How To Take Great Pictures on Ski Vacation
You have put so much time and energy into planning this vacation, make sure you bring home some lovely captured memories. We would all love to display Pinterest-worthy pictures online, showing all our friends the wonderful vacation experience. Keep these few guidelines in mind as you start to point and click and in no time your will be confident to take great pictures.
Beginners Guide: Take home great pictures during your ski vacation with these quick and easy tips!
iPhone and Point & Shoot Cameras:
Battery Power
Cold temperatures will quickly drain power from your battery. Start fresh with a fully charged battery. Keep a spare available and your lodging or tucked into your inner coat pocket to stay warm and ready
Gloves
If your fingers are frozen they won’t help you much with being ready for that great shot. Try hand warmers or fingerless gloves to help your digits stay functional.
Use HDR
When shooting with your iPhone, bump the setting to HDR ON and tap the screen to focus on the person or place. This will keep the subject in focus while the HDR setting will keep the sky from being blown out.
Go Candid
Everyone will be distracted with the conditions around them, now is a great time to get those candid photos. Playing in the snow, skiing, trying not to slip on ice, capturing the unique moments provides great conversation pieces later.
DSLR Camera Settings:
Skiing and Activities
make sure you have a higher ISO/Shutter speed or use the sports setting to avoid too much action blur.
Zoom
Don’t get caught up in taking in ALL the scenery in one single frame. Get close especially to people, this way your frame won’t be too busy. In trying to get everything in the photo sometimes you end up with a whole lot of nothing.
Manual Mode Landscape Photos
When you do want to take in the scenery, adjust your aperture (also known as Fstop) to a low setting. (This would be a high number such as F20, rather than F7). There are many factors that will determine a solid shot, but as a basic, the larger the aperture the more in the frame that will be in focus.
Camera Condensation
Be aware of entering warm indoors after shooting in the cold. Condensation can form on your lens. Keeping a large ziploc bag handy helps the camera to slowly adjust to the change in temperatures.
White Balance
Play around with your white balance settings to make sure the snow is not blue. Shoot in RAW if you have the means to adjust color in post processing.
Winter lighting tends to be overwhelming, the glare from the snow can leave you with white photos and not much else. Be conscience of your settings, learn to read the histogram to see what you are getting. Consider the time of day when taking photographs. Photography is all about light manipulation, so those early morning snow shots before the sun is too bright can be the best lighting.
Capture the moments that create memories. Have fun on your ski vacation and don’t forget your camera!