How to Properly Expose Snow

-3 EV: Too dark-2 EV: Too dark-1 EV: Still too dark"Properly exposed": Too dark+1 EV: Getting close+2 EV: My favorite+3 EV: Too bright

In a post on his blog back in the winter of 2006, Chase Jarvis wrote that in order to expose snow properly, one must fool the camera by overexposing the scene by one to two full stops. The reason is that cameras are designed to turn everything into 18% gray. That's why if the snow is "properly exposed" it will look, you guessed it, gray. If you want it to look all pretty and white, then you have to let the camera capture more of the light reflecting off the snow. Therefore you have to overexpose the shot. So how is this done? I put my camera into manual mode, and adjusted the exposure time and aperture until my camera's light meter indicated that the exposure was "optimal", i.e 18% gray. I took a total of seven shots. One was at the "optimal" exposure. The others were -3, -2, -1, +1, +2, and +3 stops away from the camera's recommended exposure. If you shoot with a DSLR, you can take a bunch of photos and look at the LCD and histogram to see which exposure produces the best result. My favorite of the bunch is the photo taken at +2 stops, although I think the snow would have looked even better if I increased it by another 1/3 stop. You can see that Chase's advice is pretty much spot on. If you shoot in aperture or shutter priority mode or some other auto shooting mode, make sure to apply +1 to +2 exposure compensation if your camera allows it. If it snows where you live, go out and play around with your camera. If you're like me and live where it never snows, get in a car/boat/plane and go someplace where it does snow!