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It's looking scarily like Christmas ...

It snowed again. It keeps doing that. Very annoying. 

50mm f/1.8, 1/200th second, ISO 100

The kids enjoy the snow, anyway. This is Aimee revelling in the snow, throwing it about and creating what I think is a very Marks & Spencer feel.

I used wide apertures so that the shutter speed was fast enough to freeze any flying snow while still giving a little motion blur. This also let me use a low ISO for smooth, noise free pictures. The wide aperture also helped give some depth to the pictures, which I find is important with snow. It's easy to lose any sense of depth or scale when everything is white. Setting the metering to +2/3EV ensured the snow stayed white, instead of averaging to dirty grey. This worked well for the whole set, but this one in particular fell perfectly.

The snow is in focus, frozen and distinct from the blurred background. The trees are snow covered and give atmosphere and context. The canted angle and framing gives a sense of space and motion while still filling the frame with the important features. In the end, this was a photo of opportunity. See it, frame it, and shoot it in a matter of moments. As much luck as design, it still always pays to be prepared!

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