The Snowflake Man

A short documentary film about Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, pioneer of snowflake photography. I've seen his wonderful photos before, but here you'll see his setup, combined from microscope and camera, and Snowflake Man at work:

Direct link on YouTube

Here you'll find all snowflake videos.

NowThis: Amazing macro photographs of snowflakes

Nice video clip by NowThis News features my snowflake photos:

Amazing Macro Photographs of Snowflakes

These up-close photos of snowflakes are incredibly fascinating

Posted by NowThis 14 January 2017 г.

And here is four similar videos - by The LAD Bible, MinuteBuzz, Curioctopus.it and Enjoy.Science:

Amazing snowflakes

These snowflakes are awesome

Posted by The LAD Bible 15 January 2017 г.

Il filme des flocons de neige en gros plan pour un résultat in...

Tout un univers magique et onirique qui se dévoile 😮

Posted by minutebuzz 17 January 2017 г.

La spettacolare struttura dei fiocchi di neve posti sotto la "...

Fotografare un fiocco di neve in modo così nitido non è per niente semplice, ma questo fotografo ha sviluppato una tecnica personale ;-)
Scopri di più sulla tecnica di Alexey Kliatov: http://bit.ly/2jdsjMb

Posted by Curioctopus.it 21 January 2017 г.

Magnified snowflakes

Now you can marvel at their beauty without fearing lest they melt.
via Alexey Kljatov, 500px.com/chaoticmind75

Posted by Smart is the New Sexy 17 January 2017 г.

Here you'll find all snowflake videos.

Snowflake draft #3

Here is two snowflakes, quickly processed for Snowflake draft series. Both photos was taken March 19, 2013 - quite late for serious snowflake photography, but that day was cold, and i have nice catch of interesting snow crystals without visible melting:

Snowflake photo: Draft_3-1 (2400 x 1800)

Prints of this spiky cluster available at: Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

I like this cluster of three stellar dendrites with thin and sharp arms, resembling blades. However, it was hard to process: that cluster was captured from non-ideal angle, so it slightly out of focus at top and bottom edges. Also, it lays high over background, touching single wool fibers in one or two points - this visually separates snow crystal from surrounding background and looks nice, but this unstable construction shifts and rotates from every light blow of the wind. I've spent lots of time, until achieved good alignment of all 8 source shots for averaging process.

Here you'll find similar flat cluster with three snowflakes, captured on glass with LED back lighting:

This single stellar dendrite crystal have big central hexagon with beautiful inner structure, though it's six arms is not perfectly symmetrical, if we look closely at their side branches:

Snowflake photo: Draft_3-2 (2048 x 1536)

Prints available at: Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

Here is very first pack of draft snowflakes - catch of December 18, 2015:

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.

Snowflake flash drives from USB Memory Direct

An American company USB Memory Direct specializes in producing USB flash drives with custom shape, color and print on drive's surface, and has been a leader in the industry for over fourteen years. They can make flash drive case from many materials: plastic, metal, silicone, rubber, and even wood and leather. The company offers wide range of drive shapes and designs - more than 50, and will even make exclusive shape, based on drawing or sketch that you'll provide them!

For my order, i instantly selected these twist drives: this nice hexagonal shape is great for snowflake design. For logo background, i've picked silhouette of big snowflake Silverware / Neon.

The result looks even better than i expected. I'm impressed by drives exclusive look:

Snowflake flash drive: angle 1

Flash drives in my order already formatted in FAT32 file system and instantly ready to work.

I like print quality very much: logo printed directly on drive case, it's glossy, have good resolution, contrast and colors, and smooth blue/white gradient in the middle of logo looks perfectly even at magnified photo:

Snowflake flash drive: angle 2

I'm very pleased by drive pack from USB Memory Direct, and certainly will make new orders in the future! I recommend this company for anyone who need custom flash drives with exclusive look and feel.

Pack of 25 custom flash drives by USB Memory direct

Snowflake vectors 2

I've already created two vector snowflake images, trying to make them very similar to original photos. This time i tried different approach: my goal is creating simplified image in just two colors, which represent only most significant details of real snow crystal, traced to smooth curves.

As source images i've picked again large and complex crystal Gardener's dream and small Forget-me-not.

Vector files: EPS and SVG formats, pre-rendered PNG: 8000 x 8000

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

This version shows only highlights of snow crystal's glossy surface on black background:

Vector files: EPS and SVG formats, pre-rendered PNG: 8000 x 8000

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

Imho, these vectors looks quite nice on beautiful girls from RedBubble:

Processing workflow for these pictures is simple: i enlarged each snowflake about 4x times and applied Photoshop filter Image -> Adjustments -> Threshold - it allow to choose level of brightness, which divide picture to black and white pixels: any pixel that darker-than-selected level become black, and any that brighter-than-selected level become white. Resulting picture may look quite nice, but contain very jagged and unpleasant lines and edges, if we look closely. This is not problem, however, because vector tracer will convert every pixelated line to nice smooth curve. Also, i applied second filter: Artistic -> Cutout, which does exactly what i need: it simplifies picture and get rid of all small and insignificant image details. After adjusting filter sliders, picture are ready to vectorize.

This time i used nice, fast and free online service Autotracer.org. I applied these settings: number of colors = 2 and in advanced settings, smoothing="smoother". Resulting curves looks good in high resolutions.

Similar vector version for this small and simple crystal:

Vector files: EPS and SVG formats, pre-rendered PNG: 8000 x 8000

Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com.

Vector files: EPS and SVG formats, pre-rendered PNG: 8000 x 8000

Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com.

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.

Capped column (reworked)

I've already processed this unusual snowflake three years ago, but recently pull it out of archive and decided to fully re-process. I'm happy to see that my processing workflow improved over time: new version have slightly better details, colors and contrast. Also, i keep lots of empty space around crystal in all directions, and created special variant with isolated snowflake on transparent background: all this is needed for quality prints on various products. I glad that such tiny snow crystal (slightly bigger than 1 millimeter on longer axis) now available in full range of print variations.

Snowflake photo: Capped column, new variant (1200 x 900)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

8 RAW photos was taken as quick series, aligned and averaged to improve signal / noise ratio of this picture.

Here you can see differences between old and new processing:

Old vs new capped column pictures

And here you'll find another, even more strange variant of capped column - with thin column, and caps of different shape and size:

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.

Stars in my pocket like grains of sand

Snowflake photo: Stars in my pocket like grains of sand (2560 x 1920)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

I borrow this title from sci-fi book, written by amazing author Samuel R. Delany.

This is tiny cluster of two stellar dendrite snowflakes: large and medium size. It was flat, and perfectly fits in focus without focus stacking technique. I like star shapes and elegant structure of this pair, and their sharp edges, without any traces of melting.

7 identical RAW photos was taken as fast series, aligned and averaged to improve SNR (signal/noise ratio) of this picture. I've used only diffused light of cloudy sky, dark grey wool fabric as background; and macro setup, containing Canon Powershot A650is and lens Helios 44, reversely mounted in front of camera as additional magnifier.

Here is slightly different version: without my usual blue color toning. As you can see, completely grey wool fabric shows color variances at high magnification:

Snowflake photo: Stars in my pocket like grains of sand, grey variant (2560 x 1920)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

And this is version with blur background. I've done it easily, because already had precise isolation mask, created at early processing stage:

Snowflake photo: Stars in my pocket like grains of sand, blur variant (2000 x 2000)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

Here is another stellar dendrite snowflake, also taken at dark textured backdrop, and processed in same technique:

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.

Collection of fernlike dendrite snowflakes

Fernlike dendrites are common, large and traditional-looking snowflakes. In fact, snow crystals of this type are so big, that many of them can be seen in all details with naked eye, without any magnification tools (especially at contrast background like black wool mitten). I see and photograph huge specimens of this type at regular basis - up to 10 millimeters in size and even bigger! These snowflakes have very small center, and long, complex and massive arms: with many side branches, and lots of icy "petals" and "leaves" on them. These crystals are fragile, and often broke in air, when collide with neighbor snowflakes. In my photo archive, i keep lots of these wonderful crystals, but processing them is hard task: my workflow requires drawing precise mask, which isolates snowflake from background (to be able processing crystal and background separately), and drawing good mask for their complex shape is not easy work.

Here is already processed snowflakes. When i'll process new crystals of this type, i will immediately add here links to them, too. Just click on photos you like, and they will open as full resolution versions:

Here you'll find similar collection with small and simple hexagonal plate snowflakes:

If you want to see all of my snowflake photos, you may 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.

Sunflower

Snowflake photo: Sunflower (1600 x 1200)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

This is very interesting snowflake: with big and flat central hexagon (almost without any features), relief outer rim and arms with many ridges - quite unusual combination. This is medium size snow crystal, just 3 millimeters from tip to tip; but that large and empty center was easily noticeable even with naked eye, and it instantly attract my attention. This snowflake remind me sunflower: with short, broad icy "petals" and inner "lines of seeds".

8 identical RAW photos, taken as quick series, was averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio of this picture. Snowflake was captured on glass background with LED back light, with additional lens Helios 44M-5, in Moscow, Russia.

And this is version in alternate colors:

Snowflake photo: Sunflower golden (1600 x 1200)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

And here is computer generated pencil drawing of this snowflake, done in wonderful free program FotoSketcher:

Snowflake pencil drawing: Sunflower (1280 x 960)

Also, this crystal available as Ultra HD wallpaper:

I already processed two more snowflakes from same amazing snowfall of January 3, 2016: Winter fortress and Serenity:

And here is another snowflake from previous winter: Dusty mirror - it slightly remind me new one: this crystal also have big and flat central hexagon, where only visible feature is pattern of tiny dots, relief outer rim and short arms with nice details:

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.

Harlequin snowflakes

For these two pictures, i've used blending mode difference again, for subtracting original background (smooth blue / gray gradient) and revealing snowflake with all details on pure black. This time, i've divided picture by two halfs, and replaced one with part of original photo; and picked two small hexagonal plate crystals as sources:

Snowflake picture: Harlequin (1024 x 768)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.

Snowflake picture: Harlequin II (1200 x 900)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.

Previously, i've applied same technique on two medium size snowflakes and two large and complex fernlike dendrites.

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.

Neon snowflakes

This is my next effort to completely change look and feel of snowflake photos, captured on glass surface. I already applied this technique to two large fernlike dendrites, and now it's time for two smaller snow crystals with relatively simple structure: High voltage and Ice relief:

Snowflake picture: High voltage III (1600 x 1200)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

Snowflake picture: Ice relief III (1600 x 1200)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

This processing is really simple, though it also requires some time. I use difference blending mode to separate snowflake details from background (it looks like subtracting clean background from snowflake). Here is original photos:

I like difference blending very much: often it can be used to create very interesting effects and colors. You can see another example of it's abilities: Mirror's edge, picture of snowflake in vivid colors, caused by blending two variants of same crystal, processed in different colors:

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.

Artist website is ready

Artist website alexey-kljatov.pixels.com is ready and fully functional:

Every purchase includes a money-back guarantee. Products delivered to any destination in the world.

Some HDR photos is not uploaded yet, but my best snowflake, macro and still life pictures are here.

Website powered by FineArtAmerica, one of the largest, most-respected giclee printing companies in the world with over 40 years of experience producing museum-quality prints. All prints are produced on state-of-the-art, professional-grade Epson printers. Site have exactly same content, and almost the same functionality as it's mirrors at Pixels.com and FineArtAmerica.com, but have some important advantages.

It's fast. In my tests, main page loads twice as fast as same page on Pixels.com profile. Also, website have nice customization abilities, and it's look and feel can be changed dramatically. For this moment, however, i've selected default color scheme, but spent many time on photo and text content.

Website, also as FineArtAmerica.com and Pixels.com, offers money-back guarantee for every purchase.

This website will be my main print-on-demand place, though some additional products also available at RedBubble.com.

If anyone interested, i glad to offer one-month 100% discount. That not means free prints, however: my commission will be zero, but discount does not apply to manufacturer's materials, print process and delivery. Here is it, 6-symbol code: LSVXZY. On final stage of ordering any product, there is special field for discount codes:

Snowflake draft #2

This is quick update of Snowflake draft series, before i'll continue digging archives from recent winter. This photo was taken January 18, 2013: very first winter when i start to use lens Helios 44 as additional magnifier, and assembled my current snowflake macro setup. I needed this picture of snowflake for side project, and spent three hours to process it from averaged stack of 7 serial JPEG sources.

Snowflake photo: Draft_2-1 (3200 x 2400)

This is pair of big stellar dendrite snow crystals, fallen together at my black woolen backdrop. Interesting thing with that couple is that far crystal have almost the same size, shape and structure as near one, and it even sit in wool fibers at same angle! It seems that both snowflakes fall and grow in close proximity to each other, and similar air conditions and changes in temperature and humidity around them caused crystals to grow with similar shape. If you look closely at far crystal, you'll notice some differences in details of arms.

Prints of this double flake available at: Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

Crop of snowflake center in full size

And this is version in real colors, without my usual blue color toning. Almost all of my source photos with dark grey woolen background have similar, almost monochromatic grey colors, because in most cases the only light source is diffused light from cloudy winter sky:

Snowflake photo: Draft_2-2 (3200 x 2400)

Snowflakes is the crystals of clear transparent ice, and they can take any color, depending of light source and surrounding environment (this gives us a fantastic opportunity to experiment with lighting and backgrounds). Although, when looking from particular angles, snow crystals become white and semi-transparent, or almost opaque (i think, this is because of light scattering: light rays can bounce inside of snow crystal, reflecting from numerous facets). Also, in some cases snowflakes can show us rainbow colors, which produced by prismatic features inside crystals, and even more interesting phenomenon: rainbow colors, created by thin film interference effect (it explained in Wikipedia; this effect also creates rainbow colors in soap bubbles). In relation to the snowflakes, this effect can be seen rarely: it needs interleaved and very thin layers of ice and air inside snow crystal. Here you can see several examples of rainbow snowflakes, that i've encounter during recent winters.

Prints of grey version also available at: Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, 500px.com.

Here is next pack of draft snowflakes - catch of March 19, 2013:

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.

Snowflake draft #1

Decided to start additional series of snowflake photos: Snowflake draft, in parallel with fully processed snow crystals. This will be small packs of snowflake photos, processed with simplified and more quick workflow.

My main processing workflow for snowflake photography requires lots of time and effort. I really like this work and never tired of it, because careful processing of aligned and averaged RAW stack certainly worth all efforts: resulting image looks way better than in-camera source photos. But that means that i can show you only small fraction of all nice and interesting snowflakes i capture every winter. All of my snow crystals stored in very big archive as series of RAW + JPEG photos, waiting for processing; though i suspect that most of these snowflakes will never be released - only because i can't find enough time to process them all!

So, here is first post in draft series. For these photos, i'll do faster processing: averaging of JPEG stacks with simplified post-processing. I will show only interesting and/or beautiful crystals (at my taste), but, to keep some intrigue, will not show best of the best snowflakes, until they processed with full workflow. :)

These crystals was captured 18 December 2015. This was second day of my snowflake photography this winter, and first day that brings me some nice specimens:

Snowflake photo: Draft_1-1 (2453 x 1840)

This large snow crystal resembles duck feet or gecko's paw. Snowflakes of this type, if they are big enough, can be easily spot by naked eye and draws attention, thanks to their unusual and beautiful shape with thin, broad and very clean arms. Here is details of one arm without re-scaling. I like how background distorted by transparent details on crystal surface:

I've already processed two snow crystals of this type: High voltage / Gecko's paw (normal and negative processing of same photo, taken on glass surface) and Ice crown - large snowflake on dark woolen fabric:

Next snowflake is very big 12-sided crystal (quite rare finding), with complex structure and slight rime on surface:

Snowflake photo: Draft_1-2 (2901 x 2176)

Here is crop of it's center in 1:1 scale. Can you find tiny hollow column snowflake on it?

Snowflakes with twelve arms is one of my favorites (along with hexagonal plates and triangular snow crystals). Here is two more 12-sided crystals: Wheel of time and Twelve months (i've captured and processed them in 2014).

Next crystal is stellar dendrite, but almost completely covered with rime. Usually, i do not like such crystals: often they carry so much rime, so they reminds pillow, almost completely opaque and even their shape barely seen. However, small amount of rime sometimes look cute: snowflake can remind massive brooch, covered by lots of tiny diamonds:

Snowflake photo: Draft_1-3 (2400 x 1800)

And finally, small crystal of capped column type. Although, it is bigger than common capped columns, and have wide caps with different size. You can see it's thin column through transparent cap:

Snowflake photo: Draft_1-4 (1752 x 1314)

Here you'll see "standard" capped column:

These snowflakes was the best from December 18. In total, 129 photos was captured; they took 1,5 Gb in archive after packing RAWs with archiver 7-Zip (after tests, i choosed PPMd compression method and model order=3 - it gives best compression ratio for my 10bit RAW/DNG files, and also good speed).

Here is next snowflake in draft series, captured January 18, 2013:

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.