Snowflake-a-Day No. 12 - a photo on Flickriver

I’m having a hard time believing this one is real. Not even five minutes after heading out to photograph my first new snowflakes of the season, I discover this nearly perfect beauty. This is the reason why I head out to photograph new snowflakes even though I have many hundreds from previous years that I haven’t had the time to edit. View large!

Slow, stable growth gives is broad-branched snowflakes, and this one shows some signs of spinning in a fairly stable way. This is the only way I can explain the side-branches always being larger on their right side when looking up at them from the center. If this crystal was rotating in a clockwise manner, then more water vapour would be available to build up the branches like this, but it wouldn’t have an appreciable impact on the order branches where the building blocks were more abundant. Just a theory!

The center ties it all together, and it’s very hard to explain. The large hexagon is sitting above the lower plate (you can see underlying features of the snowflake below it), and the darker dot in the center is usually a symbol of a start as a “capped column” type of snowflake. It’s very rare for this to result in a very large hexagon in the center, but more like the smaller one in the middle, gem-like in appearance… So where did these two hexagons come from? I don’t know.

I suppose the mystery would be easier to solve if I had the opportunity to flip it over and photograph the opposite side, but as soon as the photos were taken it caught a whisper of wind and disappeared.

I’m going to say that this snowflakes makes it into my all-time top 10 list. I contemplated saving it for later in the series, but if this is how the season starts I’m sure I’ll have plenty more gems to share as winter takes hold. :)

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 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/

Taken in: Canada / Ontario / Barrie (show map)

Taken on: December 11, 2017

Tags:

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ice

crystal

nature $Everybody's photos tagged with fractal$ fractal

science

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Sets appears in: • Snowflakes & Frost

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Camera: Canon EOS-1D X Mark II, f/2.8, 1/250 sec, 65mm, ISO 200 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS-1D X Mark II
Lens:	MP-E65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Photo
Aperture:	f/2.8
Exposure Time:	0.004 sec (1/250)
Focal Length:	65mm
ISO:	200
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	On, Fired
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CC (Windows)
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