How-To
Atmospherics are a wonderful tool for creating mood in your snowy scenes. Gray mist softens the entire scene, and you’ll usually get a slight separation in tones from the mist to the snow on the ground. This is subtle, and you frequently need to process and print carefully to bring it out, but the effect is magnificent when it’s done well.
We always think of snow as being plain white, but the reality is that it’s a malleable element that can take on any of several colors depending on the conditions in which you’re shooting. The lighting as well as how you make use of your camera controls have a profound impact on the color of water when it goes from a liquid to a solid.
Control over the colors of snow begins with your exposure. Historically, inexperienced photographers had a lot of trouble with snow because it can fool the in-camera meter so easily. All reflected-light meters want to make the subject they’re metering render as middle gray