Water of Symmetry

To commemorate my first deviation with 100 favorites (now 341! [link] ), I thought I'd upload another one, taken 7 minutes later.

This one isn't quite as big, but somehow I kind of like it better; I just really like the pattern.

The title is incredibly cheesy in my opinion, but it's also kind of like the Muse album, which is really good.

Taken with my old Vivitar MF 100mm f2.8 1:1 macro, with a +5 diopter lens (approximately +5 - my brother sort of made it). All the rest of the technical info is in the EXIF data.

The background is a mohair scarf. Lighting is natural (cloudy day), and I of course used a tripod. I did some minor editing; a bit of levels, and increased the exposure a bit (no cropping).

To get good snow flake pictures, it has to be right around -5ºC - too cold, and they'll look nice, but they'll be tiny, too warm and they'll be nice and big, but they'll just be puff balls, and they may even melt very quickly. Given how little is in focus, even at f9.5, anything other than a flat flake doesn't really work.

I've also concluded that tight weave, and even glass doesn't work as a good background. Because when you're that close up, you just see all the imperfections, and it doesn't look nice. I think the ideal is hairy things, which are meant to be chaotic and "imperfect", and the flakes rest on the hairs nicely as well.

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WOW!! My first DD ! Thanks so much ^dandelgrosso, *Haen9, and everyone who's commented/favorited!

This picture is getting so much attention lately! First it gets in my credit union's (bank) calendar, and they use it for their internal Christmas cards, then I make cards of it, then I enter it in a contest on here, and that gets it a bunch of attention that turns into this DD!

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Since people seemed interested, I've now written a much more detailed guide on taking snow flake pictures; [link]