Snowflake photographer Alexey Kljatov

Snowflake photographer Alexey Kljatov.
First of all, almost all snowflakes are unique. Moscow based photographer Alexey Kljatov uses homemade tools for fixing stunning closeups of snowflakes. Of course, the definition ‘homemade tools’ is slightly exaggerated, but still, the idea is created by Alexey. Alexey Kljatov takes pictures of snowflakes right on his balcony. As components of the installation, he uses his camera Canon A650, lens Helios 44M -5 from the old brand of Soviet camera ‘Zenith’, a little scotch, a piece of glass and wooden bar. Snowflakes turn out to look really beautiful, with ideal geometrical shapes. It’s amazing, but there are no two identical snowflakes.

Snowflakes by Russian photographer Alexey Kljatov

Though snowflakes form various intricate shapes, it is very unlikely for any two randomly selected snowflakes to appear exactly alike, due to the many changes in temperature and humidity, which the crystal experiences during its fall onto earth. Initial attempts to find identical snowflakes by photographing thousands of them with a microscope from 1885 onward made Wilson Alwyn Bentley. He found the wide variety of snowflakes, that we know about today. In 1988, Nancy Knight was documenting snowflakes for the National Center for Atmospheric Research and found two identical snowflakes of the hollow column type.

A non-aggregated snowflake often exhibits six-fold radial symmetry. The initial symmetry can occur because the crystalline structure of ice is six-fold. The six “arms” of the snowflake, or dendrites, then grow independently, and each side of each arm grows independently. Most snowflakes are not completely symmetric.