Photos of snowflakes reveal elusive beauty

By Dru Sefton
Newhouse News Service

	AL SEIB / LOS ANGELES TIMES Ken Libbrecht, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, monitors the growth of a snow crystal. He photographs the flakes and even designs his own in the lab, with patterns of his choosing.
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And there are even fewer photographers who capture those snowflakes.

"You have to have a unique skill set," said Ted Kinsman, who has been doing just that for 10 years. "You have to love photomicroscopy" — photography through a microscope — "and you have to live where it's cold, and be willing to go out into the absolute worst weather."

All that, just to freeze an ice crystal in time.

It's a unique art form that has been around since 1885, when one determined, nature-passionate Vermont farmer, Wilson Bentley, became the first person to take a magnified picture of one snowflake.

"Others were attempting it, but he was the first to be successful," said Ray Miglionico, a board member of the Jericho, Vt., Historical Society, which now displays Bentley's equipment.

Bentley was also the first person to declare that "no two snowflakes are alike," Miglionico added.

His achievements earned him the nickname "Snowflake" Bentley.

"He never ceases to be an inspiration," said Patricia Rasmussen, who took the photographs for a new book, "The Snowflake: Winter's Secret Beauty."

Bentley, who worked from 1885 to 1931, wrote a book and several articles that continue to be the foundation for modern photographers interested in preserving the fleeting, crystalline beauties.

"I read a reprint of an article he wrote in Popular Mechanics a long time ago," said Mark Cassino of Kalamazoo, Mich. "He described his technique. That was my starting point."

That was five years ago. His entire first winter, Cassino, a professional nature photographer, got no usable snowflake shots.

"My first time out, I got incandescent spotlights and set up four. Of course I walk in and drop a snowflake down and it instantly melts. It was one of my Homer Simpson moments," he said.

Incandescent lights are far too hot. Rule No. 1 of snowflake photography: All equipment must be very, very cold.

"Now I use banks of fluorescent lights because they're cooler," Cassino said.

The photographers generally use garages as workspaces — they're cold enough but provide shelter. But even that can get complicated.

"I just got kicked out of the garage because my wife wants to put her car in there," said Kinsman, who lives in Rochester, N.Y., and runs Kinsman Physics Productions, specializing in scientific photography.

Kinsman, like his fellow snowflake artists, has tweaked his equipment along the way. He uses warm hunting mittens, the tops of which may be pulled back so he can use his fingertips. "Microscope mittens, my kids call them," he said.

Cassino uses a special thick piece of glass, about 4 inches square, to catch falling snowflakes. The thickness of the glass keeps the flakes cold.

Kinsman holds a piece of black foam core (plastic foam sandwiched in paper) in a snowstorm and lets it collect flakes for a minute or two. Then he uses a cold needle to lift the flakes to be photographed onto a slide.

The slides must be "super clean," he added, because even tiny specks of dirt are magnified by the microscope.

Rasmussen, who lives in Eagle River, Wis., said the process is "challenging, because everything must be chilled to outside temperature. Even your breath or heat radiating from your body or hands" will melt the minuscule crystals.

But the results are amazing.

"It's the internal structure of the snowflakes that will just blow you away," she said.

The most common snowflakes are star crystals — the "traditional" snowflake. Dendrites are three-dimensional stars that form at colder temperatures. Plates are much plainer, with simple, straight sides; they grow in drier air.

Most snowflakes have six sides but some may have 12, said Kenneth Libbrecht.

Libbrecht, a physics professor, designed and developed Rasmussen's equipment and the two collaborated on "The Snowflake: Winter's Secret Beauty."

Libbrecht has made a career of studying snowflakes — more properly called ice crystals. He even creates "designer snowflakes" in his laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Year-round, right here in sunny California," he said.

His passion for snow photography has led him to take his family on several "snowflake vacations," even visiting the Snow Crystals Museum in Asahikawa, Japan.

"Northern Japan has some of the best snow I've ever seen," Libbrecht said. "Just gorgeous."

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