Tiny Miracles of Beauty

Posted on | December 10, 2009 | No Comments

Snowflake2

It snowed this morning. The central coast of California was touched, however lightly and fleetingly by snow crystals. You had to be in the hills to notice, and the “flurries” are long over, but all things aligned in the dark of the night to bring us a little snowstorm.

Growing up in the Rockies, snow was the best part of winter. We spent our days sledding, skiing, making angels and snow people, building igloos, bunkers and a snowball surplus. Life was great. Every once in a while school would be called off and we would exhilarate all day in the pure bliss of freedom while romping through the otherworld created by snow.

We agree that no two snowflakes are alike – right? Well there was actually a man who pioneered that notion and dedicated his life to studying and archiving snowflakes.

In 1880 a fifteen year old named Wilson Bentley was given a microscope. The focus of his micro-exploration soon turned to the snowflakes that fell on his family’s Vermont farm. He would put the flakes under his microscope and try to draw them, an approach that proved frustrating and unsuccessful as the snow would melt before he could get much down.

Two years later, he coerced his parents into getting him a camera (a brand new technology at the time) and started devising a way to take micrographs of the flakes. After much experimentation, he became the first person to successfully photograph a snowflake in 1885 at the age of 19. Over his lifetime, he captured over 5,000 images of snow crystals, never finding two alike.

Wilson

From Bentley’s writings:
“The experience of the search for new forms, the rare delight of seeing for the first time this exquisite lineament under a microscope, the practical certainty that never again will one be found just like this one…to perpetuate each masterpiece, the image of each rare gem in the photograph, before its matchless beauty is forever lost (to us) is an experience so rare, so truly delightful that once undergone is never forgotten.”

“Then after the storm is over, with what eagerness the dark room is sought, that we may watch the magic, these exquisite images of nature’s handiwork, come forth, in all their matchless beauty & complexity of design.”

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Category: Art, Design, Holidays, Photography
Tags: history > photography > snow crystals > snowflakes

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Tiny Miracles of Beauty

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