Steven Bourelle Digital Arts

With winter’s cold having settled itself into the Midwest and no end to it in site, I thought I’d share with you how I keep my hands warm in the coldest of temperatures.

This is my third winter in Wisconsin and I now know how important good gloves are for winter photography. For my first winter here, I had a pair of Black Diamond fleece gloves that are wind proof and very warm, but working the camera with them was cumbersome so every time I touched the camera, I took them off. This led to some very cold hands. In fact, one time I was probably on the verge of frostbite since I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore.

Since I love those gloves and didn’t want to replace them, I decided last winter to see if I could adjust and shoot with them on. I found that I could do it, but I also found that my thumb would bump buttons on the back of the camera and change  settings without me knowing it. It became very distracting having to double check my camera settings all the time. I also discovered that if these gloves got wet, they were useless.

This year I decided it was time for a change. While we were on vacation in California I found a pair of gloves that I thought might work this winter.

The gloves I bought are made by Red Ledge. They are wind proof, water proof and very warm. They are actually fingerless mittens that have a fold back top. The top is secured in the open position by very strong Velcro. The thumb also folds back on these gloves.

The first test for these gloves was this fall. While shooting fall colors we had some temperatures at or near freezing. The gloves worked great, but I was concerned about my bare fingers sticking out. It wasn’t bad at 32 degrees, but once the temps dropped into the single digits and the windchill went below zero I wondered if these gloves would work.

I thought about this a lot during the fall and decided to look into some thin glove liners to wear under the mittens. While at the Bass Pro Shops store one day I found some liners made by GameGuard. They’re made for hunters, but they work great for photography too. They’re thin, cotton gloves with very small rubber beads on the palm. Because they’re thin and fit snugly, you can feel your camera controls perfectly, and the small rubber beads help you keep a hold of the camera.

Last Sunday this glove combination got put to it’s first real test. We were out photographing the ice shelf along Lake Michigan (See photo above or the rest here.). The temp was 18 degrees with a windchill of 3. How did the gloves do? Awesome! My hands never got cold. The couple of times my fingertips started to get cold I just flipped the mitten top down and they warmed right back up. I had no problem working the camera controls or changing lenses and because the thumb top flips up, I didn’t have to worry about accidentally changing settings.

I don’t know if this combination would work for everyone, but it seems to work well for me. So if you’re going to be shooting out in frigid temperatures this winter, you might want to consider a glove setup similar to this.

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