5 tips for taking pictures of the mountains during winter sports

You probably know it: you’re standing there in the mountains on the long slats or your snowboard and you feel so insignificant between those huge mountains. Just take a picture of that splendor, but once home, those grotesque mountains don’t come into their own at all. Now that is always a struggle: something that is so incredibly beautiful 3D (and if you include the cold, 4D), just comes across a bit flatter in a flat photo. If you still want to give it a try, we have 5 tips for you to hopefully capture those imposing mountains on camera.

1. Think about the depth

Taking a picture of a mountain flattens it quite a bit, so you have to make sure you look down. You do this, for example, by photographing all kinds of ‘layers’ between you and the mountain. Just that one sprig of pine on the right, those pair of skis a little further to the left, some bushes around the corner: if you just take a few more objects in your photo that are a little further apart, you can create a little more depth to make that photo look good. to get.

2. Put people on it

One of the things that makes it so difficult to photograph such a majestic mountain range is that it is difficult to estimate how big it really is. Even a tree cannot properly direct the masses. What is? People. If there just happens to be a mountain climber, or a skier is just coming down: give them a role in your photo, because you will notice that they (however they look) take your photo to a higher level. Where on an internet photo you often place a coin ‘for size’ next to an object, in the case of a mountain that ‘for size’ is still best a person.

3. Be mindful of the sun

It is sometimes very difficult to take mountain pictures, for example because it is foggy. Now snowboarding and skiing is a challenge anyway on a misty mountain (white + white = just let go, hoping for victory), but it is also difficult to photograph mountains. It is best if it is a bit brighter and it is smart to play a lot with the sun. The sun is able to make snow shine beautifully and to give mountain tops a kind of golden edge. See where the sun is and how you position yourself in relation to the mountain: sometimes the sun even gives color to a completely different part than you actually wanted to photograph, but which you then realize is not always about that coveted top of the mountain have to go. Also check on your phone if you can move the sun in the photo up or down a bit. Especially because of the snow and how the sun or fog looks, a photo can sometimes appear much bluer or yellower than reality.

4. Play with the height

This might be a crazy tip, because you can’t make a mountain higher or lower than it is, but you can crouch yourself. By sitting a little lower yourself, you can make the mountain seem even higher or make a winter sports enthusiast appear even more powerful. But you can also go a bit more extreme and photograph a mountain range from above. That way, you’ll see the mountain pass, the rolling hills leading up to the mountain, and you might even be able to capture a lot more than you thought possible. By the way, you don’t necessarily have to get into a helicopter, you can also use a drone or take a photo from the plane.

5. Experiment with the scale

If you want to photograph one mountain top on its own, then you would do well to get started with a lot of depth from tip 1. But sometimes you have to deal with several gigantic mountains and you want to get that scale on it. Sometimes it is therefore very beneficial to use your wide-angle camera, but there are also situations in which that does not work at all, because it is much too 2D and there may be more ‘ground’ in the picture than mountain. Take full advantage of your phone’s modes and see what works best for you in that particular situation. So you can even play with sharpness, as we did below. This way you can clearly see the difference in how the underlying mountain appears in these photos.

Tips for taking iris photos and how to take good photos of food have already appeared in this series. Also listen to our podcast about photography:

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Do you have any good tips on how to photograph mountains? Let us know in the comments to this article.