Photographing snow and ice

Why snow comes out grey

Your camera's light meter is set to render each scene as mid-grey. Yet fresh snow reflects 80 to 90% of sunlight. Faced with a snowfield, the camera thinks the scene too bright, reduces exposure, and the snow comes out grey.

The correction. In aperture priority (A or Av) or shutter priority (S or Tv), increase the exposure compensation. Nikon advises starting at +0.3 EV, then +0.7 and +1 if the snow stays grey. When snow fills the entire frame, many photographers go to +1.5 or +2 EV; the less it fills the image, the less correction is needed.

The check. Check the histogram: the curve should approach the right edge without hitting it. If the highlight alert blinks on the snow, dial back a third of a stop. Burnt-out white cannot be recovered.

In manual mode, exposure compensation does not work: adjust shutter speed or aperture so the meter indicator sits between +1 and +2.

On a phone, keep your finger pressed on the snow until you see "AE/AF Lock", then swipe up on the screen to brighten.

When you're done, reset the compensation to zero.

Photographing falling snow

Shutter speed determines how flakes appear. At 1/250 s or 1/500 s, they become sharp dots. Slower, they stretch into streaks, then into a veil. On a tripod, with exposures of several seconds, they almost disappear from the image.

White flakes are hard to see against a white sky: look for a darker background behind them, a forest, a wall, water.

In a blizzard, snow erases the background and leaves only the subject.

Composing with white

A vast expanse of snow empties the frame. Few elements remain, and each one counts: a track, a silhouette, a colour. Gabriel Madie framed a single ski track on the slope; the jury sees “a form of calligraphy drawn across a vast sheet of snow”.

Leave space around the subject. A person or an animal, however tiny, provides scale: in Steven Nestor's work, the climbers are “graphic accents that give scale”.

The snowflake in macro: the most demanding shot

For a snowflake to fill the frame, a magnification of 1:1 to 5:1 is required: at 5:1, the snowflake occupies five times its actual size on the sensor. At this ratio, every constraint of macro photography becomes extreme.

An infinitesimal depth of field. The Canon MP-E 65 mm macro lens, which ranges from 1:1 to 5:1, has a depth of field of 2.24 mm at best (f/16, 1:1) and 0.048 mm at worst (f/2.8, 5:1). A single exposure therefore renders only a slice of the snowflake sharp. Hence focus stacking: multiple exposures, each sharp at a different depth, then merged. Don Komarechka assembles 30 to 50 exposures of the same snowflake, sometimes from up to 300 shots.

A subject that vanishes. The snowflake melts if the equipment is not very cold; even without melting, it evaporates directly into the air (sublimation) and its edges degrade. One must work quickly: Nathan Myhrvold photographs on a cooled stage to save time.

Cold, everywhere. Everything that comes near the snowflake must be cold: support and equipment, cooled before the session. Your breath and body heat are enough to melt it: breathe to the side. The cold also drains the battery, and condensation awaits the camera on return (see "The camera in the cold").

Vibrations. At these magnifications, the slightest tremor shows. Alexey Kljatov, snowflake photographer, triggers with a 2-second self-timer to remove his hands from the camera; OM System advises a tripod. With the MP-E 65 mm, flash also enables sharp hand-held images.

Light. Ice is transparent: without directed light, the snowflake disappears. Komarechka lights it with a ring flash. Kljatov lights it from below, through a glass, with a simple LED lamp, at an angle to bring out relief and contours. The colours in physicist Kenneth Libbrecht's photographs come from coloured lights illuminating the transparent ice.

The background. A woollen glove for Komarechka; dark grey woollen fabric, or a glass lit from below, for Kljatov; cooled sapphire plates and black card for Myhrvold. A dark background makes the crystal stand out.

White and relief. A snowflake is clear ice: what one sees are its edges and relief, revealed by the angle of light. Kljatov lights at an angle to obtain more highlights, shadows and contours, and merges 8 to 10 exposures of each crystal to reduce noise.

Jim Chung received the Macrophotography Prize 2025. The jury notes “an almost perfect symmetry” and observes that “the crystal is remarkably intact”. It highlights the red, cyan and green reflections of the crystal: “This phenomenon is difficult to obtain consistently because it requires very controlled lighting, a precise angle and a reflective surface that enhances spectral decomposition”. It also notes the contrast between the sharp snowflake and “the organic, fibrous, almost chaotic background”, and recalls that “photographing an intact snowflake in macro requires very low temperatures, complete absence of vibration and an extremely shallow depth of field”.