Top 10 Cold Weather Shooting (and Survival) Tips

This past Sunday it went down to -25F in several parts of Connecticut and those temps are no joke—not only can they cause your camera to give up the ghost—they can put your life at risk. But you can only shoot so many photos of the big blizzard from your living room window, eventually you have to open the door and venture forth. Cold can wear on your batteries and your camera and it can be downright dangerous—very dangerous and I know about that firsthand. There’s no need to risk life and lens, however, and there are lots of clever ways to keep both you and your equipment warm. Here are my top 10 ways to stay warm and keep your camera operating when you’re out there shooting in this winter’s extremely cold weather. Please forward this posting to any friends in cold areas--and you have my permission to print it and hand it out. This has been the worst winter I can remember for years and I don't think there is enough being said about staying safe. Most of what's here is for your camera--but there are tips for keeping you (and a few stray cats) alive, too.

1.  Stop using the LCD. Reviewing and composing on the LCD just eats up battery power, so try to use the peephole viewfinder (if you have one) and limit your use of the LCD to briefly reviewing important shots and occasionally checking the histogram. And don't idly zoom the lens in and out on a zoom camera--zooming uses up a lot of battery power.

2.  Check your battery levels before you leave home. Heading into the field with a half-charged battery is kind of self defeating.

3.  If you’ll be using lots of fill-flash, bring an accessory unit. They typically run on AA batteries and Lithiums last much longer in cold weather. Also, you can stash the flash in an inside pocket and keep the batteries and the flash warmer. 

4.  Shut the camera off! If you’re not using it, shut if off and put the battery in your pocket.

5. Lithium Batteries: Speaking of batteries, the consensus among both makers and users is that non-rechargeable Lithium batteries handle cold best. Energizer claims theirs last up to 8x longer, have a 15-year storage life and operate down to -40F (and up to +140F). If it’s colder than -40 (or hotter than 140F) where you are, don’t go out. Energizer Ultimate Lithium Batteries, AA, 4-Count

6.  Limit your video shooting. Again, continuous video recording drains batteries very fast, so unless it’s important, wait for a warmer day.

7.  Wear a wool scarf. A wool scarf will not only keep your neck warm, but if you wrap it around your face, it will prevent another winter annoyance: condensation on cold viewfinder peepholes or LCD screens. The scarf constrains your hot air (so to speak). Mom told you you’d need this—and she was right! Check out www.llbean.com (like you needed an excuse).

8.   Tell people where you’re going and when you’ll be back--and keep your cell phone charged. Seems like silly and obvious advice, I know, but in the past several weeks in Connecticut there have been several reports of people being found dead—frozen to death—within sight of their homes. Tragic. In Connecticut--not Alaska or North Dakota. Frozen to death. Years ago I got stranded on a sandbar (the tide came in behind me and I was too busy shooting the sunset to notice) and I nearly didn’t make it back to shore. I’ll tell you that story in one of my next postings. It was even scarier than it sounds. And it wasn't the first time I got stranded in winter in a bad situation--both times it was entirely my fault. 
     If you go out to your car at night to get something, bring your house key. If the door locks behind you and you have forgotten the key, you're in deep trouble. You might have five minutes or less to save your own life. Ever try to wake a neighbor at 1 a.m on a cold January night? Carry your cell phone in your yard and driveway--always. (I fell one night taking the garbage out and had I been hurt, that might have been the last night I took garbage out.) If you live in a remote rural area, consider buying a satellite GPS unit--I'll blog about one of those tomorrow.  Not cheap, but $500 might save your life and they go well beyond cell range. DeLorme Earthmate PN-60W Portable GPS Navigator with SPOT Satellite Communicator

9.  Carry hand warmers. Those little chemical hand warmers you see at the check-out register really do work! Says my friend Alaskan photographer Ron Niebrugge: “I keep an extra battery in my pocket with a warmer and then rotate as needed. "  And for extreme cold he suggests securing one to the base of your camera with a rubber band.  Buy extras and give them to the guy that delivers your paper or leave some in your mailbox for the mailperson. Mail them to your kids or grandchildren at college. Hand them out to homeless people (don't just think about doing that, do it--God will reward you). On bitterly cold nights, put a few under a towel for the stray cat that lives in your garage or barn. Hand warmers are cheap--buy a case or two--they have a very long shelf life. HeatMax Hot Hands 2 Handwarmer (40 pairs)

10.  Bring a thermos of coffee of tea. There’s nothing like a creature comfort when you’re out photographing winter creatures—or just shooting the sunset. Many years ago my parents bought me a couple of beautiful stainless steel thermos bottles at Christmas and they still look brand new. I have one tall one for tea and a wide-mouth one for soup. Thermos Nissan 34-Ounce Stainless-Steel Bottle with Folding Handle

Don't Get Divided Over Symmetry

 

One of the "rules" of design that you'll see over and over again in books about composition is that you should never divide a frame exactly in half, either vertically or horizontally. The reason for that stodgy old rule is that when you precisely divide a frame in half it tends to take away the dynamic tension in a scene by creating an exact balance of visual space between two halves of the frame (either top/bottom or left right--or both). And a lot of times not dividing a frame in half is a pretty good idea. But as they say, to every rule an exception. I think there are times when perfect symmetry works really well and one of those times is when you have a very strong reflection--as in this winter scene. 

I shot the picture here last Friday on the same day I shot the previous winter pond scenes (see the previous postings), but this is a different pond, a few miles from the other one and I went there intentionally looking for a symmetrical subject. Because it's a somewhat long and narrow pond and you can see the entire length of it from almost any spot along the edge, I wanted to shoot a panoramic (and I did) of the hillside and it's reflection. As I was finishing up I saw the man and dog approaching from the right and so I quickly framed a scene that I wanted (I wanted to include that curved stairway--where I spend endless Saturdays hanging around as a kid) and just waited for him to walk into it. He was walking a long leaping stride so I was only able to get off a few quick frames before his shape got lost in the stairway--and I wish I'd shot a half second sooner than I did--but I'm happy with this frame.

Because I had the camera set up for a more or less symmetrical composition before he came along, I just left it that way and I'm glad I did. I kind of like the tension that exists between the reflection and the "real" scene and I even cropped it a bit to make it more closely balanced. While the horizon isn't in the exact middle (you can check in Photoshop by using the ruler tool--Command R on a Mac, no idea what it is in Windows!), if you look closely you'll notice there is just as much space between the top of the tall tree on the left and the top of the frame as there is below it's reflection and the bottom of the frame. I think that that spacing actually emphasizes the idea of symmetry as much as the precise placement of the horizon. 

Anyway, I think the scene has a kind of Norman Rockwell appeal to it and I very much like the symmetry between top and bottom--though to be honest, I could probably crop it otherwise and be just as happy. As I said, I think symmetry works particularly well with strong dividing lines like reflections and so next time you're shooting a reflection in a pond or lake (or a puddle, for that matter), don't be afraid to run the horizon right across the center--you may find that, rules or no, that's the best placement.

Looking Back at the Islands of Time

 

Here's another scene from yesterday's quick snow storm. This is the same pond and the view is just a few hundred feet to the right of the shot in yesterday's posting. I like the other shot more, I think, but one thing I like about this scene is that there are quite a few yellow leaves still clinging to some of the smaller trees. I think the yellow color adds another level of color interest to the scene. I like the very smooth reflection here, too. Interestingly (for me, at least) that large tree at the edge of the pond,  just to the left of center, has been there since I was a kid and, in fact, I used to sit on it and fish. That was more 40+ years ago and I had no idea I'd be a photographer then, but I find it comforting in a slightly mystical New Englandish way that I am able to revisit some of these haunts of my youth and turn them into photographs. While this town has undergone its share of development, oddly, there are some islands of my youth that have been untouched by time. If you have any places like that in the town or city where you grew up, whether you are still there or just visit occasionally, take time to photograph them because surely one day the bulldozers will come and those islands will disappear into the mists of memory. Tomorrow I'll show you another pond from the past.