Nature drone video of Alaska – Where The Snow is Never White

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Color grading is always a challenge. It's too tempting to go overboard and too easy to not go far enough. We are told that something has to be white balanced in the shot because it draws the human eye toward it. While true, this is more in the realm of art, where something that is white establishes the brightest point of the image, and then the black is the darkest, and you try to make everything else match in between for maximum contrast. It doesn't have to be that way, though.

This poses a challenge for trying to document nature, especially snow. On this day in mid-December, with the sun was low on the horizon--about 12 degrees--the air was cold--maybe -22F--the snow was glittering, my hands were freezing, and there wasn't anything white to be seen as far as the eye could see.

No, the snow was golden, sometimes pink-orange depending on the time of the short day. The shadows were blue, gray-purple, and gray-orange, dependent on the reflection of the snow nearby.

Snow will always have some subtle color to it. As unreal as this video might seem, this is the true color of winter on a sunny day in Alaska. Want to see what it looks like inside the ice? Here is a short video: https://www.instagram.com/p/CL2zESinonc/

Song is Lies by KYLO: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZpIzv18Z3SokuU0hPaVoPQ/featured

Song is not creative commons and is licensed; you will have to use your own audio if remixing this video.

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.