Tips for beautiful snow shooting

美しい雪景色を撮影するためのヒント

Genuine winter photos often do not get, as we see with our eyes. It is complicated to photograph snow on your phone. I will give you a few tricks that will help you to beautifully photograph the winter story.

Shoot high key

Snow usually adds light to the photo and can re-brighten it. And the camera's electronics will try to compensate for this sunrise, using the exposure.
As a result, you get a uniformly gray picture, not the white one you wanted. In the photo, this shooting technique is called "high key" or "white on white".
The point is to "explain" to the camera that so much white in the frame is standard, and that's what you want to get. And she doesn't have to darken it and make it gray.
When shooting snow, your main task is to keep the information in the brightest light without becoming just a flat white spot.
You don't want the light "blowing out".
To accomplish this, when shooting, you need to transfer the exposure compensation to +1 and above if you hit on the camera with manual settings.

Choose white balance correctly

It is also vital to ensure that the white balance corresponds to the light color you see and is neither too blue (cold) nor too yellow (warm).
That is, white should be as white as possible in this lighting. This is the essence of the white balance.
Photographers often prefer to balance white more in blue than get yellowish snow.
It looks terrific if you have a piercing blue sky and sun.
This can be done when shooting (setting "white balance" in the camera or phone) and processing in any editor.
However, to correct the white balance after processing, the RAW format is best, not JPEG.
If you are shooting a landscape, the balance of white snow should not be a problem.
Another thing, if you photograph a person against the background of snow, it would be good to do a more thorough treatment so that the cold tone of the photo does not make the skin of a person bluish and not very healthy. Then, treating the human skin with a separate masking brush with a warm white balance will be necessary.

How to make winter photography even more interesting

Interesting winter photos can be obtained on a sunny day, cloudy, and even at night. On a cloudy day, photography will be paler, but this can be used to create a particular mood, for example, minimalism. And another cloudy day can be perfect for winter portraits because clouds will give a beautiful soft scattered light without sharp shadows on the face. And in black and white, winter photography can also look great just due to the exciting composition, objects, and play of light and shadow. 
In general, I recommend watching as many good photos as possible to be inspired and to learn how they are made and why they cling.