3 Ways to Maximize Your Winter Photography Experience

The late fall and winter months can be both inspiring and frustrating for photographers. While the colorful leaves sprinkled on the ground might make them want to grab their cameras, the dark gray days can also be extremely discouraging. Often the gray skies make it difficult to capture any photos that appear bright and cheerful enough to warrant trudging around with a camera in the cold. However, that really does not have to be the situation. Try out these great tips for how to turn the dark days into stellar late fall/winter photo opportunities.

• 1. Capture the clouds: Instead of letting the darkness dampen your spirits, let it light up your camera "trigger" finger. Avoid the common mistake of over exposing the dark clouds. This will lead to a rather bland photo shoot. Instead, make sure that your skies are almost under-exposed. (Some cameras will allow you to easily capture the ideal setting for the sky if you focus on the sky for the initial auto-settings; repositioning the focus point after this should not change the settings already auto-locked in for the sky.) However, if your own camera does not have these automatic options, then play around with your exposure settings until you find one that allows you to properly capture the shades of the sky.
• 2. Take advantage of the darkness: While darker days can be frustrating, they can also be the perfect way to shoot any daylight photographs that require longer shutter speeds. The darker skies allow you to increase shutter speeds significantly without resulting in a completely washed out photograph. For example, in order to create a photograph of a waterfall that has the smoothly-flowing, soft appearance, long shutter speeds are needed; on sunny days, this is almost impossible to accomplish. However, gray skies provide the ideal weather for capturing such waterfall photography. Of course, remember to employ a tripod for any long-exposure photography in order to eliminate unwanted blurriness.
• 3. Shoot some bokeh: There's really no better time of the year to sharpen up your bokeh-shooting skills than the winter season, thanks to all those Christmas lights. While "bokeh" can technically refer to any area of a photograph with a certain degree of blur, the term has come to be more closely associated with out-of-focus light patterns. Mastering the art of bokeh photography can certainly be tricky, but the abundance of brightly colored Christmas light provides the ideal bokeh-shooting training grounds.

This winter season, don't let the cold cause you to hibernate the months away. Instead, grab your camera and stir up your creativity. Most likely, you'll end up with acquiring a few new photography skills and stellar pictures in the process.