High voltage / Gecko's paw

Snowflake macro photo: High voltage, medium size snow crystal with broad arms, resembling duck feet, sparkling on smooth gradient background
Snowflake photo: High voltage

This is medium size snowflake, around 3 millimeters from tip to tip. Captured on glass surface with LED back light, with additional lens Helios 44M-5, December 2014, Moscow. 12 identical RAWs photos, taken as quick series, was averaged for better signal-to-noise ratio.

I like big, broad and clean arms of this crystal, resembling duck feet: they attract my attention instantly, when i saw this snowflake on glass. This crystal looks unusual and interesting even for naked eye.

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

And this is negative variant, created from inverted picture:

Snowflake macro photo: Gecko's paw, real snow crystal with big broad arms, glittering on dark blue background
Snowflake photo: Gecko's paw

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica).
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com.



Also, here is variant with bright crystal, transferred to clear black background. I'm huge fan of Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, pioneer of snowflake photography, and his photos is my constant source of inspiration. He used sharp knife to scrape photographic emulsion from plates outside the crystal, to get beautiful black background. I use small Photoshop brush, instead of knife, to achieve the same effect, and draw by hand precise mask at contour of snow crystal. Creating this mask also require patience and significant amount of time, but can't compare with Wilson Bentley's work with backgrounds.

Snowflake macro photo: High voltage, real snow flake with big broad arms, isolated on clear black background
Snowflake photo: High voltage II

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

And here is slightly different snowflake with broad arms: Ice crown, captured on dark woolen fabric:

Snowflake picture: Ice crown, large snow crystal with very broad arms and unusual pattern in the center, sparkling on dark blue background

Also, in this quick processed series you'll find another large snowflake with similar arms:

Snowflake macro photos: four real snow crystals of different types, glowing on dark grey wool background in diffused light - Alexey Kljatov

December 26, 2014, was amazing day for snowflake photography in Moscow: my snowflake archive from that day contains several hundreds of source photos, and took more than 8 gigabytes of disk space. I've already processed two more snowflakes: Winter technologies and Gardener's dream, and have lots of nice specimens for future work!

Snowflake picture: Winter technologies, small and simple stellar plate snow crystal with glossy relief surface, glittering in cold LED lightSnowflake image: Gardener's dream, big stellar dendrite snow crystal with ornate arms and massive central hexagon, divided by six sectors

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.