Snowflake 884 - a photo on Flickriver

Snowflake 884

            Here’s a fun one! We’ve had a ton of snow the last two days, unfortunately with high winds and a deluge of flakes, it was nearly impossible to isolate a single image for photographic purposes. I was able to shoot some footage for a documentary project, and dive into some recently shot snowflakes to find some magic from earlier in the season.

This one really jumped out at me – the metallic-like structures, the symmetry, but even more captivating was the connection of colour in the lower area where two separate snowflakes have fused together. This is one of my favourite oddities of “thin film interference” in snowflakes!

Thin film interference is what produces the majority of colour within these crystals, an optical interference of light between different thin layers of reflective ice and air. Normally this happens within a snowflake, evoked from bubbles trapped within the ice. It can also happen with a thin layer of ice trapped between two snowflakes, usually so close together that they have most certainly begun fusing together into a singular mass of ice. The colour here appears filtered through the front branch of the snowflake, bent and refracted along its contours and appearing like coloured glass. Physics can be beautiful!

The center of this snowflake has its own beauty, with a perfect circle that all roads lead to. Circles initially confused me as much as these vibrant colours – where do they come from when a snowflake grows outward at 60-degree angles? How can this geometry possibly create rounded, near-perfect circular shapes?

Inward growth. It’s easy to imagine a snowflake that only grows outward, constantly expanding its footprint. A snowflake is not such a simple creature. A snowflake can grow outward, but also inward. If there is a thicker ridge that formed during slower growth (usually from lesser humidity or colder temperatures), this ridge can continue outward, but its inner cliff-light edge can also grow back towards the center. This does not keep the same geometric shape, instead rounding out as water molecules attach themselves to the easiest-to-attach places – the inner areas of the corners. This rounds out the corners continuously until the result is a circular shape that continues in towards the center of the snowflake. It’s beautiful, but the science behind how it’s beautiful amplifies my appreciation for such tiny things.

Shot on a Lumix S1R with the Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens, paired with a Yongnuo YN-14EX II ring flash and a Bolt P12 external battery back – this is my snowflake shooting setup for this year and it’s the best ever!

Taken on: February 25, 2019

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Camera: Panasonic DC-S1R, 1/200 sec, ISO 200 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Panasonic DC-S1R
Exposure Time:	0.005 sec (1/200)
ISO:	200
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	On, Fired
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Gain Control:	Low gain up
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop 21.0 (Windows)
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