Hex appeal

This winter in Moscow still too warm for good snowflake shooting, and i continue to dig archives. This is simple hexagonal plate, around 1.5 mm. 11 serial shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Background: dark woolen fabric, natural light (gray clouded sky), external optics Helios 44M-5, march 2013, Moscow. Looks better in original resolution: 1200x900.

More snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

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Don Komarechka. "Sky Crystals: Unraveling the Mysteries of Snowflakes" - snowflake photography book

This book written by my friend from Canada, professional photographer Don Komarechka (Website, Google+, Flickr). This excellent 9x9" size hardcover book, containing 304 pages, along with fantastic snowflake photography, will detail the science, photography techniques and even delve into why we find snowflakes beautiful.

"The book contains all of my snowflake images, and will detail every photographic and editing technique used in their creation – and I encourage you to try it for yourself! The book also contains all of the science and physics of snowflakes that I can share without personally having a degree in molecular dynamics. I’ll keep the explanations easy to understand and graphic, but the science is fascinating and there are still many unanswered questions." -- Don Komarechka.

Don's snowflake photography truly amazing, much better than my efforts. He kindly spent a whole page describing my own snowflake photography approach.

The book can be ordered at Amazon and at Don's website:

skycrystals.ca

Book cover



Don checked quality of print process at all stages.



Two examples of Don's snowflake photography:

(photographs in this post and the book cover (c) Don Komarechka, posted with his permission)

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Snowflakes - printable versions, part II

 >> snowflakes - printable versions, part I

Trying to do something with low resolution of snowflake shots. I enlarged pictures 2x using SmartEdge demo, free resampling program. It works very slow, but produces output with good looking lines and edges and preserves textures clarity. This demo version also have input image restrictions (resolution should not be bigger than 512x512 pixels), so i processed whole pictures part by part and then reassemled.

Then i applied one of these nice freeware canvas textures in "soft light" blending mode with small opacity. This texture masked noise and resampling artifacts, making picture more appealing (i hope) at 1:1 scale view.

(2500x1876)

(2118x1588)

(1600x1200)

All snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals, print versions here: snowflakes for print.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

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Relief

Small snowflake, around 2 millimeters in diameter (companion crystal proportionally smaller). 8 shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Glass background with backlight, additional lens Helios 44M-5, december 2012, Moscow. Better viewed in original resolution: 1200x900.

More snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

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New design of Tumblr page

New beautiful design of page chaoticmind75.tumblr.com is made entirely by Lucy Hartman. I recommend to visit her blogs:

The-grinch-who-stole-vintage
Glam-ifornia

Thank you very much, Lucy!

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Planetary system

Group of small snowflakes, 1-2 millimeters. 8 shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Glass background with backlight, additional lens Helios 44M-5, january 2013, Moscow. Better viewed in original resolution: 2256x1692.

More snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

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Snowflakes: before and after

Especially for people who doubted that i shoot real snowflakes, here is small "before and after" table. Please click at source previews to open full 12 megapixel shots (straight out of camera jpeg's).

source shot	processed picture

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The core

Medium size snowflake, around 4 mm. 8 serial shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Background: dark woolen fabric, natural light (gray clouded sky), external optics Helios 44M-5, january 2013, Moscow. Looks better in original resolution: 1600x1200.

More snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

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Starlight

This is one of most beautiful stellar dendrite crystals that i captured past winter, but it was hard to process because of aligning problems (it shifted and rotated during serial shooting). It's diamater around 5-6 mm.

8 serial shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Background: dark woolen fabric, natural light (gray clouded sky), external optics Helios 44M-5, january 2013, Moscow. Looks better in original resolution: 2048x1536.

More snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

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Orion's belt and sword

... Moscow variant. Strong light pollution of the city causes bright sky at long exposured shots. For this picture i use 67 RAW shots, aligned with Hugin's "align_image_stack" utility and averaged. This allows to get Orion nebula's natural color, but it's size and details still unacceptable. Next time i'll try capturing this nebula with better camera settings and bigger series of source shots. Star colors looks better in original resolution: 1567x2093.

I wrote small post about averaging stack of shots here: english / russian.

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Emerald city

3644 x 2733

Moscow Kremlin, october 2013. For better clarity and colors i averaged multiple shots for each exposure (2 shots for brightest and 8 for other 5 exposures, 42 shots total). I wrote small post about averaging stack of shots: english / russian.

Print available at: deviantart.com, 500px.com.

View full map

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The beauty of imperfection

Large snowflake, 5-6 mm. It have one reduced branch, but i like pattern in its center. 7 serial shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Background: dark woolen fabric, natural light (gray clouded sky), external optics Helios 44M-5, march 2013, Moscow. Looks better in original resolution: 2120x1590.

More snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

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Stellar dendrite

Large snowflake, around 7 mm. 8 shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Glass background with backlight, additional lens Helios 44M-5, january 2013, Moscow.

(2667 x 2000)

Same shot with inverted luminocity and different contrast curve and color gradient.

(2667 x 2000)

More snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

Read More

Snowflakes - printable versions, part I

 >> snowflakes - printable versions, part II

Trying to do something with low resolution of snowflake shots. I enlarged pictures 2x using SmartEdge demo, free resampling program. It works very slow, but produces output with good looking lines and edges and preserves textures clarity. This demo version also have input image restrictions (resolution should not be bigger than 512x512 pixels), so i processed whole pictures part by part and then reassemled.

Then i applied one of these nice freeware canvas textures in "soft light" blending mode with small opacity. This texture masked noise and resampling artifacts, making picture more appealing (i hope) at 1:1 scale view.

(1600x1200)

(2048x1536)

(2294x1720)

(2048x1536)

(4096x3072)

All snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals, print versions here: snowflakes for print.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

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Blueprint

Looks better in original resolution: 903x677.

More snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

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Cloud wheel

Another crystal of my favourite snowflake type - simple hexagonal plates. I like unusual pattern near the edges. This crystal was around 1,5 mm in diameter. 8 shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Glass background with backlight, additional lens Helios 44M-5, january 2013, Moscow. Looks better in original resolution: 1024x768.

More snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

Read More

Snow flower

Small snowflake, around 2 mm in diameter. 8 shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Glass background with backlight, artifical colors, additional lens Helios 44M-5, january 2013, Moscow.Looks better in original resolution: 1147x860.

More snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

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Shine

Medium size snowflake, around 4 mm. 8 serial shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Background: dark woolen fabric, natural light (clouded sky), external optics Helios 44M-5, march 2013, Moscow. Looks better in original resolution: 2048x1536.

This snowflake as desktop wallpaper in wallpapers section.

More snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

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Fractal supper

(2048 x 1536)

I do this lightpainting picture just for fun. First time i see cabbage-head in perfect fractal form. This structure - big cone with spiral pattern of smaller cones on it's surface - repeated at least at three levels, maybe even more, but my magnifying glass don't show this clearly.

I wrote small post about lightpainting technique here: english / russian.

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Autumn road

1536 x 2048

Kuzminki park, Moscow, september 2012. 3 exposures (+2, 0, -2 EV).

Print available at: deviantart.com, 500px.com.

View full map

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Yellow store

2998 x 3723

Teply Stan, Moscow, 5 exposures (-4, -2, 0, +2, +4 EV).

Print available at: deviantart.com, 500px.com.

View full map

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Ice rainbow 2

Another rainbow snowflake from january 2013. In center of this crystal can be seen coloured areas, caused by thin film optical interference effect (thanks to Don Komarechka!). 9 RAWs averaged. Looks better in original resolution (1600x1200).

More snowflakes in set snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.


This is cropped central region of this crystal after averaging, with 500% magnification and without any additional processing (no sharpening, color altering or any contrast curves):

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