Photographing Snowflakes

A cold day. Snowflakes drift into view intermittently with a slower frequency, almost, than falling stars in the night sky. The picturesque crystals hit the ground here and there, landing on the concrete of the driveway, on the waxy surface of a fallen leaf, glittering specks of dust.

While walking the dog I began to notice the isolated flakes, placed in different places as if on display. So after we (the dog and I) returned to the house, I took the camera and flash and extension tube and went back outside in search of snowflakes to photograph.

Strangely, I found myself holding my breath as I leaned close to the ground, positioning the camera lens and flash, concerned that the warmth of exhaled air might melt the subject flake. Photographing a flake on one small green leaf, a second flake appeared in the image though it remained nearly invisible to the eye, like a watermark on a fine sheet of paper. This ghost snowflake must have fallen sometime earlier, its dendritic arms losing molecules of water through sublimation until an incredibly thin structure of ice remained.

These microscopic, six-legged creatures of ice are perhaps even more ephemeral than any insect, subject to transformations beyond the material metamorphoses of butterflies and dragonflies---think for instance of the social migrations that form rivers and clouds, the deep collective power of the oceans. And yet, despite their molecular fragility, their potential to shape-shift and vanish, snowflake populations will arrive and persist these next months, adding their reflective whiteness to winter.

Posted on December 13, 2017 03:02 AM by scottking