The forecast is 30cm's of snow? Well, why not use that opportunity to go outside and take a walk! That's what was on my agenda a few days ago as we were hit with the last big snowstorm of Winter 2012/2013. It also gave me the chance to do something I'd wanted to do since the beginning of the season, play around with shutter speeds. What I wanted to accomplish was to take a nice photograph where you could see the flakes as they fell from the sky. My wonderful assistant acted in a role that is natural for her, that of being a pedestrian, and also served as a colourful backdrop so that the flakes would stand out a little more than in the otherwise very white frame. As she walked down the street, I took several shots at different speeds, hoping to find one just slow enough to catch sight of the snow. The winning combination was f/16, 1/30sec, ISO 100 at 66mm. Some cropping was then done in order to better place the walker in the photo and to get rid of some real-estate signs that were on the other side of the street. While taking the photo, I didn't think that 1/30sec would be the best of speeds as you generally need a shutter speed of 1/80sec in order to freeze human movement. As my model was walking, I was a little worried that she would become rather blurry. As it turns out, there is some blurring around her left hand and foot, but not on her body itself. As a result, in my opinion anyway, this adds more to the image by giving the appearance of movement. We see her walking through the snowstorm. Your best bet when it comes to photographing the falling snow also applies to driving in it. Slow down.
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