How to use winter light to shoot beautiful landscapes

Words by Mark sunderland

What a dreary time of year winter is! It’s still dark when we get up, the days are very short and it’s damp and cold, with huge heating bills to boot. So you might be tempted to just use your camera indoors, or hide it under the bed until the first days of spring.

But hang on a minute; with such short days the best times for outdoor photography, sunrise and sunset, are at more sociable hours – after breakfast and before dinner – and when the sun does shine the crisp clear winter atmosphere provides a quality of light never seen on hazy summer days.

So don’t hide the camera away over the winter months, as this really is the best time of year to make use of great light. Of course, the weather can be severe and unpredictable, and a moment of great light can be fleeting and easily missed so it is essential to plan ahead to give yourself the best chance of catching it.

I like to have a few early and late light locations in mind which I can get to fairly quickly when the time is right. With this in mind, whenever I’m out shooting, I always carry a compass with me so that if I find a subject that doesn’t work quite so well at that time of year I can make a note of the direction it faces and come back on a more appropriate date. A sun position compass will help with working out the exact direction of the sunrise or sunset where this is critical, though as a rough rule of thumb I just work on the fact that the sun will rise to the south-east/set to the south-west at the winter solstice and will rise due east/set due west at the vernal equinox, so it will move between these directions in the intervening winter months.

Then it’s just a case of keeping a close eye on the weather forecast for the next few days, along with the sunrise and sunset times, and being prepared to act when the conditions look right. So, on one occasion when clear skies and sunshine were forecast, I set off for the pretty village of Staithes on the east coast just north of Whitby, which I had been planning to photograph in winter for some time.

The best lighting is available in early winter, close to the winter solstice, as the sun sets down the river valley and the last rays of the setting sun catch the rooftops. As the direction of the sunset moves further round to the east a shadow is cast across the village, so even by early March the rooftops are in shade at sunset.

On my visit I was pleasantly surprised to find a dusting of snow on the rooftops (there had been no sign of snow when I set out). I had allowed plenty of time to get in position and set up my tripod and camera before sunset, which was just as well as negotiating the icy hill down into the village with all my gear was rather treacherous!

Contrasty scenes like this can be tricky to meter, particularly with the very bright snow. Most multi-segment metering systems will make a reasonable job, but it could be useful to bracket if you’re not sure (especially if using film, as I was for my Staithes shot) or check the histogram on your DSLR very carefully. A spot meter is very handy in these situations – as it’s possible to see exactly how much brighter the sunlit (highlight) rooftops are compared with the shaded (mid-tone) ones.

The sky was also very bright compared with the boats in the river below – so I used a graduated filter over the sky to help with this. With my DSLR I’d be more inclined to use two exposures (which can be merged later in Photoshop) as I find this approach more flexible, but in this particular case a grad filter suited the composition very well. By the time sunset arrived I was almost frozen to the spot, but a nice lady in a house by the viewpoint brought me a steaming hot cup of tea, which was very welcome! And the soft light was just fantastic so it had been worth the wait.

My Staithes shot was daylight-balanced and as a result it has rather a cool blue appearance, particularly in the shaded areas. This works fine with this image, adding to its wintry feel, but it’s worth keeping an eye on white-balance in this kind of lighting, in case a warm-up is needed. If you’re shooting JPEGs where your DSLR settings are applied directly to your final image, it can be a good idea to ‘bracket’ your white-balance settings (rather than just using auto white-balance) and create separate daylight and shade exposures, for example.

However, I prefer to work with Raw files, leaving the camera set on auto white-balance and adjusting the colour temperature as necessary at the Raw processing stage later. Of course, JPEGs can also be adjusted later in Photoshop, but the Raw approach is more convenient and I like to know I’m starting from a full set of data!

Forward planning is even more critical at Burton Cliff in Dorset. The cliffs face in a south-westerly direction and so look at their best when the sun sets over the sea in the winter. The added complication here is that you need a low tide to get out onto the beach, so it’s necessary to check tide tables to find when a January low tide coincides with sunset to figure out the window of opportunity for the shoot. Then it’s just a case of picking the day with the best weather forecast.

Low cloud obscured the sun for much of the time on my visit, but for a few moments that great winter light was there as the setting sun burst through, making it doubly important to be in position and set up in plenty of time.

A sunset shoot is probably the easiest to do on a chilly winter day, but it’s also worth getting out early as sunrise can also produce some great light. Pre-dawn soft pink twilight can often accompany rising mist, so rivers and lakes can make good subjects along with the reflections of mountains or skeletal trees, for example. Even a freezing, foggy night can sometimes help by adding a touch of hoar frost to the trees and grass, and if the fog clears in the morning light it can be magical.

Silhouettes can make great winter subjects – especially of trees devoid of their leaves, or of a distinctive building or monument. A dramatic sky behind the subject will always help – I had been planning to shoot a silhouette of the ruined keep of Knaresborough Castle, near where I live, for some time but had just been waiting for the right light – so when I saw bright pink cloud formations against a deep blue sky out of my living room window late on a winter afternoon I grabbed my gear and headed for the castle.

I metered from the sky to ensure this wasn’t overexposed, leaving the castle ruin to go completely black. If you’re shooting this sort of image with the sun still above the horizon and in the frame then take great care not to look directly at the sun, especially with a longer lens, as it’s still going to be very bright.

Even during the day winter light can produce great results, as the sun stays relatively low in the sky all day. The deep ravine at Gordale Scar in the Yorkshire Dales runs roughly north-south so it’s not possible to get a good early or late light shot of it. But I achieved my best shot of it to date by shooting around noon on a blustery day in winter, when the scar was well lit, and the shadows of the rapidly moving clouds added a little drama to the scene.

With that image in the bag I didn’t think I deserved any more great light that day, but at nearby Attermire Scar things got even better, with gorgeous afternoon light catching the rolling hills. Once I’d done my tripod shots I even had time to experiment a bit with some panned handheld images, producing a more impressionistic view of the winter light.

I’m at my happiest photographing the landscape, but cities can also be rewarding places to photograph in the winter, as they tend to be a bit quieter, and it’s much easier to pop into a coffee shop if it’s cold! A city skyline on a misty morning can look wonderful in twilight. A clear afternoon is a great time to wander around a city photographing buildings, or just shooting details as the sun sets. Cathedrals make excellent sunset subjects, as they generally face west. And after the sun sets, there’s still time to photograph floodlit buildings and bridges against a darkening sky before dinner.

So, I take it all back, winter isn’t dreary at all. The short days make it easier to take advantage of great light, and with a bit of planning and a touch of good luck with the weather you’ll need those long winter evenings to process all the extra images!

KIT BAG

If you want to get the best out of the great lighting situations that winter has to offer, then the essential item to remember is a sturdy tripod. If your body has a mirror lock-up facility, then make sure you use it when the camera is on the tripod. Also, if you have an image stabilised lens, don’t forget to turn the IS off.

Lens hoods are a useful extra for reducing flare when working with low side-lighting. Flare can still be a problem though. If you have a cable release for your camera, or can use a short self-timer facility, shade the lens yourself by standing to the side of it – this has the advantage that you can then see the front element of the lens so you know for sure when it’s shaded from any direct rays of light!

A polarizing filter can be a useful accessory for deepening the colour of the sky a bit, and a selection of ND grads will also come in handy if you prefer to avoid merging multiple images in Photoshop. It’s a good idea to keep the front element of your lenses protected with a UV filter, but don’t forget to take some cleaning gear with you to keep them clean.

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