Paris - Shooting Snow

 Place Des Vosges - Carla Coulson

 Le Marais - Carla Coulson

 Notre Dame - Carla Coulson

 Ile-St- Louis - Carla Coulson

 Places des Vosges - Carla Coulson

Along the Seine - Carla Coulson

Last year in the lead up to Christmas it was snowing it's little heart out in Paris. As those first flutters fell every photographer raced outdoors including moi (see above). It is so rare to have a thick blanket of white in Paris and when it happens we all go gah gah..Sometimes its just us photographers out there shooting each other in Paris.. How romantic!!

There is a trick to shooting snow. For your camera it is like pointing the lens towards the sun, the exposure meter goes wild and thinks ooohhh there is too much light and it will encourage you to close down your aperture or suggest a higher shutter speed. Which results in murky snow, not lovely white snow that the eye sees..

Why does this happen??

Your camera is programmed to read the light at medium grey..When you point your camera at different coloured objects in the same light  (eg white or black) your camera will give you two different exposure readings even though the objects are in the same light. The white will cause you camera to under expose the image and the black will tell you camera to overexpose it. This was a huge problem when using film. At least with a digital camera you can see that it is incorrect and correct it by changing shutter speed and aperture.

How to overcome this problem?

You can carry a grey card with you and take an exposure reading of the grey card in the same light as the scene - the camera lurves grey. Or you can take an exposure reading of a medium grey object in the same light in the scene and measure your exposure on that. That should get you a spot on exposure reading and pretty white snow.. Works for brides dresses too!!!

Happy Shooting..

Carla x

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Great Reads on Paris The Most Beautiful Walk in the World, Walks Through Lost Paris, Hidden in Paris, Parisian's Paris

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