19 Winter Landscapes Around the World: Peyto Lake to Shirakawa-go

Snow turns familiar places into new ones. These nineteen winter landscapes run from a snowy street in Liverpool and frosted riverbanks in Bavaria to the thatched farmhouses of Shirakawa-go, the turquoise curve of Peyto Lake and the red deer of Richmond Park, each by a named photographer.

Frost forests in Bavaria, Germany

In Kilian Schönberger's winter riverside view from Bavaria, hoar frost has turned every twig white, so the trees stand out against the dark, unfrozen water. Hoar frost forms on clear, calm nights when water vapour freezes directly onto cold surfaces, which is why it often lines rivers and lakes.

Forests, rivers and villages from Canada to Estonia

The first gallery travels widely:

• Salmon Arm, British Columbia: a city of about 19,400 people on the shore of Shuswap Lake in the province's Southern Interior, photographed by Viktoria Haack.
• Nagano, Japan: the mountainous prefecture of central Honshu, seen here through a frame of icicles by Takanobu Kano.
• Kuusaankoski, Laukaa, Finland: open water running through frosted forest in Laukaa, the Central Finland municipality beside Jyväskylä, known for the Kuusa lock on the Keitele Canal.
• Foreste Casentinesi, Italy: a 368 km² national park on the Apennine ridge between Tuscany and Romagna, founded in 1993. Its ancient beech forests, including the Sasso Fratino reserve, joined UNESCO's European beech forests World Heritage site in 2017, and the park is home to the Camaldoli monastery and the Franciscan sanctuary of La Verna.
• Moominworld, Naantali, Finland: the theme park built around Tove Jansson's Moomins, opened in 1993 on Kailo island beside Naantali's old town. The tall blue tower is the blueberry-coloured Moominhouse.
• Skaneateles, New York: a lakeside town south-west of Syracuse whose name comes from an Onondaga word meaning "long lake". A single red jacket on the bridge gives the scene its scale.
• Estonia: a winding stream through frosted woodland by Jan Lepamaa.

Snowy cities: Paris and Tromsø

Snow in Paris is rare enough to empty the avenues and turn a tree-lined walk into a study in symmetry, as in Irene F's photograph. Tromsø, in northern Norway, lives with winter for months. The city centre sits on the island of Tromsøya, more than 300 km north of the Arctic Circle. The sun stays below the horizon from about 26 November to 15 January, and the city lies inside the auroral zone, so the northern lights are a regular sight on clear winter nights. Geir A. Granviken captured the lights of the waterfront at blue hour.

Compare it with our winter city-break guide.

Peyto Lake, Mount Seymour and Shirakawa-go

Peyto Lake is a glacier-fed lake in Banff National Park, Alberta, at about 1,860 metres. Its famous turquoise comes from rock flour carried in by glacial meltwater, and its name honours Bill Peyto, an early Banff trail guide. The classic viewpoint is Bow Summit, the highest point on the Icefields Parkway. Adam Gibbs photographed it framed by snowy slopes.

Mount Seymour, 1,449 metres high, rises about 15 km north of downtown Vancouver in a provincial park created in 1936. The park includes a ski area with five lifts, and in Adam Gibbs's second image its trees are buried under thick snow.

Shirakawa-go, in the mountains of Gifu Prefecture, is part of the UNESCO World Heritage site "Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama". Its gassho-style farmhouses have steep thatched roofs built for heavy snow and for raising silkworms in the attics. Nomiyama Kei photographed the village at dusk.

For another Canadian scene with a human subject, explore figure skating on a Canadian mountain lake.

Richmond Park, Squamish, Karelia, Austria and Reykjavík

Richmond Park is the largest of London's Royal Parks, a royal deer park enclosed by Charles I in 1637. Around 630 red and fallow deer roam freely across it, and it is now a National Nature Reserve. David Lloyd photographed a red deer in falling snow.

The Karelian Isthmus is the strip of land between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga in north-western Russia, part of Finland until the Second World War. Conifers of Scots pine and Norway spruce, mixed with birch, cover more than three-quarters of it, which is the kind of woodland Vitalii Verevkin shows in low winter light.

The set closes with a forest near Squamish, British Columbia, a sunlit stream in Austria by Roland Maria Reininger, and walkers among frost-covered trees in Reykjavík by Oskar Pall Elfarsson.

Go prepared for photography in the cold: keep spare batteries warm in an inside pocket, as cold drains them fast, and slightly overexpose bright snow so it stays white.

Related reading

• Tent-Door Views in the Fann Mountains
• Jakub Polomski’s Iceland: Photographs Shaped by Changing Weather
• What Happens To This New England Town Every Winter Is So Beautiful, It's Shockingg
• Innsbruck: City Streets and Alpine Views in the Inn Valley
• Norway in Photographs: Villages, Roads and Mountain Views

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