For those of you who are fortunate enough to have snow in your backyard, then I’m guessing at some point you’ve wanted to take pictures in the snow or have already. Living in Montana snow is one of the great perks and getting to work with snow can be a lot of fun and also very challenging if you haven’t spent a lot of time with it.
Upon first glance you might not see much of a challenge. But snow being white reacts to light very strongly and in a photograph the gradients in blue and grey in snow can be dramatic. If you want to test that, just take a picture of snow and then convert it to black and white and you’ll see all those gradients. I brought up flash because while you might not think that adding more light to an already bright element would be helpful but the white light coming from a flash can actually make snow look more like we always think it is, white. Even a little pop of light from a flash can make a big difference, especially if you are trying to focus the viewers eye on that one spot and not the whole thing. Now granted if you’re trying to capture a entire mountain range it probably won’t do you much good but something smaller it might help. Keep in mind flashes aren’t as resilient to water like our cameras and lenses are, so due keep that in mind if you are planning on going out into the snow to shoot.