Capturing a snowy scene with the Fuji X-T1 and its EF-X8 flash

The day broke today with snow falling and clouds moving through the city causing the building to fade in and out of the haze. It was still dark when I began photographing, but the day brightened quickly. I wanted to capture the effect of the snow flakes against the muted city, and decided to use a flash to light the nearby falling snow and allow the background to go darker.  With the camera set manual mode I could vary the ratio of exposure between the actual scene and the flashed flakes. To vary the exposures I used the ISO, varying it between 200 and 400. The snow was being over lit with the flash so it was consistently white throughout these changes. I used the aperture wide open to maximize the blur on the snow flakes and keep them as large as possible.

Here I wanted the darker effect of night time so I kept the ISO at 200. The lens was the Fuji 10-24mm set to f/4.

The clouds were in close and moving rapidly, and I began to time them so that the top of the Empire State Building would be partially enveloped. Here I opened the background exposure by increasing the ISO to 400. 

To change thing up I zoomed in tighter to a 24mm focal length. In addition to tightening the shot, this decreased the depth of field and had the effect of rendering the snow flakes larger and more out of focus. I also enhanced the color by pushing the blues, and, finally, added a levels layer in Photoshop which I used to increase the contrast by deepening the blacks and opening up the whites.