Collection of hexagonal plate crystals

Simple hexagonal plates is one of my favourite snowflake types. These small crystals are usually no more than 1.5 millimeters in diameter, and most of them are not larger than 1 millimeter. But, despite its small size and very simple form, they have their own beauty, hidden in the patterns and internal structure.

These photos are the best examples for the last two years. I'll add new crystals as it is processed.

More snowflakes in album snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

Cryogenia

(1200 * 900)

I think, this is best snowflake of "hexagonal plate" type i captured this winter. However, it was hard to process, because i got only 4 identical shots for averaging, and in close proximity to crystal was piles of ice debris - this complicates cleaning of background. This crystal was around 1,5 mm in diameter, quite large for it's type.

Glass background with multi-colour backlight, additional lens Helios 44M-5, january 2014, Moscow.

More snowflakes in album snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

Alternate color version:

(1200 * 900)

Rainbow flower

(1024 * 768)

This is tiny snowflake, around 1 millimeter in diameter. Colours caused by thin film optical interference effect (similar to effect on surface of soap bubbles). This winter i especially hunting for rainbow snowflakes, shooting tiny hexagonal and sectored plates like this one at horizontal glass sheet, pointing macro setup at angle with small desktop tripod. After hour of trial and error, i catched some crystals with this effect. Rest of shots (quickly processed from JPEG's) i posted here:

What colour of snow is your favorite?

This picture was made by averaging stack of 13 RAWs for better details and colors of such small object.

More snowflakes in album snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

Version without blue color toning and vignetting:

And this is source picture after averaging 13 RAW shots, without any color/contrast changes, sharpening and noise removing (2048 * 1536):

Google authorship with Flickr photo content

Recently introduced Google authorship program is really good thing for any blogger - it highlights author's content in search results and, hopefully, Google trust this content more that one without verified authorship and boost its position in search results. But it is also works nice with your photo content on Flickr photo hosting.

It's easy to do in a few steps:


1. At first, to make sure that all my flickr pages are indexed by Google, i manually added into Google Add url tool these of my flickr URLs (photostream root, profile page and all album pages):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/
http://www.flickr.com/people/chaoticmind75/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157626265195798/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157630617454194/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157626146319517/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157636124631135/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157626140542341/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157629984474454/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/sets/72157640454694553/

(although adding albums maybe is not nessessary - google robot should find them by visiting link "albums" from photostream page).

2. As Google instruction says, i added to Contributor To section of my Google+ profile two custom flickr links (photostream and profile pages) and their copies with https prefix, as well as link to this blog:

chaoticmind75.blogspot.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chaoticmind75/
http://www.flickr.com/people/chaoticmind75/
https://www.flickr.com/people/chaoticmind75/

3. Then, all i need to do is make sure that on every page of my flickr account will be reciprocal link to my Google+ profile, which may look like this:

<a href="https://plus.google.com/111839554038128178268?rel=author">Author: Alexey Kljatov (Алексей Клятов) aka ChaoticMind75</a>

For this, i added that code at end of descriptions in all my flickr albums, and, because in descrption fields of all my flickr photos already was this string of links to my other places:

Prints | Blog | Facebook | Google+ | DeviantArt | 500px | Tumblr

all i need to do is slightly change it, appending "?rel=author" attribute to Google+ link:

<a href="https://plus.google.com/111839554038128178268?rel=author">Google+</a>

Also i placed this string of links into description field of my Flickr profile page.

That's all. When Google indexed my flickr pages, they looks better in search results. For these queries, it shows photo page links with verified authorship snippet:

Flying castle

Medium size snowflake, 3 or 4 millimeters in diameter. Glass background with backlight, additional lens Helios 44M-5, 8 RAWs averaged, january 2014, Moscow. Looks better in original resolution: 1600 * 1200.

More snowflakes in album snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

Alternate colors:

(1600 * 1200)

This snowflake as desktop wallpapers in wallpapers section:

Shiny metal

Another snowflake of my favourite type, simple hexagonal plates. This one was around 1 mm in diameter.

(1024 * 768)

Interesting, this "scratch" across the crystal seems to be part of it's pattern, and pattern elements at opposite sides of this scratch, though looks similar, have differences in size and shape.

Glass background with multi-colour backlight, additional lens Helios 44M-5, january 2014, Moscow. 8 RAWs averaged.

More snowflakes in album snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.

Snowflake before and after processing (please click to view in 1:1 scale on flickr):

Silver plume

Medium size snowflake, around 3 millimeters in diameter. Glass background with backlight, additional lens Helios 44M-5, 8 RAWs averaged, january 2014, Moscow.

(1866 * 1400)

More snowflakes in album snowflakes and snow crystals.
Also i wrote small article about my shooting technique.