Tip of the Day – Shooting Snow

Joys of the Season to you and yours. I know we’ve been on a roll with the Dead Presidents but winter prompts an important photography tip. One of the most spectacular weather events to photograph is snow. Whether it’s your kids frolicking in it or just capturing how it coats the earth and transforms a scene, there are lots of opportunities to create keeper images.

In the Woods Behind the House, Columbia, MD (10 December 2013)

I’ve been taking pictures for half a century and I still need to be reminded of this important fact of life when you take pictures of snow: you need to OVER-expose pictures of snow scenes.

Modern camera’s AUTO or default exposure metering is calibrated to integrate all the possible colors in the picture...the people, sky, ground, trees. Your light meter then averages them together into a proper exposure recommendation. All the blended colors make the entire scene a modest shade of gray. That’s why serious old-timers used to carry around an 18% gray card. They would meter the light that reflected off the card to set the proper exposure on their cameras...back when cameras were simple light-capture boxes that focused your scene on film. Now we have light meters built into cameras. While the AUTO setting works to bring out most of the colors properly, a scene that is mostly white will be darker and dull, dull, dull.

My Deck After a Big Snowfall (6 February 2010)

Here is what our back deck looked like after the big Super Bowl dump of 2010. Beck was stuck in New Orleans when the Saints won the Big One [poor thing...all that celebration to put up with] and I was stuck in the house on a street that wasn’t going to be plowed for three days. I thought I’d pop off a few shots of the accumulation and did not think to compensate for the white snow. It did not help that it was overcast but the regular meter setting made the snow too dark.

I don’t know much about all the features that are now available on today’s point-and-shoot cameras. I understand some have exposure options that include a ‘snow’ setting. That will do what people who understand the MANUAL controls on the camera know is required…overexpose snow scenes one or two aperture stops. That means if your AUTO metering says a scene is ‘properly’ exposed with a lens opening of f/11 and a shutter speed of 1/250 second, you should reduce the f-number to f/8 (one stop) or f/5.6 (two stops). The same result can be achieved by slowing the shutter speed to 1/125 (1 stop) or 1/60 (two stops).

Fortunately, most digital cameras, especially the DSLR’s (digital single lens reflex) have a feature called exposure compensation. Set that to +1 or +1.5 and every picture will be overexposed enough to make the snow white. However, you’ll need to remember to turn off exposure compensation when you come inside or are no longer shooting snow scenes. These pesky cameras do have controls to make shots better BUT [a] you need to remember to employ them and [b] you have to stop using them when they are no longer applicable.

For example, there is the issue of white balance. When I got my first DSLR in 2005, I would try to dutifully use each white balance setting where I was shooting...and sometimes forgot to change it for the next situation. Let’s just say an artificial light setting in the snow will give you the blues.

Winter Blues (12 February 2006)

On the other hand, the neat thing about digital imagery is that you can fix many mistakes. There are brightness and contrast controls AND you can remove all the color to turn an image into a black and white photo. If the scene has no people or is just snow and trees, like this one, make it black and white or ‘grayscale’, as some programs call it and it will look more natural.

Winter White (16 February 2006)

This tip also applies to beach scenes, especially the sugar white sands we find on some southern shores. If you want bright scenes to look natural, you need to overexpose the pictures a bit.

I wish you the best light and perfect exposures in the New Year.

Passed Presidents - # 38 – Gerald R. Ford

By 2008, the Dead Presidents Quest was down to the Final Four. In April, I lucked out when Beck had a job in Michigan. I tagged along and spent a day shooting the capitol in Lansing and visiting the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids.

Adjacent to the museum, on the shore of the Grand River, is the president’s grave. He died on this date in 2006. He was our oldest president, having lived 93 years and 165 days. This contrasts with the fact that his was the shortest time in office of any president who did not die on the job.

The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, 
Grand Rapids, MI (9 April 2008)

Gerald R. Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1913 and named Leslie Lynch King, Jr. His parents divorced soon after and when his mother married Gerald R. Ford, Sr., he took the new name. It’s ironic that events like a stumble down an airplane step and Chevy Chase’s parodies cemented the reputation that he was a klutz when in fact, he might have been our most athletic president. He was a multi-sport star in high school and a two-way standout on two undefeated University of Michigan football teams. The Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions offered him pro contracts but he went to Yale where he could coach their football team and attend law school.

In Front of the Ford Museum (9 April 2008)

Ford was elected to Congress in 1948. He served in the House for 24 years and rose through the Republican Party ranks to become the Minority Leader. In 1973, when Spiro Agnew had to quit because he was a crook, Richard Nixon needed someone above reproach to be his Vice President...the first such appointment under the new 25th Amendment to the Constitution. The following year, when Tricky Dick went down, Jerry became the only man to serve as Vice President and President without being elected to either position. He was nominated for another term in 1976 but lost to Jimmy Carter.

Elizabeth Bloomer, the Martha Graham Dancer (9 April 2008)

I love unusual shots of famous people. This was taken in the Ford Museum; through the glass into a display of early life information. Some First Ladies have great stories of their own...even if their graves are diminished and removed from the president’s...like afterthoughts. “Oh, right. He had a wife. She’s over there by that small marker.” In those crazy 70’s, Betty Ford made headlines by being FOR the Equal Rights Amendment AND abortion rights. She was forthright about her need for substance abuse treatment and went on to found facilities that still bear her name. Her public cancer treatment prompted many women to seek help and allowed us to stop whispering the word ‘breast’. She was a class act and deserves a last resting place equal to that of her husband’s.

On March 11, 1985, I was in the audience at Tulane University in New Orleans to see former presidents Carter and Ford discuss the presidency. They represented opposing parties and held (what we understood at the time) conservative and liberal positions but they had much in common. They were most interested in what was good for the nation and its people. They were friendly, considerate and appreciated each other. Those were the days.

After he died, I saved a tribute from Pat Oliphant, the editorial cartoonist. He recalled one of the annual parties the ex-president had for his White House alumni. Oliphant was the evening’s entertainment as he told stories from the era and drew caricatures of the main personalities. He concluded his routine with a sketch of the president, shown as he often was in those days, with a Band-Aid on his forehead. The cartoonist notes that he got a little carried away with the applause and went over to where the president was sitting to draw a large Band-Aid on Mr. Ford’s actual forehead. The 38th president laughed and let the joke run its course. Try that on Richard Nixon. Your butt would be in Guantanamo faster than you could say, “Sock it to ME?”

He was a good guy...honest, hard-working and reasonable. I didn’t like the Nixon pardon but it was probably the right call at the time. And guys like Cheney and Rumsfeld came from his inner circle but those were the days when Republicans wanted to govern, not rule. Times have changed.

Gerald R. Ford

38th President; Served 1974-1977

Born: July 14, 1913, Omaha, NE

Died: December 26, 2006, Rancho Mirage, CA

Grave Location: Gerald R. Ford Museum, Grand Rapids, MI

Date Visited: 4/9/2008

Passed Presidents – CSA #1 – Jefferson Davis

Among the friends who know of my ‘Dead Presidents Quest’, there are some who say Jefferson Davis should not be included. They consider him a traitor and the leader of the rebel secessionist nation that caused so much havoc and destruction as the North fought to save the Union. My reply was not very persuasive. He was an American president. The states he presided over were and continue to be part of the United States.

Jefferson Davis was born in Kentucky in 1808 and died in New Orleans 124 years ago today in 1889. He was a prominent political figure before the Civil War. The West Point graduate fought in the Mexican War and served in the House and Senate. He was also Franklin Pierce’s Secretary of War. In 1861, when the South seceded, he left Washington and was elected the Confederacy’s first president.

His first wife was the daughter of his commanding officer, Zachary Taylor, who went on to become our 12th president. The marriage lasted three months before she died of malaria. His second wife moved his remains from New Orleans to Hollywood Cemetery in the former Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia. I have to be honest here. If he were buried in rural Kentucky instead of a showcase cemetery where two more actual American presidents are located, I would have ignored him. Let’s just consider him lagniappe in the Dead Presidents collection (an old New Orleans expression that identifies ‘something extra’...a bonus).

Jefferson Davis Grave, Richmond, VA (28 June 2005)

Unlike other presidents’ tombs, Davis’ family could not help

but make his grave an advertisement for the Lost Cause.

Jefferson Davis Memorial, Hollywood Cemetery, 

Richmond, VA (28 June 2005)

In the space under the rotunda where the Kentucky capitol honors its most important citizens, there are statues of the presidents from both nations in our great Civil War. Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were born less than a year apart in the state.

Jefferson Davis Statue, Kentucky State Capitol, 
Frankfort (9 June 2008)

I don’t care to say more about the guy. Historians seem to think he was not a great leader and he hampered the South’s war efforts. He was imprisoned for two years but not convicted of treason. He travelled, held a number of jobs, ran his Louisiana plantation and wrote about the Confederacy until he died twenty four years after the war ended.

On the grounds of the old Mississippi capitol in Jackson, there is a monument to the war dead.

Mississippi Confederate Monument, Jackson, MS (16 May 2102)

Inside the locked glass door is a statue of the President. With the glare of the light on the glass, I could only zoom in and capture a portion of the marble head. I like the creepy gaze of the old white supremacist.

'Jeffy Davis Eyes'

Jefferson Davis

1st [and only] President, Confederate States of America

Served 1861-1865

Born: June 3, 1808, Christian County, KY

Died: December 6, 1889, New Orleans, LA

Grave Location: Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, VA

Date Visited: 6/28/2005