When changing film with a standard camera, be sure to keep your back to the wind. If necessary, use your open parka to prevent snow from blowing into the camera. Shading the camera with your body is also important if you are loading the film on a sunny day. Features like automatic exposure, autofocus, motorized film advance, and built-in flash make a camera much simpler to operate in cold weather. Don't be dismayed by the cloudy, lackluster skies that follow or precede a storm.
Overcast conditions add moodiness to scenes and provide a simple, attractive background.
Your film will be better able to record the full tonal range of landscapes or other scenes, and you will have recognizable detail from the darkest to the lightest parts of the print or slide. Gray skies can get a little tedious visually though, so consider buying a graduated color filter that will color the sky slightly but leave the foreground natural. Look for high vantage points that reduce the amount of sky in the scene, or tilt the camera down to concentrate on subjects in the foreground. Bright-colored subjects have heightened impact against a blank canvas of snow and they will add interest to your photographs. In a sunlit winter snow scene, the tonal range is so extreme that no film can record it completely.