I love being outdoors but good old mother nature has made it a bit challenging by keeping temperatures in the low teens. This didn't stop my wife and I today. We ended up stopping by the place where we had our wedding portraits taken almost 15 years ago. We parked our Subaru in the same lot our wedding party bus parked and walked down the steps to the Bridal Veil Falls. The best part about the frigid temperatures in Cleveland is that the creek at Bridal Veil Falls was frozen over and covered with a few inches of snow. This made it possible to hike through the creek along a path that is just about impossible to follow in the summer.
I'm not a big fan of lugging around a tripod because I enjoy hiking just as much as I enjoy photography and for me, a tripod slows me down and also limits my ability to try shots from different angles. I do use a tripod when there is a need but my style of photography is always on the move. With that being said, don't sell your tripod.
All of the photos listed below were captured with two Canon 5D Mark III cameras and two lenses. The Canon 24mm F1.4L II lens was mounted on one and the 70-200mm F2.8L IS II was mounted on the other. Like the tripod, I didn't want to mess around with changing lenses so I opted to walk with two cameras.
Listed below is a couple of photographs I captured during our walk down the creek. You can save any one of these to your desktop by clicking on the thumb to open a larger image preview and then right-click on the image and choose the option to "save image as."
I shoot in manual mode 99.9% of the time. In snow scenes, you'll need to overexpose anywhere from +1 to +2 stops depending on how prominent the bright white snow is in your frame. If you shoot in a priority mode (Aperture), you'll need to add about +1 to +2 of exposure compensation. If you let your camera do the metering, all of your snow shots will be underexposed and look gray.