# Photographing Ice: Five Habits That Help

Ice fools cameras. These five habits, collected from our photography workshops, will give you cleaner images and fewer disappointments.

Ice is among the most photogenic things you will ever see from a ship, and among the hardest to photograph well. The brightness confuses exposure meters, the colours change by the minute, and the scale is almost impossible to convey. A few simple habits help a great deal.

## 1. Expose for the whites

Cameras tend to treat a bright scene as too bright and darken it, which turns white ice grey. Dial in a little extra exposure, usually between one and two stops over, and check the preview. If the brightest areas show as a flat patch on your histogram, pull back slightly.

## 2. Include something for scale

A towering berg looks like a small lump without a reference. A boat, a bird, or even a stretch of dark water at the base gives the eye something to measure against. Our guides will often position a landing boat in the corner of the frame for exactly this reason.

## 3. Shoot in the soft hours

Midday sun flattens ice into a glare. The hours around sunrise and sunset bring warm tones to the highlights and deep blue to the shadows. Overcast days are surprisingly good as well, because the soft light reveals the texture inside the ice.

## 4. Look for the blue

The deepest blue appears where ice is old and compressed, and where it has recently rolled. A polarising filter helps cut surface reflections and saturates the colour. If you do not have one, simply changing your angle can make a big difference.

## 5. Slow down

The best ice photographs rarely come from the first glance. Spend ten minutes watching one berg. Notice how the light moves across it, how the water laps at the base, and how birds use the ledges. Then take the picture.

## A short kit list

- A body with a lens that covers wide to medium zoom
- Spare batteries, kept in an inner pocket to stay warm
- A lens cloth, because spray lands on glass constantly
- A rain cover for the camera

## One last thing

Put the camera down for part of every sighting. The most vivid memory is usually the one you took in with your own eyes, and the photographs will be better for the rest.