Today (and tomorrow) is supposed to be the most snowfall we will be receiving in the general area where I live. I wanted to capture the near-blizzard like conditions. I have tried in the past, but typically the snowfall never appears as I see it. It is difficult to capture the large number of airborne snowflakes, however, I came across a technique that Tom Grill wrote in in this blog post on his about photography blog. Using a flash helps emphasize the depth of the snow. I mounted my Yongnuo YN560III, an incredibly inexpensive, yet one of the most versatile flashes on the market. I think the main reason why it is so inexpensive is the fact that there’s no TTL or auto exposure mode. It’s strictly manual, but variable over an 8 stop range. Trial-and-error is the order of the day playing around with flash power settings and apertures. I used the Fujifilm XF 23mm f/1.4 on the X-Pro2. Here are the results of my efforts. My personal favourite is the Jackson Pollock like image of snow in front of the hedge.
An early attempt, but a little too “literal” for my tastes.
This one is close to the feeling I wanted to capture.
This is it! Good luck to my friends in New York City. We’re getting a dumping here, but they’re getting even more. I haven’t checked any hard data, but my sense is that over the last five years, they’ve been getting more snow than we have in Toronto.
