How about some advice?

[jeepdogg]

So with winter here and snow coming soon, I want to take some pictures. I saw a pictures that a local photographer took of the fresh snow on a street. It was a little dark, maybe late evening and the street lights were on. And as I looked at the picture I noticed the lights it was composed well, but it was not focused well, and the lights were very bright in the picture. So my question is some I am asking for some advice about how to take this style shot. Any advice anyone can give is much appreciated. I will of course be using a tripod with my Canon XTI. So lets here it, what should I do to capture a better photo?

[rvdw98]

Are you asking how to focus and expose properly?

[jeepdogg]

Yea basically. I thought about a slower shutter speed but the lights will blow out, right. So just looking for some advise

[rvdw98]

In a high contrast situation, you can only expose for one part of the scene: either the shadows or the highlights. Exposing for the highlights will underexpose the shadows, while exposing for the shadows will blow out the highlights. There is no way around that, except taking multiple exposures and manually blending them in Photoshop or using HDR. The latter technique (HDR) is a bit controversial though, because it is very easy to achieve unnatural looking results when overdoing it.