snapping from NIKON.