Friday, December 10, 2010

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!!!

7 comments:

  1. Everybody tells me I'm wrong, but I swear I would be in heaven if I lived in a place where we got snow. We got snow here in Dallas last Christmas but the amount we got was very unusual I'm told. I want more!!! LOVE all the pictures!

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  2. I love snow too, but I hate driving in it! Thanks for the great photo tips! The only other thing I could think of to add is that I like to get good action shots of them having a snowball fight, making a snowman or snow angel, or just throwing snow up into the air!

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  3. The pictures turned out great! We are in MI and we gets lots of snow - we love it!
    Use the digital cameras action setting for pictures on the "go" and set it on the "fill flash" setting to so it eliminates the shadows for the snow pictures. have a great weekend.

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  4. Thanks for the tips. Our 8 year old digital camera is finally dying and I could use some tips on buying a (not too expensive) new one. Since ours is so old even a cheap one will be an upgrade now. But you said some things in your post that I don't know about: DSLR and aperture. Maybe you could expound on these things?

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  5. You have great camera tips! I don't really miss the snow in Houston...at least I didn't until Kaia told me she'd like to play in the snow! We might get one snow storm a year! The temperature dropped down to 31 this morning and "they" issued a severe weather warning for three hours for "freezing temperatures." Luckily, it was back up to 60 this afternoon!

    ~Carla

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  6. I always love the pictures that you take. I really wish I could take a class on how to take cute pictures of kids and basically how to use a SLR camera. Sorry that I have been so lame about commenting! I will try to do better. We cannot wait to hang out with you and your family when you come down! Cities and Knights!!!!

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  7. LOVE your pictures!!! Your girls are darling! It's really funny that you've had snow and we still haven't had any!

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