Another giant beauty! The funny thing about these snowflakes is if they all fall together from the same snowfall, many of them are so outwardly similar. The differences get lost in the complexity and they feel more similar than they really are. View large!
This snowflake fell on December 17th, which was one of the best snowfalls for large, elegant, ornate crystals with high level of symmetry. You’ll notice a few “adornments” on the left side, smaller snowflakes that tagged along for a sense of scale. If you’ve seen other snowflakes that take on a similar appearance to this one in this year’s series, they all fell within minutes of each-other. This one, I didn’t get to photograph as quickly as I did the others.
While the internal structures are still very solid, you’ll notice something less “robust” about the outer tips of any branch on the perimeter of the snowflake. This crystal has been sublimating. Maybe for 10 or 20 minutes, but resting among the other freshly fallen snowflakes it begins to fade away almost immediately. Sublimation is evaporation from a solid without first becoming liquid, something that snowflakes do as soon as they leave the cloud that formed them. Photographing them as quickly as possible is extremely important… but sometimes, it doesn’t snow “the good stuff” for long enough.
Sometimes the best snowflakes will only be falling for a few minutes. When the snow has stopped falling but you still want to shoot more of their beauty, it’s okay to go dumpster diving for snowflakes. Using the black mitten hat I photograph all of the snowflakes on, I gently place it on the freshly fallen snow, and lift it back up. The top layer of dendrite crystals will stick to the mitten like Velcro and I can hunt around for some choice specimens for a handful of minutes after the snow has stopped. This was one of the last discoveries made with this method I photographed before giving up – they were too far gone.
I particularly love a few sets of branches off the bottom branch – one pair with very small sets of branches like legs on an insect, with very broad side-branches just up and behind them, growing underneath on a slightly different plane. To a lesser degree of distinction, you can find the same characteristics in the same place on all the other branches. Comparing these branch-to-branch differences are part of the beauty for me: making sense of the complexity and chaos.
If you’d like to know more about the science of snowflakes with an exhaustive and comprehensive tutorial on how to photograph and edit these little gems, check out my book Sky Crystals:
Hardcover: www.skycrystals.ca/book/
eBook: www.skycrystals.ca/ebook/
Other things you might be interested in:
2018 Macro Photography Workshop Schedule: www.donkom.ca/workshops/
2018 Ice Crystals Coin from the Royal Canadian Mint featuring my snowflakes: www.mint.ca/store/coins/coin-prod3040427
“The Snowflake” print, taking 2500 hours to create: skycrystals.ca/product/poster-proof/
Photo Geek Weekly, my new podcast: www.photogeekweekly.com/
