Winter Aspen Panorama, Big Cottonwood Canyon, Utah

One of the rules of color landscape photography that I’ve always lived by is: you cannot photograph a white sky.  A dark grey, brooding sky, yes, always; but a white sky, never. Well almost never.

A solid white, featureless sky creates perfect light for photographing nature’s intimate details, compositions that take advantage of soft, even illumination without actually including the sky in the frame. Sometimes, black and white conversion is the answer to working with a pure white sky.  An example of this can be seen in my previous blog post. White on white, winter landscapes may offer another avenue of exploration. Still I wouldn’t want to include a large block of blank white sky in my winter landscapes.

This was the scene Thursday, March 5th at Solitude. One foot of fresh, super low density, Wasatch powder. What a glorious day to be on the mountain. Weather alternating between mixed sun and clouds, and snow.
Top and bottom images were made from the same position using a telephoto zoom on my DSLR. It was snowing hard at that point, which adds to the mood. All images were captured in about 1/500 of a second. The stop action shutter speed helps create a sense of motion and tension.
Top image shows Wayne reaching the end of the steep Evergreen mid-slope, while snow blows from the pines.
Middle image shows Judd kicking up a huge spray in Honeycomb Canyon. Aaahh  yeah, that's the stuff. The sun coming out was key to this image. The fast shutter speed freezes the spray, but the sun brings out the detail. Notice how the spray is casting a shadow.
Bottom image shows Marinda flying past me at  the bottom of Evergreen. I just love the feel of this image. I think it does a great job of expressing what it feels like to be at Solitude on a snow day.
March 9th was the last day it snowed in the central Wasatch, and that was a dusy - more than 20 inches at Solitude. On March 12th there was still some good snow to be found if you were willing to hike for it. Now, however, I fear we are in need of a storm. We could really use a few more days like this before the season ends.