The winter landscape, beautiful as it may be, is quite tricky. It’s just like shooting high-key studio portrait. Majority of landscape is white, background and foreground are bright and camera’s exposure meter will tend to give you wrong reading, resulting in underexposed shot. In order to avoid this problem it is a good idea to switch to manual program and take picture by overexposing it by one stop.

Sometimes winter will serve up some gray skies and you may think that your pictures will look equally gray and sad. That may not be case; you have several options in this case. The first would be to use gray sky to your advantage, that moody color may add more character to your image. You will have a grater opportunity to showcase full spectrum of gray scale, visible in winter sky. When you are finally tired of gray, try to shoot from such an angle that sky area is not as visible. Another option is to use a gradual coloring filter to visually change sky color. Besides shooting grey sky, you may consider other choices for your winter photography project.

If you have a dog, take it with you on your shooting trip. It may surprise you how playful dogs can be in powdery snow. The picture of friendly mutt’s face covered with white fluffy stuff will make your heart melt.

If you lucky enough to be by water somewhere, make sure to take some shots of frozen surfaces if it’s a lake or maybe spectacular frozen river scene with just a trickle of water coming through onto cascading stones.

The country scene with a crooked, old barn surrounded by sparkly branches of low growing bushes covered with ice. Make sure that your scene composition is done in your viewfinder, so it is balanced and perfect, not on your computer.

With Digital cameras, and flexibility of processing that they offer, you have greater ability to choose finished format of your photograph. The winter scenery may work well in wide landscape format.

Other options for outdoor winter photography may include horses in pasture, colorful birds at feeder, wild animals in forest.

Your children will provide endless array of images that you can work with. Just remember to dress them in layers and let them have fun. Make sure to get down to their level, and get in close. If you are afraid to spoil their fun, or you know that they will be camera shy, step back, use a telephoto lens and a tripod for stability. The final results will be well worth hassle.

If you are lost for choices in winter photography themes, you can always try close-up shots. The beauty of frozen patch of grass, sparkling in sun on background of glistening snow, may be discovered only through viewfinder of your camera.

So be brave, dress warmly, get out there and shoot, world of winter photography awaits you!

4. Don't get carried away and end up bidding more than need or want to. Some items appear very frequently on eBay and it may be worth setting yourself a limit and waiting for next one to come along.

5. If you find you are often being outbid at last moment, consider using a sniping software which you can use to automatically submit a bid in last few seconds of auctions.

6. Where possible, use Paypal to pay for items on eBay. The sellers get their payment quickly, and there is a degree of protection for buyers if things go wrong. eBay (via My eBay) provides a number of tools for monitoring progress on your transaction.

Stephen Reynolds