The center of this crystal has very symmetrical and geometrically beautiful patterns – growth so stable that side-branches sprouted at exactly the same point and grew at the same rate to fuse together. Beyond that point, however…. a different story is told.
Signs of similar environments can be seen in the similarities within the branches (including one or two larger sets of side-branches further out), but each of the six branches of this snowflake are distinctly unique. Not only is every snowflake unique, but it’s rare (if not also impossible) to find two branches of the same snowflake to be exactly alike.
Even still, there is plenty of beauty to behold in a snowflake such as this.
Larger snowflakes are sometimes easier to photograph and edit; the lower magnification allows me to locate the snowflake more quickly in the viewfinder, and holding the camera stable during the shooting process makes for stronger alignment of the needed frames for focus stacking. This in turn speeds up the editing process, with fewer perspective issues encountered between frames. It still takes roughly the same amount of time (four hours), but there is far less guess-work involved.
Want to know the entire editing process to create your own winter snowflake images like this? Check out Sky Crystals ( www.skycrystals.ca/ ) which details the entire process over nearly a hundred pages (with an equal number of pages dedicated to the science of these crystals, too!). Probably too late to order a copy in time for Christmas, but there is still plenty of winter left – it’s just about to officially start! :)
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