Winter Photography Tip

Question: Why is the snow in my photo blue?

Answer: As winter descends on us and we are starting to prepare for our annual snowy owl workshops, this question comes from our snowy owl workshops last year…

Blue snow happens when a camera fails to recognize what snow looks like in the shade. Digital cameras will not recognize all the colours in the spectrum like your eyes will. The camera captures the light as it shines through the oxygen inside the frozen ice crystals, thereby producing a blue colour.

To eliminate the snow, I do one of two things… In post production I adjust the blue saturation down, and voila, blue is eliminated.

In camera, I will shoot to the right, or over expose by as much as little as a half stop to as much as three full stops. This ensures I get an over exposed image and the blues are not an issue when I get the image into post editing software.

Thanks for reading,

Kev