I’m… dream­ing of a whiiiiite… Christ­massss… Well, I was but no, not in Irland. Instead, we were finally blessed with a few cen­ti­metres of snow a couple of weeks back (but which only hung around for a few hours) — and I used this oppor­tun­ity to shoot a couple of pic­tures around the beau­ti­ful old cam­pus.

Unfor­tu­nately I can’t show these pic­tures just yet, as some of them will be used else­where and the pho­tos ought to be “fresh” for that ;-)

But any­way, here’s some tips for winter pho­to­graphy: First of all, when you go out in the cold, make sure you pack some warm clothes (obvi­ously) so you can devote all your atten­tion to the pic­ture, and not your shak­ing body. Also, gloves are handy. Keep all your bat­ter­ies as close to your body as pos­sible (i.e. in your pock­ets, not the cam­era bag), so that they are kept warm — this will make the last longer.

Next, make sure you use plenty of pos­it­ive expos­ure com­pens­a­tion (that’s the +/​– EV thingy on your cam­era you always wondered about), as pic­tures in the snow tend to be gen­er­ally brighter than your aver­age light­ing situ­ation, and without com­pens­at­ing for that fact your cam­era will prob­ably under­ex­pose, mak­ing white snow look grey and ugly.

Finally, when you come back inside with your cam­era (mine is almost 2kg of metal and glass), it’ll take a good while before it warms up. In the mean­time, this cold block of high-​tech will make a lot of water con­dense on it, so you may want to put it in an air­tight plastic bag before go back inside. That way it can warm up in there without get­ting all the humid­ity inside. You def­in­itely do not want mush­rooms or lichens grow inside your gear…