Snowflakes 101 – A Beginner’s Guides to Capturing Snowflakes

This Tech Session was presented on January 21, 2021 by Kersti Meema. The following is a summary of what was presented and is intended to get you started on photographing snowflakes. 

What you need:

• Camera with macro lens (or lens with macro capability)
• Remote trigger
• Tripod
• Glass plate (the glass from an old picture frame works well – cover edges in duct tape)
• Falling snow! Temperatures of -8 ^oC to -5^oC work well.
• Extension tubes
• Sharpening software – I used Topaz Sharpening AI

How to:

• Set glass plate outside to cool down
• Find a sheltered spot – porch, garage with door open – with enough ambient light
• Set up glass plate between two supports – level as best you can
• Consider the background – black fabric more than 50 cm from glass
• Set up camera (with remote trigger and extension tubes if you have them) on tripod over the glass plate
• Capture snowflakes on glass plate and place on support
• Focus and shoot

Tips:

• Settings for image without extension tubes (suggested just to get you started)
  • F-stop f/4
  • Exposure time 1/10 sec
  • ISO 100
  • Focal length 50 mm – macro lens
• Without extension tubes you will need to crop heavily around an individual snowflake
• Sharpen with software
• Using mirror lockup will help reduce shake on these very magnified images
• When using extension tubes, try focus stacking since your set-up is likely not to be 100% perfectly level. This can be done with as few as 3 images. Then sharpen the final image.

LET IT SNOW!

I was delighted to learn that an article with photographs that I submitted to the magazine Nature Photographer was accepted and published in the Summer/Early Autumn issue. The article entitled “Going on a Moose Safari” describes my adventures photographing moose in Algonquin Park in June of 2018 and includes four of my images from that weekend.

This year at “Spectra”, part of the annual CONTACT photography festival, I presented a series of four resin cast images mounted on wood panels. The show, which ran between November 11 – 22 at Gallery 1313 on Queen Street West, featured the work of 14 artists who are members of the Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography. 

In a time when things are deliberately overexposed, I find myself continuously returning to those aspects that are often hidden, my images making visible what is overlooked. Throughout this series, I invite the viewer to move into a space of gentle energy. As almost everything reflects light, I use photographic processes to reveal an ethereal but lively essence of momentary dispersions of light on various surfaces. They are all different and the living shapes created by the reflections produce a unique experience that requires one to look more closely and deeply.