I really love snowfall. Snowflakes swirling in the air create a unique holiday and cozy mood. The air becomes voluminous and tangible. When it snows, it’s nice to sit quietly by the window, wrapped in a soft blanket with a cup of hot mulled wine. It's great to go outside and catch snowflakes on your fluffy collar and mittens. But today I want to talk about how you can also take great pictures in the snow without harming either the equipment or the delicate taste of future connoisseurs of your work.
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There are two main ways to photograph flying snow: at a short shutter speed to freeze or minimally smear the snowflakes in flight, and with flash at a shutter speed of any length.
Let's look at the first method first:
Snow usually flies quite quickly, especially on a windy day, so this method is best used when the snowflakes are large and fall quite slowly - as if floating in the air. Absolutely calm weather is preferred. In such conditions, shutter speed can vary from 1/500 to 1/800. If there is wind or snowflakes are smaller and falling quickly, a shutter speed of 1/1000 or shorter is suitable. With more long exposures the matrix does not have time to record the snow in the frame - the photo looks like on an ordinary cloudy day. At a shutter speed of 1/400-1/500, snow may appear in the frame in the form of white lines, this can add dynamics to the picture, but the snow does not look very natural. In this type of shooting, snowflakes are best seen against a dark background (as you see in the photo), they merge with the light sky. It's also worth remembering that with such fast shutter speeds on a cloudy day the scene can look underexposed, so you should raise your ISO, around 640 is usually sufficient.
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Second way:
Flash photography. When shooting with flash, you can shoot even very fast-flying snow, while the camera captures snowflakes flying in close proximity to the lens, so they look larger. Also, in this case, the background does not matter - snowflakes will be drawn even against the background of a cloudy sky. For such shooting, we switch the camera to aperture priority mode, set the flash exposure compensation to a value from +2/3 to +3 and preferably install the camera on a tripod, because during snowfall the lighting is usually insufficient even during the day, therefore the shutter speed can be quite long. ISO value 100.
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Depending on the flash power and the set exposure compensation value, snow may appear as large round balls (high power, exposure compensation from +2), sometimes as short white stripes (lower power, fractional exposure compensation value). Compare the options in photo 5.
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During snowfall, in the vast majority of cases the sun is hidden behind the clouds, and the picture often looks monotonous in color. It can be a good idea to capture some warm-colored object in the frame (the orange house in photo 6).
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However, in my opinion, photographs taken in snowfall when converted to black and white with cold toning look no less impressive. Blue and blue tones will add atmosphere to the winter scene.
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A good solution would also be to find a flashlight or other source of artificial light (lit window, shop window, car headlights). In this case, you should tighten the aperture as much as possible to get nice, sharp star rays from the light source.
Firstly, such a source will highlight the snowflakes and separate them from the background and from each other - backlight (a light source behind the subject) can create a nice golden halo around each snowflake; secondly, such light will add an interesting warm accent to the usually completely cold (blue-bluish-gray) tonality of the scene. The contrast between the color temperature of the light source and the surrounding winter picture can be successfully emphasized by combining two frames with different color temperatures: in one the temperature is set automatically according to the light source, in the other manually - in the "flash" mode, or experimentally select the optimal number for your taste color temperature (above 4000 K). In the first photo below (#8) you see the scene in its original key. The second photograph (No. 9) is an image already composed of two frames.
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The last thing I want to talk about is how to protect your camera in snowfall .
Firstly, if the snow is dry, there is severe frost outside and the snowflakes are not very large, it is enough to simply immediately hide the camera in your bag after shooting and brush it off with a brush from the snowflakes.
If the snow is wet and coarse, you need to hide the device in a bag or protective case, leaving the lens open. I sometimes use a regular umbrella - the camera is mounted on a tripod, and I just hold the umbrella over it.
Happy and magical winter shots to you, and don’t sit at home just because it’s snowing outside!

Shooting falling snow

What is definitely worth photographing is the beautiful snowfall. To obtain good shot, you won't need much:

• Telephoto lens with a focal length of 70 mm and above. And even better - from 135 mm.
• Expose aperture within f/4.5-6.3 and shutter speed at 1/400 second or faster. With these settings, you will be able to achieve such sharpness when the snowflakes are directly in front of the lens and behind the focus point. Then in the frame they will turn out to be very large and will look magical.
• Wide open aperture you can shoot a mess of snowflakes in focus and out of focus.
• Built-in flash will make snowflakes big blurry blots. If the image comes out colorless, expose to a darker background than it actually is.

Organizational aspects

Think first, then go

Be careful not to damage the scene with your own footprints in the snow. Before you wander around looking for the right shot, think about whether you might want to later take a photo of the very place you just walked through.

Best time to shoot

If you want to add interesting lighting and shadows to your frame, shoot at sunrise or sunset. It’s much more realistic to “catch” them now than in the summer. In June, the photographer must be on site at 4 am in full readiness. And from November to February in the middle zone, the sun rises above the horizon only at 7-8 am. And it’s easier with sunsets - you can take pictures right on the way from work.

We also recommend shooting a night snowy landscape to practice conveying the mood in the frame. Snow, which looks cheerful and elegant during the day, can be mysterious or dramatic. For snow to stand out in the dark, light must fall on it. The moon alone is not enough. At night, it is best to photograph snow with lonely lanterns. Or in the light of railway lights at stations.
Take a series of photos of the same place in different lighting to capture how the mood changes.

Camera settings

Compensate exposure

When shooting on a sunny day, you want to capture more of the shining, clean snow in the frame. To make it really white in the frame, set the exposure compensation to negative values. Since, in addition to the sun, light reflected from the snow enters the camera, then with an exposure of “++” you will get overexposure.

Use bracketing

To make sure you don't miss the exposure, use the bracketing function. The camera will automatically take each frame in at least three exposure options - there will be plenty to choose from.

The most successful shots taken with different exposures can be collected in a graphics editor in HDR.

Adjust white balance

To remove the blue cast that snow can give in the shadows, select the “flash” option in the white balance settings - and the color temperature in the frame will rise to 5500 Kelvin. And if you are shooting at sunrise and want to get beautiful golden tones, set it to all 9000 Kelvin.

And we're not even talking about the fact that you need to shoot in RAW. We're sure you just can't bring yourself to take photos in JPEG.

Optional equipment

Flash

If you're photographing people on a sunny day, bright snow can become increasingly dark objects, adding deep shadows to them. What to do about it? Option one is to wait for a cloudy day when the snow is not so dazzling. The second option is to use an external flash to illuminate the models without overexposing their faces.

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How to shoot snowflakes

Photographer Alexey Klyatov takes stunning photographs of snowflakes. Thanks to him, we can see in detail how beautiful they really are. And everyone is different.

Shooting snowflakes

I was lucky with the location for filming - it was a home unglazed balcony on the top floor, more than half of it was open air. Sometimes I shoot at an angle on woolen fabric in natural light, but more often I shoot on glass, shining through it with an LED flashlight from the back side.

On the floor of the balcony I place an inverted stool with the legs up, put a piece of foam rubber on the legs (anti-slip), and on them is a sheet of glass from a bookshelf. Last year I shot Powershot in standard macro mode. To do this, I cut out the middle part from a small soda bottle in the form of a tube 5.5 cm high. I selected the height so that the camera lens, inserted into the tube, did not reach the bottom 1 centimeter (this is the minimum focusing distance of the A650 in macro mode). I place this cylinder with the camera above the selected snowflake, the lens looks vertically down. You can shoot with a delay of 1-2 seconds after focusing and in a series, so that you remove your hand and there is no movement or shifting . I use a flashlight to illuminate the snowflake from below, from under the glass. The flashlight shines through two layers of white polyethylene from the bag to even out the lighting and prevent harsh glare. There is enough light to shoot in complete darkness at minimum ISO and a short shutter speed.

This year I made a macro attachment with external optics - Helios 44M-5 from Zenit. To do this, I took a board ~30cm long, attached an inverted Helios to it (with the back lens towards the snowflakes, the front towards the camera), marked and drilled a hole in the board for a bolt suitable for the camera’s tripod socket. The camera is placed on the board so that the lens extended to maximum zoom rests on Helios and looks into its front lens. Then it is secured with a screw through the board and an additional metal corner and a piece of wire glued to the board so that it does not move anywhere. I screwed three Zenit narrow extension rings onto the reverse side of Helios, which gave me just the right focal length (2.5-3 centimeters from the lenses). The area where the lenses connect to each other was covered with a black polyethylene sleeve to prevent light and the ingress of snow and drops. The whole structure turned out to be quite strong and stands stably vertically with the lenses down. I simply place it on the glass above the selected snowflake, shoot at maximum optical zoom (6x) instead of macro, the camera’s autofocus works well.

I also tried this design for shooting at an angle on fabric, placing something hard under the far end of the board in order to shoot at the desired angle, removing my hand. The magnification and detail are noticeably better than standard macro, but the depth of field is small even at the narrowest aperture. So you have to take at least 3 frames per snowflake, focus on the center, near and far edges and do a focus stack.

Helios increase

Set

From the life of snowflakes

Yesterday finally turned out to be a good snowy day and I continued my experiments with shooting snowflakes. I filmed in the evening in an extension near the house, in which the air temperature was almost the same as outside. I tried different surfaces and different lighting. I was pleased with the result, although I would have liked a larger increase. Still, my 105 with a close-up +2 filter turned out to be a little too small. Showing it off for a blog is enough, but for photo banks it’s best to glue together a set of several pieces...

While studying this issue online, I unexpectedly learned a lot of interesting things. For example, that snowflakes are formed from steam, bypassing the state of rain; that there are no two identical snowflakes (this is generally on the verge of science fiction); that the largest snowflakes that ever fell were the size of the palm of your hand! Did you know that all snowflakes are strictly hexagonal? And that the creaking of snow in the cold is the sound of hundreds of thousands of breaking crystals of snowflakes?

The growth of a snowflake begins high in the sky when water molecules begin to stick to frozen particles of ice or dust particles in the clouds, thus collecting a strictly symmetrical hexagonal snowflake. While falling, the snowflake continues to grow and after landing its growth stops. In this case, the clarity of the edges is very quickly lost. That's why you need to remove a fallen snowflake as quickly as possible.

Personally, I noticed that when the frost is not very severe, the snowflakes are larger and have a more plate-like shape. At the same time, they fit well on the glass. In severe frost, snowflakes are thinner and more fragile. When falling on glass, many of them simply break or break off their rays.

I tried catching snowflakes on different surfaces. What I liked most were CDs and glass (the main thing is to take them out into the cold first so that the snowflakes don’t melt when they come into contact with a warm surface). CDs are good for shooting during the day, in natural light. I fished on glass at night and shot with bottom or side lighting (if you shine it from below, a black snowflake comes out against a white background, if you shine it from the side, it’s the opposite). You can place multi-colored backgrounds under the glass.

If you need to move a snowflake from one place to another, you can use a soft squirrel brush. When shooting, try not to breathe very close to the snowflake - it will simply melt. I took pictures using a cable release with the mirror raised up. I focused manually, set the aperture from f11 to f22 (the larger the better). I illuminated it from below with an LED flashlight and from the side with a softbox.

What I liked most were the snow shots (header photo). It was as if for the first time I looked into some new world, where snow is not just a white cold mass, but billions of tiny, bizarrely shaped crystals (just like Superman’s planet). I think these photos are quite suitable for microstocks. In my opinion, they are excellent backgrounds for winter themes. Time will show.

Snowflakes under a microscope

During an ordinary snowfall, we do not think that an ordinary snowflake, when studied through a microscope, can present an equally beautiful sight and amaze us with the correctness and complexity of its forms. Here is a small selection of photographs of snowflakes, which will surely convince you that the phenomenon of snowfall, so annoying during the winter, consists of such beauty.

Crystallography is currently actively developing in connection with the needs of electronics and solid state physics - in particular, the properties of semiconductors used in our everyday electronic devices largely depend on the characteristics of the crystals used in them. The next step in studying the properties of the most famous natural crystals - snowflakes - was made by physics professor Kenneth Libbrecht from the California Institute of Technology. In Professor Libbrecht's laboratory, snowflakes are grown artificially.

“I’m trying to figure out the dynamics of crystal formation at the molecular level,” the professor comments. “This is not an easy task, and the ice crystals hide many secrets.”

A snowflake is a complex symmetrical structure consisting of ice crystals collected together. There are many options for “assembly” - so far it has not been possible to find two identical ones among the snowflakes. Research conducted in Libbrecht's laboratory confirms this fact - crystalline structures can be grown artificially or observed in nature. There is even a classification of snowflakes, but, despite the general laws of construction, snowflakes will still be slightly different from each other even in the case of relatively simple structures.

To study the characteristics of snowflakes, Professor Libbrecht began in 2001 to take photographs of naturally formed snowflakes and conduct a comparative classification of them. Structure and appearance snowflakes, as it turned out, depend on where exactly they were observed. According to Libbrecht, the most beautiful and complex snowflakes fall where the climate is harsher - for example, in Alaska, but in New York, where the climate is milder, the structures of snow crystals are much simpler.

In order for the structure of a snowflake to be clearly visible in the photograph (and this is very important for studying its crystal structure), the sample is illuminated in a special way, and the snowflake itself works like a complex lens. Libbrecht developed a special camera with a built-in microscope for “field” research. You need to photograph snowflakes very quickly - when a snowflake descends from the sky, its crystals stop growing and almost immediately begin to lose the clarity of their edges.

The photographs allowed the scientist to identify crystal growth instabilities in snowflakes, which no one had ever succeeded in doing before. “These instabilities are very important for understanding the process of crystal growth, but they are still difficult to explain from a scientific point of view,” the scientist comments.

Even looking at the snowflakes with the naked eye, you can see that none of them is the same as the other. It is estimated that in one cubic meter of snow there are 350 million snowflakes, each of which is unique. There are no pentagonal or heptagonal snowflakes; they all have a strictly hexagonal shape (although Soviet artists were forced to draw five-pointed snowflakes on posters). The designs of snow crystals, full of perfect harmony, have attracted people's interest for many years. Back in 1635, the French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes wrote that snowflakes look like roses, lilies and wheels with six teeth.

The mathematician was especially struck by the “tiny white dot” he found in the middle of the snowflake, as if it were the trace of the leg of a compass that was used to outline its circumference. The great astronomer Johannes Kepler in his treatise “New Year's Gift. On Hexagonal Snowflakes” explained the shape of crystals by the will of God. Japanese scientist Nakaya Ukichiro called snow “a letter from heaven, written in secret hieroglyphs.” He was the first to create a classification of snowflakes. The world's only snowflake museum, located on the island of Hokkaido, is named after Nakai.

The basis for the formation of a snowflake, its tiny core, is ice or foreign dust particles in the clouds. Water molecules, moving chaotically in the form of water vapor, pass through clouds, and along with temperature they lose speed. More and more hexagonal water molecules attach to the growing snowflake in certain places, giving it a distinct shape. At the same time, the convex areas of the snowflake grow faster. Thus, a six-rayed star grows from an initially hexagonal plate.

According to experts in this field, the main feature that determines the shape of a crystal is the strong bond between water molecules, similar to the connection of links in a chain. In addition, due to the different ratio of heat and moisture, the crystals, which in principle should be the same, acquire different shape. Colliding with supercooled small droplets on its way, the snowflake simplifies its shape while maintaining symmetry.

A snowflake fluttering in the air faces two dangers. Firstly, it can melt when it finds itself in warmer air layers. Secondly, during the flight, the snowflake gradually evaporates, increasing in windy weather and with a decrease in the relative humidity of the air.

Any of us knows very well that one snowflake is practically weightless: it is enough to place your palm under the falling snowball. An ordinary snowflake weighs about a milligram (very rarely 2-3 milligrams, although there are exceptions - the largest snowflakes fell on April 30, 1944 in Moscow. Caught in the palm of your hand, they covered almost the entire palm and resembled ostrich feathers).

Billions of “weightless” snowflakes can even affect the speed of the Earth’s rotation. In August alone, during the period of least snow on the Earth, when 8.7% of the entire surface of the planet is covered with snow, the snow cover weighs 7,400 billion tons. And by the end of winter in the northern hemisphere, the mass of seasonal snow reaches 13,500 billion tons. But snow affects the Earth not only by its weight. Snow cover reflects almost 90% of the sun's radiant energy into space. Snow-free land reflects only 10, maximum 20%.

It has long been known that snow is not pure white, but has a slightly bluish tint. In I. Levitan’s painting “March,” the shadows of the trees in the snow are not black, but blue: they are illuminated by the blue spring sky. But snow itself is capable of being painted in Blue colour. To see this coloring, you need to make a narrow hole about a meter deep in clean snow. Light breaking through the snow near the edge of this hole will appear yellowish; deeper it becomes yellowish-green, bluish-greenish and, finally, bright blue. The reflection of the blue sky has nothing to do with it, and to verify this, you can conduct the experiment in cloudy weather or look into the hole through a cardboard tube.

The color of ice depends on its age and can be used to assess its strength. Ocean ice is white in the first year of its life because it is saturated with air bubbles, from the walls of which light is reflected immediately, without having time to be absorbed. In summer, the surface of the ice melts, loses its strength, and under the weight of the new layers lying on top, the air bubbles shrink and disappear completely. The light inside the ice travels a longer path than before and comes out with a bluish-green hue. Blue ice is older, denser and stronger than white “foamy” ice saturated with air. Polar researchers know this and choose reliable blue and green ice floes for their floating bases, research stations and ice airfields.

In 1951, the International Commission on Snow and Ice adopted a classification of solid precipitation. According to it, all snow crystals can be divided into the following groups: stellate dendrites, plates, columns, needles, spatial dendrites, tipped columns and irregular shapes. To these were added three more types of icy precipitation: fine snow pellets, ice pellets and hail.

The symmetrical, non-repeating shapes of snowflakes are highly dependent on temperature. By the way, the snow itself is not only white. In arctic and mountainous regions, pink or even red snow is common. The fact is that algae living between its crystals color entire areas of snow. But there are known cases when snow fell from the sky already colored - blue, green, gray and black. So, on Christmas Day 1969, black snow fell in Sweden. Most likely, this happened due to the fact that the snow, when falling, absorbed soot and industrial pollution from the atmosphere. In any case, laboratory testing of air samples revealed the presence of the insecticide DDT in the black snow.

In 1955, phosphorescent green snow fell near Dana, California. Residents who dared to try its flakes on their tongues soon died, and people who handled the snow developed a rash and severe itching. There was an assumption that such toxic fallout was the result of atomic tests in Nevada. However, the commission investigating this incident rejected this assumption. To this day, the origins of the green flakes remain a mystery.

The creaking of snow is just the noise of crushed crystals. Of course, the human ear cannot perceive the sound of one “broken” snowflake. But the myriads of crushed crystals create a very clear creaking sound. Snow creaks only in cold weather, and the pitch of the creaking changes depending on the air temperature - the stronger the frost, the higher the pitch of the creaking. Scientists made acoustic measurements and found that in the spectrum of snow creaking there are two gentle and not sharply expressed maxima - in the range of 250-400 Hz and 1000-1600 Hz. In most cases, the low-frequency maximum is several decibels higher than the high-frequency maximum. If the air temperature is above minus 6°C, the high-frequency maximum smoothes out and completely disappears. Increasing frost makes ice crystals harder and more fragile. With each step, the ice needles break, and the acoustic spectrum of the squeak shifts to the high frequency region.

Probably, people have always paid attention to these amazing creations of nature; even I. Kepler wrote an elegant treatise " New Year's gift, or about hexagonal snowflakes." The first photographic image of a snowflake was obtained on February 15, 1885 by Wilson Bentley, who devoted his entire life to this matter, earning the nickname "Snowflake Man." He was the first to combine a camera with a microscope. Needless to say, how cumbersome its installation was, but fundamentally little has changed since then. Except that the technology has become more advanced, but professionally snowflakes are also photographed using a combination of a microscope and a camera.

However, snowflakes are not so small that they cannot be photographed without the use of complex and expensive equipment. Industry produces great amount devices that allow macro photography of fairly small objects. Much is done by the hands of lovers of this area of ​​photography. The author of this article, being an optical engineer by profession and an amateur photographer with extensive experience, once - this was three years ago - also decided to try to photograph snowflakes. I'll tell you what came of it.

They write that the largest snowflakes ever observed reach the size of a palm and even a plate. But this is about the same miracle as a meteorite falling. The vast majority lie in the size range 1 - 5 mm. As I became convinced much later, it is in this range that one should look for the most amazing and beautiful specimens. The capabilities of most modern macro lenses allow you to display an object on the camera matrix at a scale of 1:1. It is not difficult to estimate that for the most common matrix of APS-C format SLR cameras, which has a size on the short side of about 15 mm, the scale should be increased at least three times. Canon produces a macro lens that makes it possible to shoot at a scale of up to 1:5 - Canon MP-E 65 f/2.8 1-5x Macro Photo. It would probably be ideal for these purposes, but... I don't have it.

The only macro lens I had was the Tamron SP AF 90 mm F/2.8 Di MACRO 1:1. To begin with, I bought a 5 diopter achromatic lens attachment for him. It made it possible to increase the image scale to approximately 2:1, but at the expense of a noticeable decrease in image sharpness. However, I was able to photograph my first snowflakes and understand where to move next.

In principle, the literature describes many home-made schemes, devices and combinations for macro photography on a scale larger than what is allowed by serial macro lenses. I immediately abandoned the option with adapter (extension) rings, since they are ineffective for a lens with a 90 mm focus. As a result, I settled on a scheme of two lenses: the Tamron I have and the Industar 50-2 lens installed in front of it in an inverted position. Why them? The following considerations support this:

• Both lenses are renowned for their image sharpness.
• Industar's optical design includes only four lenses, so the design is not too overloaded, which would also degrade the quality of the combination.

Why is Industar installed upside down? I won’t go into the intricacies of the theory, but I’ll just say that a lens is usually designed to display objects at infinity. To work in pairs, it is logical to turn it over, then both lenses work “normally”: the first from focus to infinity, the second, as expected, from infinity to focus. This allows the aberrations of the entire system to be reduced to the possible minimum. The second lens, originally intended for macro photography, can also work at close distances without loss of quality (with the tube extended), so it is used for focusing. The magnification of such a system is equal to the ratio of the focal length of the second lens along the beam path to the focal length of the first. Taking into account the extended Tamron tube, this allowed us to expect a scale of about 3:1, which is not bad at all.

Everything expected was confirmed in practice. In addition, fate presented a rather unexpected gift. It is known that correct alignment plays a very important role when assembling any optical system. The slightest discrepancy between the optical axes will lead to very strong distortions in the image. Structurally, Tamron is designed in such a way that its front lens is recessed into a deep conical frame - a kind of lens hood. So it turned out that when installing Industar, its diaphragm ring enters this cone and is thereby centered both in relation to the position of the axis and in relation to its rotation. All that is required is to press Industar to Tamron so that he does not fall out. Since the assembly is used only occasionally, the design must allow for quick installation and removal. As a result, the problem was solved in the simplest, but at the same time reliable way: using a wire clamp with tabs that snap onto the Tamron flange.

So, the issue with optics was resolved. The combination was installed on a CANON 40D and immediately tested on everything that came to hand - from poppy seeds to fruit flies, and showed excellent results. Of course, shooting on such a scale in itself presents considerable difficulties, but I will not dwell on them separately - this is all described in numerous publications on macro photography. We're talking about snowflakes. It is clear that there is no question of any handheld shooting, we need good tripod, allowing you to hold the structure. But what else is needed?

In special manuals on shooting snowflakes (there are some) you can find a complete list necessary equipment, right down to the articles. But I initially went my own way! So let me joke a little. When I am asked what is needed to photograph a snowflake well, I usually answer: “Warm clothes and shoes.” When you get involved in this matter yourself, you will quickly understand that this is no joke. After all, your main enemy will be not only heat, but even your own breath! Snowflakes don't just melt, they quickly sublimate! The classic of the genre, Bentley, realized this very quickly - you need to remove a snowflake in a few minutes. Working virtually with a microscope at subzero temperatures, afraid of breathing in the wrong direction, without gloves, because you have to press buttons and turn screws - believe me, this is an activity for those who are passionate. Perhaps that's why good photos There are no snowflakes on the road, as they say. So - warm clothes and shoes. In Russia, there are no options for felt boots and a down jacket, or you are guaranteed to get a cold.

The second question is where to shoot? It is clear that not in a warm apartment. Bentley used a barn for this, where all his bulky equipment was mounted. Fortunately, modern technology more portable, so I started by simply going outside (I live in Moscow), looking for a secluded place, putting the camera on a tripod and trying to shoot snowflakes on different objects: benches, fences, cars. Not only was the quality more than modest, but I also learned a lot of unexpected things about my fellow citizens. View of a man taking pictures this is unclear, usually arouses not just curiosity, but suspicion - of anything, even terrorism. I'm not even talking about questions like “why?”, “how much does the camera cost?” and “how much do they pay for this?” A hobby should be simple and understandable, but here... Finding a place in Moscow where there would be no people is almost impossible. Going out of town? Here other problems arise: in the cold the battery loses capacity and refuses to work. Fast discharge is also facilitated by the always-on Live View mode, without which it is simply impossible to work. Batteries have to be constantly charged or use a power supply from the mains. Country house? This a good option if it is winter.
Nevertheless, I took the first photographs that pleased me precisely in such “field” Moscow conditions. Very good results I was photographing snowflakes stuck to car windows. However, the following set of problems was also realized. The fact is that snowflakes only appear white because there are many of them and they diffusely reflect light. In fact, these are completely transparent water crystals, that is, pieces of ice, and it is simply impossible to photograph them “head-on” in natural conditions - they are not visible. In natural light, it is best to photograph them at some angle to the plane, but then the outline of the reflection from the back surface of the glass is visible:

The second problem that emerged is that at this scale of the image there are no surfaces that could be considered perfectly smooth and perfectly clean. Any speck of dust or scratch on the glass looks terrifying. After all, they are essentially shooting objects of comparable sizes! Thus, the need to move to studio conditions and additional post-processing of the images was realized.

So, I moved to the balcony. Unfortunately, it faces the south, and the main enemy of all snowmen, heat, has begun to play a more noticeable role here. True, this applied mostly to clear days, but everyone knows that snow only falls in cloudy weather. Then, however, I realized that the most beautiful snowfields are observed when the sky is almost clear, and snowflakes fall as if from nowhere. And the most original ones are when there is heavy snowfall and quite severe frost - below -10 degrees Celsius. But so far I didn’t know this and tried to shoot snowflakes in the same way as some of my colleagues in this hobby describe: catching them on a soft surface such as a mohair scarf or fur. Many amateurs do this, and this method gives relatively good results at a minimum cost, because it allows you to turn the snowflake in the desired angle, and in such “traps” they do not melt or break for a long time, which everyone can observe in winter on fur collars and scarves . But the same thing is annoying: with such magnification, each hair seems like a rope:

Of course, there are image editors and they can work wonders. However, as already said, a snowflake is a transparent crystal, and no editor can correct what is behind it. However, choosing a beautiful, uniform background can significantly improve the image:

I have tried many natural and artificial materials in search of one that could serve as a background that did not require editing. This turned out to be an impossible task, because at such magnification everything looks monstrously rough. The gaze shifts to an area that is unusual for the naked eye. In addition, smooth surfaces have the disadvantage that snowflakes are blown off them by the slightest breeze. In the end, I settled on colored velvet paper and stopped further searching. When shooting at an angle of about 45 degrees, the paper under the snowflake is practically invisible, and the background around it can be filled with the same color as the paper, so that the retouching is almost invisible and the pictures take on a completely “marketable” appearance. Now this kind of shooting is not my main one, but I’m not going to give it up. Firstly, it is in this falling light that we see most snowflakes. Secondly, it is the incident light that makes it possible to see absolutely amazing optical effects deep inside the crystal. And finally, the main surprise that forever made me fall in love with snowflakes is that they are not all flat. Rather, on the contrary - there are many more three-dimensional snowflakes. Why don't we see them? Mainly for a very simple reason. Flat snowflakes so-called. dendritic type can float in the atmosphere for a long time and grow to relatively large sizes. On the contrary, three-dimensional ones do not have time to grow and fall to the ground small, usually no more than 1.5-2 mm. The eye simply does not notice their complexity and beauty. It is in the region of about 1 mm that all the variety of shapes and types of crystals is observed.
The most common crystals are prisms, both flat and in the form of “pencils”. It is from the corners of such “embryos” that those amazing rays of dendrites grow, which we usually consider to be “classical” snowflakes. But they themselves are extraordinarily beautiful with sufficient magnification, reminiscent of medieval fortresses:

Soaring in the atmosphere, these crystals of the simplest form begin to become overgrown with rays, turning into six-rayed stars and dendrites:

But the variety of forms, of course, does not end there. All kinds of “bullets”, “caps with flanges” and sockets made from these “bullets” are very common. One of these rosettes lies on top of a plate with a colored middle (photo above). But the most interesting form is the crystals, which I called “coils” - this is a hexagonal pencil prism, on the ends of which ordinary flat snowflakes, familiar to our eyes, grow:

But that's not all. Generally speaking, a water crystal doesn’t care where it grows. What we see is the result" natural selection", that is, we see only what had a chance to fly to the ground, and not perish in the abyss of the atmosphere. Sometimes something flies that overturns all our everyday ideas about what snowflakes are. The flanges of the “coils” can grow to such sizes , which even in themselves would represent beautiful samples. Additional flat crystals can grow on the “axes” of the coils, and on them, in turn, another one. The resulting structures are more reminiscent of space stations:

Prismatic pencil crystals grow not from one end, but from the middle in two or even three directions, and at different speeds. In this case, the prisms can be coaxial, or they can grow at an angle. Needless to say, all angles in water crystals are multiples of 60 degrees - this is due to the so-called. "hexagonal" crystal structure. But what can you say about such, for example, education:

Although such structures can also be “decomposed into components.” These are prisms with hexagonal flanges, but new prisms grow from the corners of these flanges, parallel to the main axis.
The shape and size of snowflakes largely depend on the weather, and with experience a certain feeling appears that allows you to predict what the Almighty will send this time. Sometimes something prickly falls from the sky, but under the lens it turns out to be needles:

But these needles are not cylindrical at all, but the same prisms, only thin and long. Hollow prisms are often found:

Shooting in natural light is relatively easy, but it still has many disadvantages. The first is, as already said, the need to replace the background, and the eye of an experienced photographer will notice this, which calls into question the “naturalness” of the photo. The second is insufficient depth of field (DOF). Even when closing the aperture to 1:22, when the lens axis is positioned at an angle to the shooting surface, only part of the snowflake is sharp. A strong aperture requires, in turn, long shutter speeds (up to 20 s), and shooting is usually carried out not indoors, in the wind! And finally, lack of light. Needless to remind you that snow only falls in winter, and in winter the days are short and there are many other things to do during the day. At least earn money for new lenses... At the same time, shooting in incident light is, perhaps, the only way to capture three-dimensional crystals of the “reel” type, so I’m not going to give it up and I usually carry all the equipment for such shooting in the winter in the trunk of a car, you never know what opportunity will arise:

All attempts to shoot in incident light with artificial sources were unsuccessful. The thing is that, as has been said more than once, crystals are transparent. I was unable to create something like a cloudy sky. The picture does not so much reflect the beauty of the snowflake as its internal defects:

All this led to the fact that a mini-studio was equipped on the balcony. This was said, of course, loudly, since everything was done “on the knees” using improvised materials, but with a full understanding of the physics of the process. As an optometrist, I am very familiar with microscopy. If we do not take into account complex methods of visualizing transparent objects based on the wave properties of light, such as phase and interference contrast, then all lighting comes down, in essence, to two methods: light and dark field. In a nutshell, the difference between the two is this: with brightfield lighting, the rays from the light source pass through the object and directly into the lens aperture. The observed objects appear dark against a light background. When illuminated using the dark field method, the opposite picture is observed: light objects on a dark background. To achieve this effect, the central part of the beam is shaded, the rays form an annular cone that does not fall into the lens aperture.

The shooting scheme is shown in the following figure:

For lighting, it is better to use only “cold” LED light sources, because you must remember about the main enemy - heat! The radiation from incandescent lamps will quickly melt a snowflake. As a screen, you can use ordinary white paper, preferably thick, like drawing paper - it scatters light more strongly. The glass is installed in such a way that it can be quickly removed and returned to its place. A sheet of glass is placed under the falling snowflakes; when at least one is caught (sometimes this happens instantly) it returns to its place. Fallen snowflakes usually stick firmly to the glass due to electrostatic forces and do not slide down a vertical surface. The camera stands on a tripod, the head of which allows micrometric movements in two planes: up and down and sideways. Focusing is manual using Live View, while first moving the entire camera on a tripod, and then fine-tuning it with the camera lens. Exposure is also entirely manual, using a cable release or delay release to release the shutter. All procedures usually take a few minutes until the edges of the snowflake begin to melt. After shooting, the glass is removed, cleaned with a soft, lint-free cloth, and the process is repeated. The glass must first be kept in the cold.

I usually hold a flashlight in my hand, observing the result of the lighting on the screen. Sometimes I use two flashlights and additional screens. The main thing is to convey the volume of the snowflake, not to make it a flat “drawing”.

The difference between darkfield and brightfield lighting is clearly shown in two photographs of the same snowflake. Each has its own charm:

In a dark field, for example, this huge snowflake, by the standards of the snowy world, was taken - the decoration of the collection:

Of course, pictures downloaded from a flash drive to a computer look completely different from what they do here. No matter how you wipe it, a lot of ice debris and other defects remain on the glass. The photo itself is usually monotonously gray, which is not conducive to artistic perception. Therefore, we also had to work hard on subsequent processing. I will not immerse you in the intricacies of this process - this is the topic of a separate article. There is nothing supernatural there, however. Briefly, the algorithm is as follows. The snowflake is selected along the contour (not very carefully, the selection is inverted and the background is transferred to a new layer. After that, it is filled with the original color. This technology allows you to quickly and radically get rid of all the garbage. After this, the layers are combined and filled with a selected gradient fill in the Color blending mode. As a result, we have this:

My collection currently includes more than 1,700 photos. Of course, not all pictures are as perfect as these, but the collection is growing.

• The gear you need to photograph snowflakes doesn't have to be expensive. It is assumed that you already have a camera that allows you to change the lens or attach a filter.
• You will get qualitatively better results if you use extension rings (also called macro rings). Thanks to them, the lens magnification factor improves and reduces minimum distance focusing, that is, the distance between your lens and the snowflake. Therefore, you will be able to take a closer shot. Make sure you get the correct extension rings for your camera model. Ideally, macro rings should come with a macro lens.
• It will be a little cheaper to use alternative way: You can also photograph snowflakes using a macro lens. Screw the lens onto your existing lens and start shooting. If you have several lenses at your disposal, we recommend trying out all combinations. The only drawback of macro lenses is the image quality, which in most cases is too low for professional photographers.

Photographing snowflakes - here's how it's done

• First, you need to decide on what background you want to capture the snowflake. Dark materials work especially well for this, as they make the snowflakes look better. But also make sure that the background structure is ultimately clearly recognizable.
• If the background is made of some props, you should first cool it so that the snowflakes do not melt when falling on its surface. If it's cold enough outside, you can simply put the props on the windowsill for a while. In other cases, this task can also be completed freezer your refrigerator.
• The most important component of your photograph is the snowflake: it should not be just the first one you come across, but rather fresh. Her rays have not yet melted, so she will look great. To catch one, place your background prop outside while it's snowing.
• Now all you have to do is wait with your camera at the ready for the perfect snowflake to land. If your camera has trouble focusing, simply focus on the snowflake manually. It will be useful to use a tripod or other stable base. Then everything is very simple: try it! Use different perspectives, catch different snowflakes, change camera settings.

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