Nighttime Winter Photography

Even though it’s cold outside, and driving in snow gets kind of old, I still enjoy winter… sometimes.  One of those times is after a fresh snowfall, when I can get some nighttime snow pictures.  So I went out last night about midnight and captured a few…

Some of the pictures are just meant to show how much snow we have gotten, and aren’t composed in any artistic way.  So please don’t be too critical.  :)

I actually did this two nights in a row, and sent out some from the first night to a couple friends that don’t get snow in the winter, and had a few people ask questions about how I was able to capture them, and what I had done in Photoshop to give them the surreal look that they had.  There’s an easy answer to that question: nothing.  The first bunch didn’t ever see Photoshop.  This bunch did, but all I did was correct the white balance, as I thought the pictures looked too yellow, and felt too warm as a result, so I corrected the color of the snow back to white.  But other than that, I did absolutely nothing to the images; these are just as they came out of the camera.

Other than having a good camera, the only thing I did special was to put the camera on a tripod so the long exposures required at night wouldn’t blur.  I didn’t use any fancy filters, no overpriced exotic lenses.  It was just all about proper composure and making sure the camera didn’t move.  But that wasn’t enough for some images; there are a few in here that are kind of blurry.  Autofocus pretty much doesn’t work at night, and its really hard to manually focus when it’s so dark outside.  So my apologies on those.  I liked the images anyway, so I included them despite their blurriness.

Anyway, enjoy.  I don’t get out to take pictures just for fun very often any more, and that’s why you never see any of my photos here on my blog; I’m usually working for a client, and I generally won’t post any of their images without asking permission first.