Colorado landscapes

[BrentHelm]

Hey everyone.

My wife and I are taking a trip to Colorado this coming weekend to do a little skiing and stuff for our 1 year anniversary.

I have never really taken photos in the winter time with a lot of snow. What are some suggestions that you might have in composition, lenses, white balance and such.

Thanks a bunch...

I have a Sony a200 with 18-70 and 100-300 with tripod, and wireless remote.

[Trailerman]

I would be very interested in seeing some photos from Colorado.
In June Im packing up the family, and the dog and pulling the Travel Trailer from Maryland to the Painted desert Grand Canyon, Brice Canyon, Arches, Canyon canyon land and ending up in Rocky Mountain National Park before the quick run back home.

Cant wait to start shooting the landscape along the way.

(although I am a little leery of dragging 12,000 lbs of trailer through the Rocky's like that.)

[dcclark]

I don't know how your Sony works, but I'm sure it has a histogram view somewhere. When you take a photo, immediately grab the histogram and look for any clipping. One characteristic of snow-filled photos is a single large bump, near the high end, which often clips (goes above the top of the histogram, meaning it's lost detail) -- that bump is the snow. If you do get some clipping, first decide if it's bad enough to care, and if it is, use your exposure compensation and drop down one or two notches. Reshoot, and hopefully things will look good.

On the other side, meters often tend to get snow wrong by making it too grey -- if you have THAT happening, you need to move the exposure compensation up one or two notches to brighten it (not sure if yours works in 1/3 or 1/2 stop steps, or what).

In general, my advice is to push the exposure as high up as you can before it clips, and if things still look grey, post-process to improve them. I do this all the time up here (where winter is 7-ish months), and it's always a balancing act.

[BrentHelm]

Thanks a bunch guys... I will post pics when i get back...