First Snowfall of the Year!!!

I LOVE snow!!!
Maybe it's because I grew up in the snow-free land of San Diego, but there are few things more magical or beautiful to me than snow. Even after the five winters I spent in Utah, I never got tired of snow. The beauty of snow-covered trees! The perfect silence of snow softly falling! It makes me happy. My husband grew up in Utah, and he was pretty tired of the snow. So it's really nice to now live in a place where we usually get snow just a few times a year. A happy medium for both of us.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we got the season's first snowfall! It was just a little bit that first day and didn't stick for long, but I got to take Natalie and Kirsten out to play in the snow and they had a total ball! Natalie was a baby the last time it snowed, so this was the first time she got to really play in it.

Kirsten and the world's tiniest snowman. :)

Snow pictures always tend to turn out so beautiful. I LOVE the way the light reflects off the snow, it just makes colors sparkle in photographs. I think these shots I got of my girls playing in the snow are just gorgeous!

Kirsten decided it would be fun to eat the snow off the bushes! And Natalie followed Kirsten around and tried to do everything she did.

I don't really know much about photography and I'm sure you could get better advice elsewhere, but here are a few of my tips for getting great pictures of your kids playing in the snow:

1. Don't shoot while standing up! Most parents do this, but you'll get a much better angle if you get down to your kids' eye level. Crouch down in the snow, even if your pants get wet and your legs freeze. You'll get much better pictures!

2. Try to include some interesting texture in your photos, like the beautiful leaves of this tree and the way the snow sits on them.

3. Dress your kids in bright or deeply saturated colors. The colors end up looking really striking against a snowy backdrop, rather than plain gray or black coats.

4. If you have a Nikon or other DSLR camera, try setting your aperture as low as it can go. I love the blurred backgrounds fading into the distance!

5. Posed pictures can be cute, but take lots of pictures of your kids with natural facial expressions, unposed and just doing their thing. Kids don't have to be smiling in every single photo.

6. You don't have to be a Photoshop pro to edit your photos. I'm sure it would make my pictures even better, but I don't have the knowledge or the time to Photoshop mine. I use Picasa's free software. Just a few little tweaks like adjusting Glow, Color Temperature (make it warmer!), and Shadows make a huge difference.

7. Don't use a flash. Not in the snow. Just don't do it, unless you want everything completely washed out.

8. Take some extreme close-ups. Get really, really close. You'll be surprised how cute some of them turn out!

9. As always, my number one tip for getting good photos:
Take TONS of pictures. There's no such thing as too many! That's why it's so great to have digital cameras. We can snap away and then delete all the hundreds we don't like. The more you take, the better the odds of getting lots of good ones!

Please comment and let me know some more good tips for taking snow photos! Or any photos! And enjoy your snowy weather, if you're lucky enough to have it right now. We sure did enjoy our first snow day!!!