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Any tips for photography in the snow?

I'm going to be going skiing soon and want to take a couple of days off and photograph people and landscape in the snow. What sort of settings and equipment should I use? Would a polarizing lens help with reducing glare?

I will answer this as if you are using digital equipment, although the principles would apply for film as well. You'd be able to check your results with digital and make adjustments, while you would just have to trust this advice if you are using film.

Your camera is going to try to make the snow look neutral gray, so you will have to overexpose to make it look white. Try one full stop at first and check your results. If it isn't right, go towards two stops overexposed. You would do this by selecting positive values for exposure compensation, such as EV (+1.0) or EV (+2.0) and so on.

If you use a point and shoot camera, they pretty much all have a "snow" or "beach" mode. If you just use that position, the camera should take care of the exposure compensation for you.

Be aware that camera batteries are not going to give full performance below freezing, so you will want to try to keep the camera warm. It's not likely that you will encounter any really bitter cold anywhere in the civilized world at this time of year, so this will probably not be a factor.

Also be aware about bringing your camera in from the cold and allowing condensation to form as this will wreck things in a hurry. If the temperatures are not too extreme, you probably won't have to take any special precautions, but if it's around freezing, you might want to carry a heavy zip lock bag (a freezer bag) so that you can put the camera in it outside and leave it in the bag until it's up to room temperature.

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