Here are some of the remarkable snow sculptures at the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival in China. Note the scale of some of them. The engineering just to pile snow that high is amazing, and then to building scaffolding for the sculptors to carve the snow into artistic shapes is also incredible. When I photograph snow, I make no exposure compensation on the camera which means the pictures are going to be dark -- maybe as much as 2/3 f/stop. I do this to protect the vulnerable highlights from becoming overexposed and blown out -- meaning a complete loss of texture and detail. Thats the last thing you want in any photograph. So, I accept the underexposure and then in post-processing I lighten the images to taste. This way I retain detail even in the white snow.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 16:03:00 +0000