For this update of draft series i've prepared five best snowflakes from my catch of February 13, 2017. That day i captured mostly stellar and fernlike dendrites, large and medium size:

Snowflake photo: Draft_4-1 (2048 x 1536)

This snowflake have relatively simple structure for it's type, and moderate size: around 4 millimeters from tip to tip. This is quite "standard" crystal, and most interesting detail is how side branches of neighbor arms overlaps with each other: snowflake looks transparent for this point of view, and we clearly see through overlapped parts.

Prints available at Artist website, RedBubble.com, Society6.com.

And this is same snowflake in alternate colors:

Snowflake photo: Draft_4-1_alt (2048 x 1536)

Prints available at Artist website, RedBubble.com, Society6.com.

Second snow crystal is smaller (less than 3 millimeters) and looks more glossy:

Snowflake photo: Draft_4-2 (1600 x 1200)

Prints available at Artist website, RedBubble.com, Society6.com.

Most interesting detail is relief central hexagon of unusual shape, with nice inner pattern. I've also prepared version in alternate colors:

Snowflake photo: Draft_4-2_alt (1600 x 1200)

Prints available at Artist website, RedBubble.com, Society6.com.

Next crystal is also small, and have dense array of side branches on it's arms:

Snowflake photo: Draft_4-3 (1600 x 1200)

Alternate, warmer color version:

Snowflake photo: Draft_4-3 (1600 x 1200)

Next snowflake is my favorite of this day. It is biggest among all five crystals, have complex and symmetrical structure:

Snowflake photo: Draft_4-4 (2701 x 2026)

Prints available at Artist website, RedBubble.com, Society6.com.

And finally, quite "standard" stellar dendrite, but i like light on it's relief surface:

Snowflake photo: Draft_4-5 (2048 x 1536)

This color version is better, in my opinion:

Snowflake photo: Draft_4-5_alt (2048 x 1536)

Licenses for commercial use available at Shutterstock.com.

My snowflake catch of February 13 was 326 RAW + Jpeg photos, 3.2 Gigabytes total - really lucky day, because last half of winter 2016-17 was not good for snowflake photography in Moscow: it was too warm and with rare snowfalls.

Here is very first pack of draft snowflakes - catch of December 18, 2015:

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.

Here is two snowflakes, quickly processed for Snowflake draft series. Both photos was taken March 19, 2013 - quite late for serious snowflake photography, but that day was cold, and i have nice catch of interesting snow crystals without visible melting:

Snowflake photo: Draft_3-1 (2400 x 1800)

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

I like this cluster of three stellar dendrites with thin and sharp arms, resembling blades. However, it was hard to process: that cluster was captured from non-ideal angle, so it slightly out of focus at top and bottom edges. Also, it lays high over background, touching single wool fibers in one or two points - this visually separates snow crystal from surrounding background and looks nice, but this unstable construction shifts and rotates from every light blow of the wind. I've spent lots of time, until achieved good alignment of all 8 source shots for averaging process.

Here you'll find similar flat cluster with three snowflakes, captured on glass with LED back lighting:

This single stellar dendrite crystal have big central hexagon with beautiful inner structure, though it's six arms is not perfectly symmetrical, if we look closely at their side branches:

Snowflake photo: Draft_3-2 (2048 x 1536)

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

Here is next pack of draft snowflakes - catch of February 13, 2017:

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 is quick update of Snowflake draft series, before i'll continue digging archives from recent winter. This photo was taken January 18, 2013: very first winter when i start to use lens Helios 44 as additional magnifier, and assembled my current snowflake macro setup. I needed this picture of snowflake for side project, and spent three hours to process it from averaged stack of 7 serial JPEG sources.

Snowflake photo: Draft_2-1 (3200 x 2400)

This is pair of big stellar dendrite snow crystals, fallen together at my black woolen backdrop. Interesting thing with that couple is that far crystal have almost the same size, shape and structure as near one, and it even sit in wool fibers at same angle! It seems that both snowflakes fall and grow in close proximity to each other, and similar air conditions and changes in temperature and humidity around them caused crystals to grow with similar shape. If you look closely at far crystal, you'll notice some differences in details of arms.

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

Crop of snowflake center in full size

And this is version in real colors, without my usual blue color toning. Almost all of my source photos with dark grey woolen background have similar, almost monochromatic grey colors, because in most cases the only light source is diffused light from cloudy winter sky:

Snowflake photo: Draft_2-2 (3200 x 2400)

Snowflakes is the crystals of clear transparent ice, and they can take any color, depending of light source and surrounding environment (this gives us a fantastic opportunity to experiment with lighting and backgrounds). Although, when looking from particular angles, snow crystals become white and semi-transparent, or almost opaque (i think, this is because of light scattering: light rays can bounce inside of snow crystal, reflecting from numerous facets). Also, in some cases snowflakes can show us rainbow colors, which produced by prismatic features inside crystals, and even more interesting phenomenon: rainbow colors, created by thin film interference effect (it explained in Wikipedia; this effect also creates rainbow colors in soap bubbles). In relation to the snowflakes, this effect can be seen rarely: it needs interleaved and very thin layers of ice and air inside snow crystal. Here you can see several examples of rainbow snowflakes, that i've encounter during recent winters.

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

Here is next pack of draft snowflakes - catch of March 19, 2013:

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.

Decided to start additional series of snowflake photos: Snowflake draft, in parallel with fully processed snow crystals. This will be small packs of snowflake photos, processed with simplified and more quick workflow.

My main processing workflow for snowflake photography requires lots of time and effort. I really like this work and never tired of it, because careful processing of aligned and averaged RAW stack certainly worth all efforts: resulting image looks way better than in-camera source photos. But that means that i can show you only small fraction of all nice and interesting snowflakes i capture every winter. All of my snow crystals stored in very big archive as series of RAW + JPEG photos, waiting for processing; though i suspect that most of these snowflakes will never be released - only because i can't find enough time to process them all!

So, here is first post in draft series. For these photos, i'll do faster processing: averaging of JPEG stacks with simplified post-processing. I will show only interesting and/or beautiful crystals (at my taste), but, to keep some intrigue, will not show best of the best snowflakes, until they processed with full workflow. :)

These crystals was captured 18 December 2015. This was second day of my snowflake photography this winter, and first day that brings me some nice specimens:

Snowflake photo: Draft_1-1 (2453 x 1840)

This large snow crystal resembles duck feet or gecko's paw. Snowflakes of this type, if they are big enough, can be easily spot by naked eye and draws attention, thanks to their unusual and beautiful shape with thin, broad and very clean arms. Here is details of one arm without re-scaling. I like how background distorted by transparent details on crystal surface:

I've already processed two snow crystals of this type: High voltage / Gecko's paw (normal and negative processing of same photo, taken on glass surface) and Ice crown - large snowflake on dark woolen fabric:

Next snowflake is very big 12-sided crystal (quite rare finding), with complex structure and slight rime on surface:

Snowflake photo: Draft_1-2 (2901 x 2176)

Here is crop of it's center in 1:1 scale. Can you find tiny hollow column snowflake on it?

Snowflakes with twelve arms is one of my favorites (along with hexagonal plates and triangular snow crystals). Here is two more 12-sided crystals: Wheel of time and Twelve months (i've captured and processed them in 2014).

Next crystal is stellar dendrite, but almost completely covered with rime. Usually, i do not like such crystals: often they carry so much rime, so they reminds pillow, almost completely opaque and even their shape barely seen. However, small amount of rime sometimes look cute: snowflake can remind massive brooch, covered by lots of tiny diamonds:

Snowflake photo: Draft_1-3 (2400 x 1800)

And finally, small crystal of capped column type. Although, it is bigger than common capped columns, and have wide caps with different size. You can see it's thin column through transparent cap:

Snowflake photo: Draft_1-4 (1752 x 1314)

Here you'll see "standard" capped column:

These snowflakes was the best from December 18. In total, 129 photos was captured; they took 1,5 Gb in archive after packing RAWs with archiver 7-Zip (after tests, i choosed PPMd compression method and model order=3 - it gives best compression ratio for my 10bit RAW/DNG files, and also good speed).

Licenses for commercial use available at Shutterstock.com.

Here is next snowflake in draft series, captured January 18, 2013:

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.