The Beauty & Challenge Of Winter Storms

The view out my window was pretty lousy! Sunrise looked to be dull and dark with thick clouds obscuring the sun. But, if you don't try, you'll never get the image, so I loaded up my gear and trekked to a location in the Alabama Hills, where interesting foreground rock formations provided leading lines to the majestic, but very dark, snow-covered Sierras. I set up my camera and waited.

Snow covers Yosemite Falls and Lost Arrow in a winter storm that's clearing from Yosemite National Park, California.

Magically, the clouds opened slightly to the east and the Sierras lit up with a beautiful magenta alpenglow. I captured the image and made it back to the car before my face and fingers froze.

Winter landscapes incorporate ominous skies, fantastic storm clouds, dramatic light, God rays, eerie mist, fog and snowstorms. These severe weather elements provide great opportunities for spectacular landscape images, but you must be prepared to deal with extreme weather conditions and also be knowledgeable about the photographic techniques needed to capture striking images.

Photographing storm elements as part of the landscape takes preparation. Do you want to feature the elements of the storm or make them an integral part of, but not the centerpiece of, the landscape itself? Evaluate the weather conditions to frame compositional considerations.

Dark, ominous skies are strong elements, but somewhat featureless, so you need an anchoring landscape element to give your image structure. Look for a hoodoo, mountain, tree, ridgeline or some geological feature, hopefully that adds color to make it stand out, when composing your image.

The Yellowstone River cuts through the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone with Lower Yellowstone Falls almost frozen over, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

Look to the west at sunrise when clearing sunrise storms often create magnificent, pink-colored clouds or alpenglow on the mountains. If you photograph in thick cloud cover with flat light, emphasize any strong elements of color using color-corrected or polarizing filters.

If you have a strong graphic image but no significant color, capture the image anyway and convert to a powerful black- and-white image using a black-and-white conversion software program like Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. Trees in snowstorms become dark silhouettes against bright backgrounds that translate into great black-and-white images. Winter mist and fog often create ethereal monochromatic conditions and softer light that you can use to create subtly toned and deeply moving images.

A winter sunrise and the resulting snowbow captured from Sunset Point, Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.

Check your exposure histogram when photographing these elements as your camera meter underexposes these scenes, creating dull, muddy images. Add exposure compensation to auto exposure or overexpose by about one stop nominal on manual to correct this. Slower shutter speeds often create soft, dreamlike images in foggy conditions. Snow and rain soften distant features in a storm and create a three-dimensional effect of elements fading in the distance. Try a slower shutter speed, depending on conditions, to create a slight blur in the drops to add dynamic motion to the image.

Clouds are often the most dramatic elements of a stormy winter scene. When magnificent, dark and foreboding cloud-filled skies dominate a stormy landscape, anchor your image with elements like hills or trees along the bottom third or less of your image to give it structure, but not overwhelm the clouds.

You may not realize it, but you can get a rainbow, called a "snowbow," during a clearing snowstorm. I photographed one of these rare events on a very cold sunrise morning at Bryce. Rainbows are truly beautiful and often stand out against those dark, violent storm skies. They add spectacular elements to an image. Because rainbows occur at a 90º angle to the sun, be careful using a polarizer to photograph them. It's easy to make a rainbow disappear when using a polarizer to darken the sky. Watch the effect through your eyepiece and adjust accordingly. Capturing lightning is challenging, especially when the strikes are prominent, but far apart, time-wise.

It's hard to keep the shutter open for long periods and not overexpose the image. Variable neutral-density filters from Singh-Ray and other companies can solve this problem. Another solution I use is the Lightning Trigger from Stepping Stone Products, LLC. Attached to your camera's cable release port, with your exposure settings on manual, it has an amazing ability to capture lightning strikes even from great distances. All my lightning images were made with this device.

Storm light can be soft and diffuse or harsh and high contrast with several stops of tonal range between shadows and highlights. Be prepared for either condition. Diffuse light can often be shot straight on with little compensation.

Harsh light requires additional effort. You can use a split neutral-density filter to even out tonal range. Or, shoot multiple images of the same composition at different ƒ-stops with your camera locked down on a tripod. Combine these images using an HDR software program like Nik Software HDR Efex Pro 2 or Photomatix Pro from HDRsoft to narrow the contrast range and bring out the best elements of your image.

When photographing storms, if you concentrate only on the grand landscape, you may miss those superb, intimate scenics that are at your feet or right behind you. Check the area around you for intimate scenics that you can convert into striking images.

The winter sun moves across the sky at a lower angle than summer, so sunset light often lasts longer and can be very subtle. If the storm clears, don't pack your gear. You may get that magical subdued evening light, giving you the opportunity for beautiful softly lit, color-saturated images with a completely different theme than your violent storm-filled images.

To see more of Dave Welling's photography, visit his website at www.strikingnatureimagesbydavewelling.com.