When climbing Mount Rainier you will encounter conditions like you've never experienced before. So will your camera. There are two photographic problems and two very simple techniques that will help you mitigate them. You will greatly improve your images when shooting on the mountain if you follow these recommendations. Yeah! It should be noted that I am only offering "quick and dirty" techniques in this article, that can make huge strides in your images with very little "know how." If you are interested in pro level control, please check out our Photography Workshops on Mt. Rainier.
The first problem you will encounter is that the snow will deceive your camera's built in light meter and result in severely underexposed images. You might have seen or taken images in the past that were taken on snow where the snow looks drab and gray, and the person whose picture you were taking is nothing but a black silhouette. The second problem is only a problem during sunrise and sunset, BUT these are the times that are best for photography so listen up!!
Let's start with getting proper exposure when shooting in any uniformly bright environment..... like snow. The light meter in all cameras thinks that the world is 18% gray (middle gray). This value works well for an "average" scene, whatever that may be, but fails when the world is "really light." This is where digital cameras make it VERY easy to compensate in a controlled way. Each manufacturer and camera model vary, so get out the camera manual and learn these functions. You will need to "compensate" for the camera's attempt at a proper exposure by using the exposure compensation function. Snow should not be gray, it should be white, which is 1 to 2 stops brighter than middle gray. The quick and dirty solution is to set the exposure compensation in the range of +1 to +1.5.
The overall effect will lighten up the snow and expose your dark subjects more accurately.
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The second issue is one of white balance. What is white balance you ask. In the old days you had daylight balanced film and tungsten balanced film. If you shot under tungsten lights with daylight balanced films the pictures looked yellow. Add fluorescent lights, sodium vapor, etc. and the mix got quite complicated. Luckily today, no matter what the "color temperature" of the light source, you can tell your camera that white is white, and your pictures will look correct. Most people leave their cameras set on "automatic white balance." Depending on your camera, it can do a pretty good job, most of the time. (Especially on snow!) The problem that arises is when you are capturing climbers at sunrise/sunset and the mountain is glowing with beautiful reds and oranges. Your auto white balance will decide that there is a reddish color cast and correct for it. AAAAGGGGGHHH!!.....Skillfully rendering your beautiful sunset WHITE. The solution is simple. Just set your automatic white balance mode to "daylight." This is effectively the same as shooting with daylight balanced film. You can leave your white balance set to daylight during the rest of the day too. Just remember to switch out of "daylight white balance" for the celebratory beers in the tungsten lit bar after the climb!
