How We Got the Picture: Concentrating on a snowflake helped erase a winter funk

After 13 days of single-digit temperatures this February, I needed to find something to make me feel better about the cold. A macro lens and plenty of fresh snowflakes did the trick.

Every winter I like to photograph snowflakes. I dress in layers before trudging into the white, even though I know it won't take long to find what I'm looking for.

I like to use a macro lens and get as close as possible, in this case about an inch away. Sometimes I'll use off-camera flash, off to the side and triggered remotely so it backlights the snowflake. But in this case, I just wanted a black background, and the natural soft gray overcast daylight was enough. I wore black gloves and used my left hand to reach behind the snowflake to provide the dark background. I prefocused the 60 mm Nikon macro lens, set the exposure at F11, 1/125 sec., and ISO 1,000. Then I slowly moved toward the snowflake, which was standing straight up on one leg on my deck railing, until the subject came into focus. This is the difficult part because even at F11 the depth of field is no deeper than the snowflake, so it's easy to miss getting it in focus. I shot a couple dozen frames and moved slightly to show some out-of-focus snow and make the scene three dimensional. I cropped out about half of the original frame.

It's probably in my top three favorite snowflake photos that I've ever made. It took me out of my winter funk that day and still makes me feel good today.