Snowflake photo: Cold metal (1600 x 1200)

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

Yet another snowflake from wonderful snowfall of 16th january 2014. This snow crystal was around 3 millimeters from tip to tip. Although it have not very pretty arms, i really like it's large central hexagon with perfect symmetry in all details.

This crystal was captured on large sheet of glass, using camera Canon Powershot A650is with additional lens Helios 44M-5, reversely mounted in front of built-in optics. 8 identical RAWs, taken as fast series, was averaged for better signal-to-noise ratio of final picture.

Check out these wonderful melon carvings from VegetableFruitCarvings.com, based on this snowflake image!

Here is next snowflake from that amazing snowfall of 16th january 2014, Crystal of chaos and order:

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: Less is more (1024 x 768)

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

This is small hexagonal plate snowflake, around 1 mm in diameter. It have surprisingly simple, yet interesting, inner pattern. This snow crystal was captured on glass background with multi-color back lighting, using additional lens Helios 44M-5, in january 2014, Moscow, Russia. 8 identical RAW photos was averaged to raise signal-to-noise ratio of this image.

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.

...in six months, since i moved my blog from nearly dead russian segment of LiveJournal to excellent Blogger platform.

Thank you very much, dear visitors!

Snowflake photo: Massive gold (1400 x 1050)

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

New snowflake photo from 16th January, 2014. That day in Moscow was wonderful snowfall, and i've captured almost 20 gigabytes of RAW + Jpeg source photos - i'll process more nice crystals soon. I used simple multi-color lighting (fragment of plastic bag with white/orange pattern putted on LED flashlight).

I like this crystal's relief surface, and especially quite complex and interesting inner pattern. Did you notice six elements, which are located in the middle, between arms, and pointed toward center? They remind me interleaved array of 3 torches and 3 bigger street lamps.

This snowflake was captured on large sheet of glass with light from behind, using Canon Powershot A650is and additional lens Helios 44, mounted in front of built-in camera's optics. 8 identical RAW photos, taken as fast series, was averaged to boost SNR of this picture.

If you are curious, how this snowflake looks without post-processing, here is picture for compare: single in-camera JPEG vs post-processed stack of 8 RAWs:

And this is version in cold silver tones:

Snowflake photo: Massive silver (1400 x 1050)

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

This snowflake also available as full HD desktop wallpaper:

I've used colder variant of this crystal to create square picture in a frame on pastel background, along with three other snowflakes:

This is collage, created from two color variants of this snowflake, warm and cold:

Music album 1975 Triptych by M-Opus, Irish progressive rock band, featuring this snowflake in booklet:

And here is another snowflake from same wonderful snowfall, Flying castle:

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

Snowflake photo: In the hall of the mountain king (1024 x 768)

This is tiny hexagonal plate snowflake, around 0,5 millimeter in diameter. Recently i especially hunting for snowflakes with rainbow colors, shooting tiny hexagonal plates like this on horizontally placed sheet of glass, pointing macro setup at angle with small desktop tripod. After one hour of trial and error, i catch some snow crystals with this effect. Here is second processed snowflake from this series: Rainbow flower.

This picture was made by averaging stack of 16 identical RAW photos for way better details and colors of such tiny object.

And here is two more rainbow snowflakes, captured previously: Ice rainbow and Ice rainbow 2.

If you are curious about effect, which produces these incredible colors in transparent ice, here is good Wikipedia article: Thin film interference.

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.

Yesterday i tried to capture that nice rainbow-like optical effect, which sometimes can be seen in snowflake photos. This thin film optical interference effect also can be seen in soap bubbles.

In case of snowflakes, it can be seen rarely than in bubbles and usually it is more subtle, with pink and cyan colors dominance. Not any snowflake have thin enough layers of ice and air inside to produce this effect, and if we want to see and capture it, we need to choose right angle for camera, where light of snowflake's surface will reflect. Don Komarechka described in detail this fascinating effect (among many other interesting topics about snowflakes) in his book "Sky Crystals: Unraveling the Mysteries of Snowflakes".

For these shots, i pointed macro setup at snow crystals (tiny hexagonal plates) and changed angle of camera, hoping to see colors at camera screen. Lighting of scene was only dim gray light of cloudy sky. This is crops from unmodified shots, without any color or contrast enchancements:

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.

Finally, in Moscow good coldness and some snow, and i tried slightly different shooting: this medium sized crystal (around 3 mm) captured in natural light at glass surface. Macro setup stands on small desktop tripod and shoots at angle. For achieving acceptable DOF i focus stacked 13 shots (and 13 was not enough even for this single small crystal). Serie for focus stacking done using great script focus bracketing for CHDK firmware. Because i use focus stacking instead of averaging, it was hard time while denoising this picture, and still, noise is clearly visible. Definitely, this will not be my favourite shooting method, but it have it's own advantages: with it, we can get nice volumetric details of crystals surface, and good chances to catch colourful thin film optical interference effect in snowflake's centers.

Original resolution: 1443 x 1082 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.

Medium size snowflake, 3 or 4 millimeters in diameter. 8 shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Glass background with back light, additional lens Helios 44M-5, january 2013, Moscow. Looks better in original resolution: 1725 x 1294 pixels.

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

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.

Although i prefer night HDR shots (they look interesting even with very simple processing), there is some daytime photos:

4000 x 3000


8616 x 7892


3928 x 2946


3908 x 2931


1536 x 2048