Photographers and Gloves

I live in Vancouver, Canada. Canada’s the second coldest country in the world after Mongolia.

Vancouver’s a city on the West Coast, next to the Pacific Ocean. It can get cold, by my standards. Today’s the high was -2°C, the low will be -7°C, that’s only about 19°F to 28°F.

The people in Thompson Manitoba, where today’s high is -40°C or -40°F, laugh at us. But -2°C is cold when trying to take photos outside, and without the proper gloves, frostbite can come very quickly. Frostbite is when the end of your fingers freeze, the fingers will go black and if it is left long enough, the fingers will have to be cut off.

There are a couple of companies that make gloves for photographers and the cold, but I haven’t found them to work for me. So I have come up with my own solution, borrowed from people that have to work with their hand outside in the cold.

First you need to know, that in Vancouver, houses are very different from most other places in the world. Almost all houses are made of wood with wood frames and gyprock drywalls. The house are build by carpenters, with wood, nails and hammers. They also work in the cold. They have gloves for working. They need to hold the nails before hammering them. They have thin gloves with the end of the thumb, index and middle fingers are cut off.

For me and other photographers, these thin gloves are not enough, they don’t keep warm, after 10 minutes my fingers freeze.

My Solution?

1. Go to some car parts supply store and buy some winter gloves for mechanics. They are around $35 in Vancouver.
2. Get a good pair of extra large mitts, with some kind of GoreTex “skin” for the wind, the cold and the rain.

I wear both, the mechanic’s gloves and the mitts. I take off the right mitt to take my photos and when I’m done, I put back my mitt and warm my fingers again.