Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
A lot of people have asked me about how I protect my camera and myself when I take all of my snow photos. I have photographed every single snowstorm in NYC for the last 5 years. It’s my passion project and what I love the most. The first storm I ever photographed, I nearly got frostbite and I was shooting with a broken point and shoot camera covering it between shots with my useless gloves.
Thankfully, I have come quite a ways since then! My camera bodies (all Sony) do really well in snow and rain but my lenses are not weather-sealed and I am paranoid about ruining them. I use….drum-roll…a plastic bag (to be less eloquent, a trash bag - the thickest kind I can find). I take the bag, take one of the corners and snip the corner with scissors. I then put the bag over my lens with the snipped corner in the center of the lens. Then I stretch the bag over my lens with only the glass of the lens exposed. (bonus: the rest of the bag I put my face into when shooting, looks pretty funny actually)
Next: (this is important!) I take the lens hood and put it on the lens with the bag stretched as detailed above. Sometimes I take a hair tie or rubber band and put it around the lens near the body. I use the hood as protection while walking around for miles. I point the camera down between shots and blowing snow collects on the outside of the lens hood which is SO helpful. I shoot in manual mode always so since I mainly shoot these photos at night, I do my settings every single block so I don’t miss shots since I have to shoot very, very, very quickly due to the conditions.
Outer Clothing: I wear a waterproof, insulated, down-filled, knee-length parka and insulated, waterproof snowboard/ski pants with waterproof snow-boots (great grip - learning my lesson the hard way 2 years back with other boots). I wear a balaclava, ski-goggles (eyes are important and only one of mine works so yeah…), a beanie, and have my hood up and drawn to my face to keep the blowing snow away from my head area. I have giant thinsulate gloves that I wear with thin gloves underneath so that my skin is never exposed when I mess with my manual settings every block.
Inner clothing: heat-tech leggings, shirt, and socks, a breathable light layer over the heat-tech shirt, breathable thermals over the leggings.
Something I have learned is that breathable fabrics are important. I walk up to 7 miles sometimes and even in below zero wind-chills, if you are too hot in your gear you can actually sweat too much, get dehydrated, and that sets off a myriad of bad issues leading to hypothermia.
Be careful out there in the Blizzard of 2016 (Jonas)!
This photo was taken the same night as my previous photo near Bryant Park.