I was reminded repeatedly on my recent trip to Yellowstone that metering in snow scares people. Any time we were near other photographers you could hear the timid “now snow is +1, right?” call out to a companion. From reading his latest BT Journal my friend Moose Peterson heard plenty of the same when he was there. But as Moose points out, snow can be your friend… For mammal photography in particular far from making metering more difficult snow can not only make metering easier it provides a giant “soft box” of light under your subject. This is particularly exciting as the morning wears on and on a typical day animals would become a nightmare of burnt out and darkly shaded fur. But on a bed of snow the shaded areas are magically lit. This coyote trotting along a creek bed looking for food is a great example. The image was made close to noon on a sunny day. You can tell by the sharp shadows on the snow. But the coyote’s fur is nicely lit all around—even though you can tell from the shadows that I’m practically having to shoot back lit given our position on the road and his by the stream. This is a shot that never could have worked on grass as there would be almost no detail in the coyote’s fur. Because I knew the coyote was backlit I did dial in + 1/2 stop of exposure compensation, which worked out well. I didn’t have time to check the histogram as the coyote would have been long gone by then, but I knew that I didn’t mind losing detail in the snow for the sake of guaranteeing I got the detail in the fox’s fur. If the fox had been backlit on grass my only choice would have been 1 to 1 – 1/2 stops of plus compensation and the image would still not have looked nearly as good. Similarly this American Bison has full detail not just in his sunlit fur but also in the fur on his shady side. Without the help of the snow this mid-day image would have either featured burnt out highlights in the fur or a dark and featureless shady side. Of course I could have tried to tweak the image after the fact using either the Fill Light slider in Camera Raw or the Shadow & Highlight tool in Photoshop but I never could have restored detail that wasn’t there in the first place. Of course snow has its downsides. First, it doesn’t provide a contrasting color—although of course it does provide good tonal contrast as a background for fur. Second, white subjects are very difficult to photograph against snow. Whether Arctic Fox or white birds it is very easy to lose a white subject on a snowy background. In the Coyote image, for instance, the shrubs provide a source of interest and help keep the coyote from looking like a cardboard cut-out against the snow. The pine trees perform a similar task in the Bison image. Snow isn’t nature’s only reflector. Aside from the frequent high overcast sky which can diffuse directional light water and sand can also provide soft ‘uplight’ on subjects to help round out an image on an otherwise high contrast day. So when you’re out in the wild and don’t have access to your studio lighting gear make sure and think about how to use nature’s own tools to your advantage.—David