I though I's share some skiing pics for my first post on the forum.

http://sol518.smugmug.com/photos/232537957-M.jpg

http://sol518.smugmug.com/photos/232536943-M.jpg

They are pretty good for your first post, Welcome to the forum! My only negative would be they are a bit dark, but should be able to be lightend easily with post processing. You didn't state what camera your using but if you have an exposure meter try setting it one step over the center mark and see if they come out brighter, if not keep bumping it up until they look brighter. Snow is tough to shoot in and you normally end up blowing it out somewhat but in most cases it won't hurt the effect of the photo.

JS

The camera is nothing fancy. Just a p&s cannon SD 700. I'll see what I can do about lightening them and post the results

Ah, Ok. Just curious what your shot settings were and wether it was overcast or not?

JS

It was overcast. I'm pretty sure I had the camera set for the snow mode.

Here's my first attempt at editing. I lightened it a little and increased the contrast a little.

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/4952/img0689editkm5.jpg

Snow mode? Never heard of that. The sports modes and so forth are not my first choice, I'm a firm beleiver in Manual mode but it takes lots of practice to get things right. Your updated version is much better!
The first thing you may want to try is setting the WB (White Balance) which can be set to Auto, or in this case should have been Cloudy, or lastly you may be able to set it manually, but there again it takes some learning to get it right. Most cameras use the Kelvin scale for color temperature which determines the white balance. The preset settings are set to specific temperatures for specific lighting but that doesn't always work for the job at hand so you may need to adjust it one way or another. If your photo has too much blue in the whites your too cold so if your set to 3500 Kelvin you need to up it and make it warmer. If you have too much red tint in the whites your too hot so if your at 7000 you need to lower it. Snow, like an ice rink is your best "grey card". Normally you would use a grey colored card to set the WB but with snow and ice rinks you can use then to set the WB and should be pretty darn close to start with.

JS

I think you'll have to go manual to get a good consistent exposure. All that snow tends to make the camera underexpose in auto modes. The same thing happens with hockey and the white ice. You may be able to use some exposure compensation as JS suggested, but since I'm not familiar with your camera I don't know what your options are. White balance is also critical any time you are shooting in ambient light. Something tells me that your camera may not have the ability to do a custom WB so you will likely have to experiment with the presets a bit. Nice shots though!

Yep, my Panasonic has snow mode.
Sets a custom white balance to stop the blue in the shadows, and bumps the exposure by about 2/3 stop.
Not having any snow I tried it out on a christmas display in the local shopping centre (pathetic display) and you can see the exposure boost in the top half compared to the normal mode in the bottom half.

Thank you SW, see even us old fogies learn something new :D Great, what mode will they come up with next? Racing......

It does up it a bit, not as much as I'd expect but it does help.

JS