Episode 6: Winter Challenges with Wildlife Photography

Winter brings a host of different challenges for us wildlife photographers. More often than not, we tend to think of enduring the cold and slippery road conditions as the big challenges of winter. However, when it comes to photographing animals this time of year, there is so much more to overcome than just our own physical comfort. Quite frankly, the very nature of physics is working against us this time of year. 

Key Takeaways

• Snow absorbs more red light than other colors. This tends to give snow, especially in low light conditions, a blue tint that can completely destroy our photographs in ways that no amount of post-processing in Lightroom or Photoshop can ever correct. 
• Cold temperatures often results in out of focus images. In this episode we discuss exactly why this occurs and the ways in which you can quickly and easily solve this problem in the field. 
• Falling snow often renders autofocus systems obsolete. However, there are AF area modes that we can use to easily overcome this. 

Winter offers us incredible backdrops to photograph wildlife against while the deep cold often provides us with amazing behavior we simply cannot see and photograph at any other time of the year. However, the obstacles we discuss in this episode are tremendous hurdles that must be understood and overcome to take advantage of the photographic opportunities this season offers the serious wildlife photographer. But to be able to solve these problems requires us to first understand why they happen and how to handle them in the field.