Hexagonal plates is one of my favorite snowflake types. These snow crystals are small, usually 1,5 millimeters or less, and biggest specimens that i've seen so far was around 2 millimeters in diameter. But, despite small size and very simple shape, these snowflakes have their own beauty, hidden in amazing patterns and internal structure.

Here is collection of already processed crystals from my huge snowflake archive, which i build within 8 winters of intensive photo sessions. I have lots of other amazing hexagonal plates in archive, but quality processing of such tiny object requires time and patience. I'll append here links to new processed photos when they are ready.

Just click on photos you like, and they will open as full resolution versions:

Here is similar collections of small and simple triangular and huge, complex fernlike dendrite snowflakes:

If you want to see all of my 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: Cryogenia (1200 x 900)

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

I think, this is best snowflake of hexagonal plate type that i've captured this winter. I enjoy this crystal's unusual structure: with "high tech" relief of central hexagon and outer pattern with six marks, which reminds ancient runes. This mix of "ancient and futuristic" in single snowflake looks really cool! And i was lucky with lighting of this pretty crystal, so all inner details are clearly visible.

However, this crystal was hard for processing, because i've got only 4 identical RAW photos for averaging (my SD card was almost full, when i saw this nice snowflake on camera screen), and in close proximity to crystal were some piles of ice debris: this complicates cleaning of background. But this specimen definitely worth all the trouble.

This snow crystal was around 1,5 millimeters in diameter: quite large size for it's type. It was captured on large sheet of glass with multi-color LED back light, using Canon Powershot A650is and additional lens Helios 44M-5, in january 2014.

This is alternate color version:

Snowflake photo: Cryogenia, alternate colors (1200 x 900)

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

Also, i've created square picture in a frame with this snowflake on pastel background, along with three other crystals:

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: Rainbow flower (1024 x 768)

This is tiny snowflake, around 1 millimeter from tip to tip or even smaller. Rainbow color circles on it's surface caused by thin film optical interference effect (similar colors you can see on surface of soap bubbles). Yesterday i especially hunting for rainbow-colored snowflakes, trying to capture small hexagonal and sectored plates like this crystal at horizontally mounter sheet of glass, pointing my macro setup at angle, using small desktop tripod. After an hour of trial and error, i managed to catch some crystals with visible effect. Rest of these photos (quickly processed from in-camera JPEGs) available here: What color of snow is your favorite?

This picture was processed from averaged stack of 13 RAWs - for better details and colors of such small object.

Version without blue color toning and vignetting:

Snowflake photo: Rainbow flower alt (1024 x 768)

And this is source picture after averaging 13 RAW shots, without any color/contrast changes, sharpening and noise removing (2048 x 1536 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.

Update: Google cancelled authorship project, and this information is not useful anymore.


Recently introduced Google authorship program is really good thing for any blogger - it highlights author's content in search results and, hopefully, Google trust this content more that one without verified authorship and boost its position in search results. But it is also works nice with your photo content on Flickr photo hosting.

It's easy to do in a few steps:

1. At first, to make sure that all my flickr pages are indexed by Google, i manually added into Google Add url tool these of my flickr URLs (photostream root, profile page and all album pages):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/
http://www.flickr.com/people/chaoticmind75/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157626265195798/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157630617454194/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157626146319517/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157636124631135/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157626140542341/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157629984474454/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157640454694553/

(although adding albums maybe is not nesessary - google robot should find them by visiting link "albums" from photostream page).

2. As Google instruction says, i added to Contributor To section of my Google+ profile two custom Flickr links (photostream and profile pages) and their copies with https prefix, as well as link to this blog:

chaoticmind75.blogspot.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/
http://www.flickr.com/people/chaoticmind75/
https://www.flickr.com/people/chaoticmind75/

3. Then, all i need to do is make sure that on every page of my flickr account will be reciprocal link to my Google+ profile, which may look like this:

<a href="https://plus.google.com/111839554038128178268?rel=author">Author: Alexey Kljatov (??????? ??????) aka ChaoticMind75</a>

For this, i added that code at end of descriptions in all my Flickr albums, and, because in descrption fields of all my flickr photos already was this string of links to my other places:

Prints | Blog | Facebook | Google+ | DeviantArt | 500px | Tumblr

all i need to do is slightly change it, appending "?rel=author" attribute to Google+ link:

<a href="https://plus.google.com/111839554038128178268?rel=author">Google+</a>

Also i placed this string of links into description field of my Flickr profile page.

That's all. When Google indexed my Flickr pages, they looks better in search results. For these queries, it shows photo page links with verified authorship snippet:

Snowflake photo: Flying castle (1600 x 1200)

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

I really like this snowflake: it have beautiful shape, relief details, and i was lucky with lighting. This is medium size snow crystal, 3 or 4 millimeters from tip to tip. I captured it during amazing snowfall, one of the best that i remember:

That day, January 16 2014, was very good for snowflake photography from early morning: i captured lots of nice specimens, but all this can't compare with snowfall, started around 16:00. Suddenly, i've saw lots of amazing crystals, falling at my glass background. I've tried to catch only best snowflakes, and as fast as i can, but that was very hard choice, which crystal photograph next: all of them were big, symmetrical and extremely beautiful! The only flaw with these crystals that they was covered by some bubbles of rime, but not too much.

After half of a hour, snow changed: snowflakes become even bigger, but more chaotic and less symmetrical. But still, i've managed to catch lots of amazing specimens. After removing bad photos, my snowflake archive from that day contains 955 RAW + Jpeg images, which took 12.3 gigabytes of disk space after packing RAWs with archiver 7-Zip (using PPMd compression method).

8 identical RAW photos, taken as short series, was averaged for dramatically better signal/noise ratio of this picture.

This snowflake in alternate colors:

Snowflake photo: Flying castle, alternate colors (1600 x 1200)

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

Flying castle also available as Ultra HD wallpaper:

Here you can see other snowflakes from that amazing snowfall: Massive gold, Silver foil, Cold metal, Iron crown / Spark, and one of these big and not very symmetrical crystals from the end of snowfall: Crystal of chaos and order. Also, lots of beautiful crystal waits, when i'll find time to process them!

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

Snowflake photo: From scratch (1024 x 768)

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

This is another snowflake of my favorite type: simple hexagonal plate. This one was around 1 millimeter in diameter. Interesting: "scratch" across the crystal is symmetrical on both ends (it seems to be a part of it's pattern), and pattern elements at opposite sides of this scratch, though looks similar, have differences in size and shape.

This snow crystal was taken on glass background with multi-color LED back light, using additional lens Helios 44M-5, in january 2014, Moscow. 8 identical RAW photos was taken as short series and averaged to raise signal-to-noise ratio of this picture.

This snowflake before and after processing (please click to view in 1:1 scale on Flickr):

And here you'll find even more interesting hexagonal crystal - Cryogenia, captured right before this one, within same hour:

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, around 3 millimeters in diameter. Glass background with backlight, additional lens Helios 44M-5, 8 RAWs averaged, january 2014, Moscow.

1866 x 1400

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