We are halfway through January, and the Polar Vortex has collapsed.  In Colorado this week, we found ourselves dealing with high temperatures less than 10 degrees Fahrenheit and lows well below Zero.  On the 15th, we got a snowstorm.  I took the opportunity to practice some quick settings in the cold with harsh lighting conditions.  With temps of -5 at the time, I didn't have long before I needed to get my camera back into some warmer temps.  It was great to try and plan my settings, run out and set up the tripod, quickly adjust, hold down to shoot a half dozen or so shots with the continuous mode and then run inside to start again.
The three photos above are original RAW exposures without editing, flattened into .jpgs.  Below are the before and after results, working exclusively in Lightroom.  

In total, I managed to grab about 20 exposures.  The snow was falling very lightly, but somewhat fast.  In Colorado, we frequently get a very dusty, dry kind of snow that skiers and other high dry-climate natives would call Powder or Dust.  My original goal on this day was to attempt to take as long of an exposure as possible, as to make a blurry effect of the falling snow against the darker colors of the outbuildings.  I purposefully chose to try this as a challenge with the heavy overcast of light clouds, falling snow, and snow all around.  The amount of white in the photo and a long exposure was a perfect challenge.

Ultimately, I struggled to get an exposure that was above 1/15 of a second without washing out the image.  I wasn't entirely surprised by this, but I was hoping to get something closer to 1/2 second or so to get some longer streaks of snow falling.  1/15 turned out to be just fine, and while the effect wasn't as dramatic as I would have liked, it still was effective.

For the first photo, I started by lowering the exposure of the sky a bit to add some depth and a contrast to the snow on top of the buildings.  I then edited the buildings together to try and keep their colors and exposure adjustments locked together.  I edited the tree as its own object.  The bird feeder in the image was a nice contrast point for color editing but looked very out of place in the final image, so I greyed it out to blend in better with the tree.  Finally, I made the image a little cooler to help make the contrast of the tree bark pop and also to create better balance between the red of the buildings and the white of the snow and added a slight vignette to smooth the edges.

I attempted a much more artistic style for the second photo.  The lack of colors in the background and foreground meant it was the perfect opportunity to subtract all of the color except the primary colors of the subject.  I took my time trying to make sure I didn't oversaturate the red while also making it really pop even with the white piles of snow building up on the door and windowsills as highlights.  I had so much fun with this one.  I cropped the image down to by closer to a square to frame the shed and tree base, as well as to balance the elements of the image.  The framed shot also features the snow streaks much more prominently against the red buildings in the background.

By the time I got around to editing the last image I realized that the snow was falling quite a bit faster than I really thought it was.  1/40th of a second was plenty of time to catch the streaks of snow falling down in the foreground.  By this point, my lens hood was beginning to collect a small dusting of snow in the bottom of it, so I probably should have realized that it was falling rather quickly, even if it was difficult to see.  This image arguably turned out the best due to the lower exposure and how much room I had to expand the contrast on the high end of the histogram.  Since I had already spent a considerable amount of time on the buildings on the last image, I decided I would devote a large portion of my time to cleaning up the tree as the subject of this image.  The buildings in the background still provide plenty of color and element cover in the image, but the tree details really pop here.  I can tell that the lower exposure did a lot for the brighter and darker parts of the bark, as well as other details in the foreground.  

The point of this project was to try a very challenging scene in washed out lighting conditions.  Finding the proper exposure and light balance of snowy scenes with a white or grey sky is a real test of skill with the camera and with post editing, so this was a great way to expand my knowledge and practice of skills related to exposure settings and pulling out details in post.  I certainly learned that snow falls faster than it looks like it is.  I'm proud of how these turned out and am excited to try my hand at some more serious subjects in winter landscapes.  

Thanks for reading!  If you enjoy these photos or learning about my process, check out some of my other work!