Sunflower

Snowflake macro photo: Sunflower, unusual snow crystal with large, flat and empty central hexagon, relief outer rim and short arms with ridges, sparkling on bright blue-grey gradient background
Snowflake picture: Sunflower. Full size: 1600 x 1200 pixels

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.

Prints available at Artist website, RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use – at Shutterstock.com, Marketplace.500px.com.

This is version in alternate colors:

Snowflake image: Sunflower golden, real snow crystal with big and flat center and six relief arms with ridges, glittering on smooth blue-yellow background
Snowflake picture: Sunflower (golden). Full size: 1600 x 1200 pixels

Prints available at Artist website, RedBubble.com.
Licenses for commercial use – at Shutterstock.com, Marketplace.500px.com.

Here you can see differences between straight out of camera photo and averaged stack of multiple RAW files with post-processing:

Snowflake GIF animation, 3 frames: straight out of camera JPEG, averaged stack of 8 RAWs with postprocessing and final picture

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:

Closeup snowflake picture: Dusty mirror, real snow crystal with turtle-like shape and dense ring pattern with hundreds of tiny dots around center

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.


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