No Ideas for Winter Shooting? Consider More Intimate Compositions!

Thomas Chu Photo

Before we know it, winter is here again. The common subjects of grand landscape scenes — the Milky Way, morning glow, flowers — are rarely seen, replaced by seemingly ordinary scenes of bare branches, ice and snow, and rocks, as well as gloomy weather of rain, fog, haze, and snow.

Many photography friends have sighed that winter is really hard to shoot.

Little do they realize that in winter everything withers and the light is flat; if you still use a wide-angle framing, the view will inevitably be all bleak.

Telephoto intimate compositions, on the other hand, can focus on the local details of a subject, and can use winter's common fog, haze, and snow as clean backgrounds — playing to strengths and avoiding weaknesses. In post, using more cool tones and strengthening light-and-shadow shaping can offset winter's monotonous colors.

In today's photography tutorial, Thomas will recommend the winter works of 5 Instagram photographers, which may open up some ideas for everyone.

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As can be seen, whether it's a part of flowing water, the silhouette of a bare branch under the sky, or a bird and a car in the vast world, with careful composition, all can become a scene.