I alluded in a post this week to the challenges of photographing snow. While some are easily met—like increasing exposure so the brights remain bright—others continue to be challenging; honestly the biggest may be simply deciding what color looks best. The images above both really blew my mind by showing three distinct colors in one small area, all due to the light.

Of course, converting the image to black and white solves the issue of “what color is snow,” but opens up the corollary issue of what tone (or shade of gray) should the snow be!

Snow is basically a great, diffuse reflector of light because it is actually millions of tiny mirrors all pointing in slightly different directions. My bright, red face after a sunny day of being out in snow can be traced to significant, diffuse reflected ultraviolet radiation!

You may never see a mirror image, as is the case with still water, but snow easily takes on the color of the surroundings, be that sky, trees, clouds, or “Alpine glow” of sunrise and sunset. I typically have to make an adjustment to the color I either want the snow to be or to get it back to what I saw. The adjustment is quite easy to make in LightRoom but the challenge remains deciding what it should be!

And exactly what that color looks like can change with the orientation of the snow to the source being reflected. I often see this in indentations in snow.

A classic example involves creating a series of deepening holes in the snow. Shallow holes are mostly white but the deeper the hole, the darker it appears. As most of the light reflects around inside the hole, some portion is absorbed, and the deeper it is, the more times it is reflected, resulting in significant absorption—less light bouncing back out.

On a bright, overcast day the light coming off snow is flat, and it is easy to become disoriented as there is little to indicate distance. On sunny days snow, especially in the shadows, is blue.

As my sister, a water color painter, said to me earlier this week, “what fun as evening comes on to watch the snow go through all the shades of purple from light to dark.” I agree and enjoy looking at the color of snow any time of day or even at night under a full moon!

24 Jan This entry was published on January 24, 2024 at 3:40 pm. It’s filed under John Snell, John Snell Photographer, Patterns, Photograph, Reflections, Snow, Sunrise, Sunset, Vermont, Winter, www.johnsnell.photography and tagged Alpine glow, nature, Photography, snow, winter. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.