Posted by mcc on Jan 13 2015 in Snow Crystal Photography, Snowflake Photography
Posted by mcc on Jan 12 2015 in Snow Crystal Photography, Snowflake Photography
A front passed through last night, raising temperatures to about freezing and leaving a few inches of fresh snow. The only whole snowflakes were very small - 2 to 3 mm in diameter. Here is one of the better ones from the evening. For this I used two flashes - one illuminating thorugh the crystal form below, and one shining down on it from above. Click on the image for a larger file.
Posted by mcc on Jan 11 2015 in Snow Crystal Photography, Snowflake Photography
I shot this snow crystal in 2002 on slide film (probably E100S). By today's standards it is a rather poor picture - I still use film a lot but for snow crystals, digital is definitely better. (Lower noise, better edge definition.) But for me this was a watershed image in that it was in this shoot that I figured out how to get consistent results. The setup I used to take this image was totally different than what I used in the years before, and still is at the heart of what I do these days.
I proceeded to shoot snow crystals on E100S and Velvia for the next couple of years before upgrading to a DSLR.
Shooting snow crystals on film was pretty challenging - in the early days (1998 and the few years following) I used manual flash and controlled exposure by controlling the flash to subject distance, which I worked out on in a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet running on a 486 DOS computer outside in snow... It felt high tech at the time! Those were fun days.
I'm posting this now in response to a query regarding the Star of David in snow crystals. If you look at this in a certain way you can see a Star of David embedded in this image. Jon Nelson's excellent article "The Six-fold Nature of Snow" helps clarify why snowflakes form in six sided shapes.
Posted by mcc on Jan 08 2015 in Snow Crystal Photography, Snowflake Photography, Pentax K3
Winter is truly here - at last! It was -8F (-22C) this morning with a howling wind. By mid afternoon snow was falling and for brief intervals some nicely formed snowflakes fell. I spent several hours outside, partially shooting and partially shoveling, and managed to eek out a few good photographs.
This is probably the best of the day (click on the image for a larger view):
The high winds and at times total white out conditions actually were not the best for snow crystal photos. The glass plates that I use to collect the crystals would fill up with dusty snow - the bits and pieces of snowflakes ground up by the raging winds, or fallen snow blown up from the ground. Here is an uncropped shot of a good sized crystal surrounded by the detritus that made up most of what was falling from the sky today:
Lastly - a wee small crystal, one of the last shots for the day:
All images made with a Pentax K-3, DFA 50mm f2.8 macro (reverse mounted on bellows and tubes) and AF360FGZ flash.
Posted by mcc on Jan 07 2015 in Snow Crystal Photography, Snowflake Photography
This year's mild winter finally gave in to a serious cold spell, and along with it a few inches of lake effect snow. I managed to get in about an hour of photographing before the snow deteriorated into a fine dust... Here are the best of this first run of the season (click on the images for larger files):
Posted by mcc on Jan 04 2015 in Landscape Photography, Pictures Of Trees, Midwestern Landscapes, Allegan State Game Area, Allegan Forest
Posted by mcc on Jan 02 2015 in Landscape Photography, Pictures Of Trees, Midwestern Landscapes, Allegan State Game Area, Allegan Forest
Posted by mcc on Dec 28 2014 in Landscape Photography, Pictures Of Trees, Midwestern Landscapes, Michigan, Allegan State Game Area, Allegan Forest
This winter has been mild here, but with one dark gloomy day after another. None were darker than the winter solstice, which was heavily overcast. I visited some remote coners in the Allegan forest, trod over fields where the berry vines seemed to reach up and snag my boots; and skittered around the edges of the most impenetrable corners of the forest. I sought something that did not want to be found, that bristled, threw up obstacles and pinched the trees together to make a barrier- "go away leave me alone."
I brought a film camera and a couple of rolls of Tri-X, pushed to 1600 to compensate for the gloom...
Click on the image for a larger file.
Pentax Mz-S, FA 28-105 f4-5.6, Tri-X @ 1600, HC110 dil B.