A good part of the U.S. has snow and lots of it at the moment so I thought it would be a good time to remind folks the main trick to photographing snow. When photographing snow you will often need to deliberately overexpose the image by a bit. Light meters try to find a neutral mid-range of light. Snow tricks the camera into thinking it doesn't need as much light and the resulting images are dull and have a gray tinge to the snow. Slightly overexposing the image corrects this (the exact amount of overexposure needed will vary depending on how much snow is in the composure) and results in a bright white snow and properly exposure on other items in the scene.

Photo © Jerry Smart with permission to About.com, Inc.

Each Saturday, an image will be posted here that was originally posted somewhere in our forum roughly one year prior. Be sure to check back each Saturday for our blasts from the past!

Our learning assignment for December is Night Photography. With the days being short this time of year, its a great time to explore light and exposure by trying some night photography. Photography equipment can not capture light as well as the human eye in most cases so we have to make adjustments to how we shoot in order to capture nighttime scenes. Longer shutter speeds, flash, higher film speeds, and larger apertures are all ways to increase the light available to the camera or the capture rate of the light. For this assignment, images should have obviously been nighttime scenes/events.

Congratulations to our winner of the Night Assignment #58 - Ray Williams!

You can see all of our finalists in the Winner and Finalist Gallery

Please feel free to add your own images in the forum as well. We have a lot of amazing people as members in our forum and we would love for you to join us!

Photo © Ray Williams with permission to About.com, Inc.

Our fun assignment for December is "cold". The vast majority of the United States and a large portion of Europe is very cold this time of year. And those areas experiencing their summer are wishing for some cold. How you express the theme is up to you.

Details and Lessons for Photography Assignment #59 - Cold