Photography in Connecticut, New Haven county snow photos
It’s snowing here in Connecticut as I write, and I think it might be the last of the season–here’s to an early spring! But photos with snow cover are a great way to illustrate a little trick that can make all the difference when you’re taking close-up photos of anything in the environment (even people!). A great way to make your photo stand out is to make your main subject separate itself from its background. One way to do this is to use a shallow depth of field, as I mentioned in a previous post; another way is to make the background light in color if your subject is dark, or vice-versa. In this photo, you can see that snow is the focus, but the photo doesn’t have impact because it’s basically white on white:
The shape of the twig comes through nicely, but there isn’t a real wow factor. So I decided to move around a bit, and within the next 10 inches of space there was a more interesting twig. Most importantly, I moved almost 180 degrees so that the background of the twig was no longer white snow cover, but instead something else:
Do you want to guess what it is? A beautiful bay? Frozen water on a lake? Actually it’s a dark nook in my driveway and our recycling bin ;-). Because I’m using a shallow depth of field, just about ANY dark background will work to make the snow pop, and the fact that the bin is blue is a bonus, as it adds some color to the photo, which I think it needed. Because I liked how the blues looked and the almost ombre effect, I decided to frame the photo a little bit differently too, to add more focus to the color and the way it transitions to white.
You can also create an interesting effect by putting the sun behind your subject–this usually makes anything wet get a little bit glittery. This wouldn’t work as well if my background was very light, as you wouldn’t be able to see the circles, which are really just very out-of-focus pinpoints of light from snowflakes and droplets of water. Next time you’re out taking photos, experiment with taking a photo, then walking around your subject til you find a more effective background color to highlight it. It’s amazing how much a photo can change.
