Take Life One Cup At A Time

take the quiz! It only takes a minute - promise! >

Hey girl! What's Your Signature Latte? Whether it's a frothy latte or a cold brew, your personality shines through.  Find out what your java ingredients are!

Photo Tip Thursday: Shooting in the Snow

Now I know what you all might be thinking here…”Whoa whoa whoa Andrew, it’s a little early for snow photo tips.” I did happen to hear on the news though that snow might be in the recent forecast for some of you fashion bloggers way up in the north however, so I thought I’d post this so you could be ready when the flurries do start to fall.

First off, I want to tell you why shooting in the snow is so tricky. If you’ve ever taken photos in the snow before in automatic mode, you’ve probably noticed that your pictures turn out quite underexposed {see the photo below for an example}.

The all to often result of relying on your camera’s automatic setting when taking photos in the snow…drastically underexposed photos.

To explain why this happens, I want to discuss the camera’s metering system for a quick second. You see, a camera determines proper exposure by making sure that all of the light and dark areas in your images average out as “middle gray”. Middle gray is just a term that describes a shade of grey that reflects 18% of the light that hits it. You may remember from physics class that the color white reflects all wavelengths of light, and black absorbs all wavelengths of light. Gray on the other hand is a mixture of white and black, and therefore absorbs some of the light that hits it, but reflects some as well.

Use the above image as an example. I’ve made it black and white just for the sake of simplicity. In order for the camera to think that this is the proper exposure, if you took all of the light areas {whites} and the dark areas {blacks} in this image and blended them together, they would have to average out to form the middle gray color that you see in the diagram below. It’s exactly the same premise for color images, don’t worry.

The real problem when you’re shooting in the snow is that it {being white} is a very reflective medium when it comes to light. Snow bounces all of light that hits it back off of it. This is very confusing for the camera exposure metering system because it detects all of these white areas in the image and the enormous amount of light reflected from them and says, “Whoa! There’s way too much white in this image and it’s not averaging out to middle gray. I need to do something to make this image average out correctly to middle gray.” It does this by decreasing the exposure {thereby decreasing the amount of light entering the camera} so that there’s more dark areas in the image and the light and dark regions average out to middle gray.

This is particularly confusing because even though the arrow in your exposure meter is right on the center mark and says that your exposure is “correct”, it actually isn’t and your photos end up being underexposed. This is where you have to outsmart your camera.

While the light and dark areas average out to middle gray and the exposure meter says that the exposure is “correct”, the image is clearly underexposed.

To compensate for your camera’s snowy shortcomings, move the arrow in the exposure meter one or two stops to the right {by decreasing shutter speed or raising ISO} to increase the exposure of your image. Also, set your camera to partial/center-weighted metering so that it calculates exposure from the center of the image where your subject is, all the while ignoring most of the snow that surrounds them.

Moving the exposure meter to right will properly expose your subject and make the snow appear its true white color. This might not average out as middle gray, but oh well. in this case it’s not supposed to.

Thanks for reading and happy snow shooting!

  1. These are just awesome – this series is great! I always look forward to Grace's outfit posts, but I really love these photography tips too, Andrew!

  2. Great tips! Thanks so much for sharing!
    The Style Storm
    <3, Christina

  3. Thanks y'all for sharing these tips! I am investing in a DSLR on Black Friday and am writing down all Andrew's pic posts so that I have some tutorials to go back to for when I get it!

    -Morgan
    http://www.how2wearit.com

  4. There was talk of flurries in Louisville this weekend, SIGH. Mother nature needs to get back on her meds.

  5. Sue Figueroa says:

    That first pic! you look stunning 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Become a healthier version of yourself by joining the FITwithASD community today! For only $8.99/month or $89/year, you never have to worry about workouts, macros, or a meal plan again.

learn more about fitwithasd ⟶

300K

join the community of

other women that love fashion, fitness, and lifestyle

@a_southerndrawl

The All-Time Favorite Posts

read this post
⟶

Personal

10/27/18 Mr. & Mrs. White

There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t feel so blessed to be Jordan’s wife. He is my everything. These photos and video are the sweetest reminder of our love for one another. So, grab a cup of coffee, pull up a seat, and try not to bawl your eyes out (because I know we did). Every time we look through our photos and watch our video, we cry the happiest tears. 

read this post
⟶

Personal

The Proposal

It’s crazy what can happen in a year. I met the love of my life and the rest is history. I was having a hard time ending this post, because frankly, I think I could talk about that evening forever. Then I realized that this post doesn’t have an ending, but instead, a beginning. Thank you so much for all of the love, excitement, and gratitude.

read this post
⟶

LIFESTYLE

Dark Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

One of my favorite things to do in the fall is bake my dark chocolate chip pumpkin bread! I’ve made it *so* many times for me, J, and friends & family. It’s moist, decadent, and super easy to make! It also makes for a great DIY housewarming gift.

Shop My Favorite Healthy Snacks!

visit the full shop ⟶

⟶

⟶

fashion

beauty

personal

travel

lifestyle

shop

fitness

I’m just an everyday gal who can go from gym to glam in record timing. I run on sarcasm & coffee on the weekdays and sass & vino on the weekends! I strive to stay fit, stylish, and healthy, while also trying to be the very best version of myself (sounds easy enough, right?).   MEET GRACE ⟶