While it is estimated that there are 200 billion Trillion stars in the observable Universe, it is also estimated that over the course of a year about one Septillion (A Trillion Trillion) snowflakes or snow crystals fall from the sky – each and everyone of them unique.

Below are my attempts at imaging these tiny gems. I used my Olympus E-M10ii camera and my Olympus 30mm f3.5 Macro Lens.

The challenges are many, including:

• Waiting for just the right snow storm can be frustrating. The “Perfect Storm” has temperatures well below freezing so that you can photograph the crystals before they melt or fuse with other crystals and little to no wind. Wind can make the collection and photography of individual crystals very difficult .
• Getting the best lighting to highlight the crystal structure. Direct lighting from the front tends to make the crystals look “flat”. Side-lighting or back-lighting is preferable but can be difficult to achieve. In my photos below there are many examples of less that perfect lighting.
• Macro lenses have extremely shallow depth-of-field (the zone of perfect focus) so getting a perfectly in-focus shot especially if the camera is hand-held can be difficult. You can see in several of my photos where the flake is at an oblique angle and while the leading edge of the crystal is in focus the far edge is slightly out-of-focus.

Even with these challenges, if you shoot enough frames you can get some beautiful and unique results as my modest attempts show.