I took the featured free RAW photo at the Saint Lawrence River in Montreal. I used a Fujifilm XT2 camera and Fujinon 18-135mm lens.
There are 2 main challenges what shooting and editing snowy scenes.
First, the camera meter always gets fooled by the abundance of bright snow. It thinks that the scene is much brighter than it actually is and, as a result, heavily underexposes the photos. The solution is to use Exposure Compensation to boost the exposure by at least one stop. In my case, I used the Exposure Compensation value of 1 1/3 stops.
The second challenge is that you often get unnatural snow color in the shadows with prominent blue hues. If you shoot RAW, you can quickly fix it in Lightroom by adjusting the White Balance or desaturating the snow area.
Please check my seasonal tutorial for more information: “How to Photograph and Edit Snowy Scenes.”
Free RAW Photos for Editing Library
My RAW Editing Version
And here is my editing version of the free RAW image. You can access all my editing steps from the Snapshot Panel of the Develop module in Lightroom.
What About Copyright?
All free raw images I share, I took myself, and they belong to me. They are not sourced from the public. But they are still copyrighted.
You are free to edit my RAW photos. And if you want to share them on your blog or social media, go for it; all I am asking is to credit me with the link to my site. And you can not use them commercially.
Free RAW Photos Library
Please remember to download my free Lightroom develop presets for faster raw editing.
