My journey to the world of snowflakes started about 15 years ago and began with my love for microscopes. Upon showing images from the microscope to friends they had little interest in all the wonderful biology, but were fascinated by the images of snowflakes. There had been little done in this field since Bentley fist took snowflake images from his barn in the hills of Vermont approximately 100 years ago.

I live and work in one of the snowiest cities in the United States. Rochester N.Y. is situated between Buffalo and Syracuse and it is often a coin toss which city gets the most snow. Unfortunately, our snow is not the kind of snow that graces the covers of Christmas cards, but is a crystalline mess called lake effect snow. This type of snow is created when very cold air travels across the warm waters of the great lakes and picks up moisture. The moisture is then dumped as snow over the land. This type of snow is very quickly growing, so large nice crystals just do not have time to form. We are lucky if we get three snowfalls a season that contain large fern like crystals. On average, Rochester gets about 92 inches of snow a year.

In the world of the study of snow an individual single crystal is called a snow crystal, when groups of crystals are called snowflakes.

The technique for photographing a single snow crystal is a bit difficult. I keep a snow shed in my backyard that keeps the microscopes and different light sources out of the weather but still cold. I only photograph when the temperature is below 25F. Above 25 F, the heat radiated by your body can melt the crystal. I keep a sheet of black cardboard inside my front door to check the falling snow for good crystal development. I can tell the snow type by looking at the terminal velocity and the reflections of lights on the crystals. If snow falling on the black cardboard tells me conditions are good, I put on all my winter jackets and boots and take the digital camera to the snow shed. The individual crystals fall on a sheet of black paper and good crystals are picked up with a pin and transfered to a microscope slide. This might seem like an impossible task, but with practice, I can go through a dozen crystals in a few minutes. I have to work fast. The snow crystal will often evaporate and change size and structure while it is under the microscope.

A relatively rare fern-like stellar dendrite snow crystal photographed in Rochester NY.

A true snowflake is a group of snow crystals. Groups like this are very common here in upstate New York.

One example of snow needles. One possible type of lake effect snow.

Many times there are “freak snow crystals” – here is one. Not exactly symmetrical.

Close-up of the center of a nice stellar dendrite snow crystal.

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This post was written by photographer Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis.

Fluids are a constant source of inspiration for high speed photography. Water and milk are two of the common liquids around us every day, but still their complex behavior is a source of wonder. Fluid scientists are still pioneering some of the basic equations that are responsible for the complex motion of fluids. In these pictures a drop of liquid is falling into a container of liquid. The first falling drop creates a recoil splash that shoots up out of the container. Just when the recoil droplet gets to the top of its motion a second falling droplet collides. The timing often happens by chance when pouring liquids, but here it is controlled with a microprocessor so each collision can be studied and photographed in detail. The motion is once again frozen in time with the help of a 1/60,000th of a second flash.

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This post was written by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis.

The human brain has an uncanny ability to see the human form in the most unlikely places. Religious icons in toast and faces in the clouds are but a few examples. Here it is droplets of water colliding with each other. I call the shot above “Man and Woman.” This tendency to create order out of chaos never stops to amaze me. I will leave it to the reader to see what they can find in the image below.

These images were taken with a Cognisys Inc. water drip valve and microprocessor camera controller. The flash is from two off axis strobes with a duration of 1/60,000th of a second. More drops hitting drops in the next post.

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This post was written by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis

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This post was written by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis.

This image was provided by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis.

With many photo sessions once the photography is done we will stand around looking at all the equipment set up and wonder what else we can do with it before the set has to be disassembled. At this point someone wondered what would happen if the paint ball were to hit an egg?

The results above show that the paint ball hits at such a speed as to break, then force the yolk out the other side before moving through the rest of the shell. Shots like this create a tremendous mess and parts of the lab will have pinhead specks of pink paint ball dye and dried egg yolk for years to come. I hope this image excites the minds of a few readers. I always welcome ideas, even though it is often years before I get around to doing a certain project.

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This post was written by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis.

I have photographed jugglers several times in the past for physics text books. I have been impressed with the level of skill some jugglers can obtain. It is difficult enough to juggle three balls, four is more difficult, and fire is a another story. When objects move in a circle they can undergo some fairly complicated motions. What would be the best way to show this motion in a still image?


























In this case the camera is panned by the juggler at a constant rate on a computer controlled pan head. When the juggler is about the center of the frame a flash is set off. The image shows both the flip the club does at the top of the throw and the uneven motion of the clubs as the juggler makes corrections to his throw as the motion is kept under control. This juggler is has been practicing for three years and is currently only 14 years old!

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This post was written by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis.

I often get asked to photograph odd things, more times than not the project changes when an art director decides to take a different path for an article. Such requests are a great source of ideas.

In this case a request was for triboluminescence. This is where my background in physics and optics is a big help. Triboluminescence is an optical phenomenon in which light is generated when asymmetrical crystalline bonds in a material are broken when that material is crushed. There are a number of materials that do this including quartz, sugar and even ice. In this image I am hitting a wintergreen lifesaver candy fairly hard with a hammer. This is clearly visible to the human eye, but very difficult to capture with a camera. To get enough light 10 candies had to be smashed in the same location. The outline of the hammer and candy is a double exposure from a separate frame. This image conveys what you would see if you did this yourself- I hope some of the readers give it a try. The lifesavers also give off light as they are dissolved in solution – such as saliva in your mouth. This is a good excuse for you and a friend to go in a dark room and eat lifesavers. If you do not have a handy assistant for this experiment – use a mirror and look at your own mouth as you eat a wintergreen lifesaver. There is still a lot that is unknown about the physics of triboluminescence. As far a photographing the process in ice – that is top of my to-do-list.

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This post was written by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis