Snowflake photo: Hex appeal (1200 x 900)

Prints available at artist website.

This winter in Moscow still too warm for good snowflake photos, and i continue to dig archives. This is simple hexagonal plate crystal, around 1.5 millimeters from tip to tip. I like it's transparency, and light looks nice, too, though it's just diffused light of grey cloudy skies - no any tricks was needed.

11 identical RAW photos, taken as quick series, was aligned and averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio of this picture. Background: dark woolen fabric, external optics Helios 44M-5 used as additional magnifier, march 2013, Moscow.

If you want to see more snowflakes, you can browse through all snowflake pictures.
Here you'll find snowflake photo wallpapers in numerous resolutions and screen proportions, up to Ultra HD 4K.
And here is article about snowflake macro photography.

This book written by my friend from Canada, professional photographer Don Komarechka (Website, Google+, Facebook, Flickr). This excellent 9x9" size hardcover book (containing 304 pages), along with fantastic snowflake photography, will detail the science, photography techniques and even delve into why we find snowflakes beautiful.

"The book contains all of my snowflake images, and will detail every photographic and editing technique used in their creation � and I encourage you to try it for yourself! The book also contains all of the science and physics of snowflakes that I can share without personally having a degree in molecular dynamics. I�ll keep the explanations easy to understand and graphic, but the science is fascinating and there are still many unanswered questions." -- Don Komarechka.

Don's snowflake photography truly amazing, much better than my own efforts. He kindly spent a whole page describing my snowflake photography approach.

The book can be ordered at Don's website - skycrystals.ca:

Book cover



Don checked quality of print process at all stages:



Two examples of Don's snowflake photography:

(photographs in this post and the book cover (c) Don Komarechka, posted with his permission)

Here is another amazing work by Don Komarechka: ultra high resolution poster:

Also, don't miss excellent snowflake book by Kenneth Libbrecht and Rachel Wing - The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry:

 >> snowflakes - printable versions, part I

Trying to do something with low resolution of snowflake shots. I enlarged pictures 2x using SmartEdge demo, free resampling program. It works very slow, but produces output with good looking lines and edges and preserves textures clarity. This demo version also have input image restrictions (resolution should not be bigger than 512 x 512 pixels), so i processed whole pictures part by part and then reassembled.

Then i applied one of these nice freeware canvas textures in "soft light" blending mode with small opacity. This texture masked noise and resampling artifacts, making picture more appealing (i hope) at 1:1 scale view.

2500 x 1876



2118 x 1588



1600 x 1200

If you want to see more snowflakes, you can browse through all snowflake pictures.
Here you'll find snowflake photo wallpapers in numerous resolutions and screen proportions, up to Ultra HD 4K.
And here is article about snowflake macro photography.

Small snowflake, around 2 millimeters in diameter (companion crystal proportionally smaller). 8 shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Glass background with backlight, additional lens Helios 44M-5, december 2012, Moscow. Better viewed in original resolution: 1200 x 900 pixels.

If you want to see more snowflakes, you can browse through all snowflake pictures.
Here you'll find snowflake photo wallpapers in numerous resolutions and screen proportions, up to Ultra HD 4K.
And here is article about snowflake macro photography.

New beautiful design of page chaoticmind75.tumblr.com is made entirely by Lucy Hartman.

Thank you very much, Lucy!

Group of small snowflakes, 1-2 millimeters. 8 shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Glass background with backlight, additional lens Helios 44M-5, january 2013, Moscow. Better viewed in original resolution: 2256 x 1692 pixels.

If you want to see more snowflakes, you can browse through all snowflake pictures.
Here you'll find snowflake photo wallpapers in numerous resolutions and screen proportions, up to Ultra HD 4K.
And here is article about snowflake macro photography.

Especially for people, who doubt that i photograph real snowflakes, here is small "before and after" chart. Please click at source previews to open full 12 megapixel photos (straight out of camera JPEGs):

source shot	processed picture

If you want to see more snowflakes, you can browse through all snowflake pictures.
Here you'll find snowflake photo wallpapers in numerous resolutions and screen proportions, up to Ultra HD 4K.
And here is article about snowflake macro photography.

Snowflake photo: The core (1600 x 1200)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

This medium size snowflake (3-4 millimeters from tip to tip) is one of my favorites. It is very clear and symmetrical. I like how volumetric surface distorts background behind the crystal. Big hexagonal center contains very simple, but interesting inner pattern.

8 identical RAW photos was taken as quick series and averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio of this picture. Background: dark woolen fabric, diffused light of grey cloudy sky, external optics Helios 44M-5, January 2013, Moscow.

This photo was chosen by Autodesk to be a part of Fake or photo? challenge version 6. This is interesting and, IMHO, not so easy challenge. My result is only 67%. If you would like to try it, you already know one right answer. :)

Also, i used precise mask for this version with blurred background:

Snowflake photo: The core, blurred version (1200 x 1200)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

This snowflake available as ultra HD wallpaper:

Next winter i captured similar snow crystal: Icy jewel, with slightly bigger size and more complex patterns:

If you want to see more snowflakes, you can browse through all snowflake pictures.
And here is article about snowflake macro photography.

Snowflake photo: Starlight (2048 x 1536)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

This is one of most beautiful stellar dendrite snowflakes i've captured past winter, but it was hard to process, because i got serious problems with aligning shots (wind shifts and rotates this crystal when i've took photo series). This snow crystal is quite large, about 5-6 millimeters from tip to tip. I like this crystal's elegant and ornate "design" and shape, especially high detailed arms: they remind me six sharp swords, pointing inward.

8 identical RAW shots, captured as fast series, was averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio of final picture. Background: dark woolen fabric, natural light (grey cloudy sky), camera Canon Powershot A650is, external optics Helios 44M-5, January 2013, Moscow, Russia.

Another variant with blurred background:

Snowflake photo: Starlight II (2048 x 1536)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

Also, Starlight available as Ultra HD wallpaper:

Starlight was chosen as cover for music disk Unicum by Draugh, composer from Chile:

I also combined this snow crystal with snowflake Rigel into one picture:

Snowflake photo: When winters meets 2 (3400 x 2550)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com, Society6.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

And here is another beautiful cluster with two stellar dendrite snowflakes, taken in January 2014, also at dark textured backdrop, and processed in same technique:

If you want to see more snowflakes, you can browse through all snowflake pictures.
And here is article about snowflake macro photography.

... Moscow variant. Strong light pollution of the city causes bright sky at long exposured shots. For this picture i use 67 RAW shots, aligned with Hugin's "align_image_stack" utility and averaged. This allows to get Orion nebula's natural color, but it's size and details still unacceptable. Next time i'll try capturing this nebula with better camera settings and bigger series of source shots. Star colors looks better in original resolution: 1567 x 2093 pixels.

I wrote small post about averaging stack of shots here: english / russian.

Prints available at Artist website, RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, Marketplace.500px.com.

Moscow Kremlin, october 2013. For better clarity and colors i averaged multiple shots for each exposure (2 shots for brightest and 8 for other 5 exposures, 42 shots total). I wrote small post about averaging stack of shots: english / russian.

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Snowflake photo: The beauty of imperfection (2096 x 1572)

This is large snowflake of stellar dendrite type, 5 or 6 millimeters from tip to tip. It have one reduced branch, but gorgeous pattern in the center:

Crop of snowflake center in full size

7 identical RAW photos, taken as quick series, was aligned and averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio of this picture. Background: black woolen fabric, diffused light of gray winter sky, external optics Helios 44, March 2013, Moscow, Russia.

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use available at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

Here is another snowflake with amazing pattern in the center - Ice crown:

And here you'll find much smaller, star-shaped crystal that i've captured same day - Alcor - with interesting contrast between flower-like inner structure, with curvy lines, and straight lines of outer hexagonal part:

If you want to see more snowflakes, you can browse through all snowflake pictures.
Here you'll find snowflake photo wallpapers in numerous resolutions and screen proportions, up to Ultra HD 4K.
And here is article about snowflake macro photography.

Snowflake photo: Silverware (2667 x 2000)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

This is large snowflake of fernlike dendrite type, approximately 6-7 millimeters from tip to tip. I like it's shape and light on numerous icy "leaves".

This crystal was photographed in January 2013 on large glass plate with LED back lighting, as fast series of 8 identical RAW shots. All serial photos was averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio of this image, then i start my usual processing workflow.

And this is alternate processing of same photo: with inverted luminocity and changed background colors:

Snowflake photo: Neon (2667 x 2000)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

Also, i post-processed this crystal on clear black background:

This snowflake was featured in nice cosplay work by May:

I used silhouette of this snowflake for design of snowflake flash drives by USB Memory Direct:

If you want to see more snowflakes, you can browse through all snowflake pictures.
Here you'll find snowflake photo wallpapers in numerous resolutions and screen proportions, up to Ultra HD 4K.
And here is article about snowflake macro photography.