first we're having an opening of an exhibit of their snowflake photography so we're here to talk about both how they started out snapping all these snowflakes what techniques trial and error was involved and a on his snowflake photographs so i kind of studied a little bit on how he did bangs and try to duplicate that with the camera equipment that i had and it took quite a few years to get procedure or set up that worked well enough but i've been photographing and you know some prints for about six years now and your background is in nature photography to start off with yeah well yeah anything  to vermont moved here last year the summer of last year moved from pittsburgh pennsylvania so moved here from my day job i talked to stu earlier and we both love to do photography full time but i don't so my day job me transferred up here i love doing anything really macro work in the scientific field and so i love looking at you know very small things under microscopes really got interested in like photography primarily because i found not much to do in pittsburgh in the winters because it's very gray it's not a pretty winter like up here so i started experimenting with it when i did some research i found out about snowflake bentley a couple other people popped up really like like stu said it's a lot of trial and error so i feel like i've perfected my technique in pittsburgh and then i've been using it up here now can we move into that technique and we'll kind of cameras to  use to start with what is the background what what are some of the common stumbling points that somebody may have when they're trying to photograph something as small and fragile like a digital camera  deal as far and i actually use a reverse lens mount it on to a macro lens and that gives me in the magnification the to get my photos and what were some of the difficulties that you faced when you were first doing th straight and and and the right material to actually catch the snowflake and photograph it on and right now i've been using black velvet and i've tried different things but i've always gone back to the black   night photography illuminate from underneath with a microscope and then during the day i just do ambient light on a black i have a piece of glass that's like well there's class black and it makes it it keeps the background very black the snowflake stands out is there like a list server a website like where people who photograph snowflakes go do i mean you bump into each other here in vermont i guess there's more maybe the national average  saw snowflake photography typically were from universities and some of the equipment they had was quite advanced way beyond what i could afford so i kind of just want to head and played and did it on my own with what i could get to to it you know little things at first if you're snowflakes a little bit tilted half of it's going to be out of focus compared to the other half getting excited which i've done it finding the perfect want to jumping up too quick and there goes my snowflake off in the wind breathing on the one of the wind is definitely a big factor yeah wind is probably my biggest numbness in this so it takes a lot of work and most of it you know how to manipulate i'm trial and error perfect sort of meteorological conditions or temperatures or days or time of days or night do you work well we talked about that and the most ideal bang for that thing that is best is the temperature between fifteen and twenty five degrees i think that's pretty much if it's any warmer than that it's hard to get flakes that aren't stuck together and then they also don't last that long once they land so you don't have much time to photograph  colder than that just doesn't seem you don't seem to get as good a flake or there are smaller much smaller flakes and i think both of us were i don't wear gloves i don't think studios either  tried tried cutting off my fingers on the gloves and i prefer you know no gloves now so but below fifteen year we start to feel it you know you don't quite as long and how many hours at a time are you out there photographing snowflakes and that would mean it depends on how many batteries i have charged up but i think the longest i've ever stayed out in a storm was maybe two and a half hours but typically it's  maybe half an hour and forty five minutes at a time and you'll go out in the snow storms obviously oh yeah yeah yeah and actually the best time i found which snowflake bentley had mentioned is at the end of the storm is really the best flex coming out i mean i get a little caught up in it and i've stayed out probably longer than i should have i think my longest was four hours sick afterwards i probably sta twenty sixth and we invite april thirtieth and we invite all the public to come by and check out these really neat photographs and you'll see that even though they're both photographing snowflakes is a real difference in the style and just the look of the snowflakes they have their own personalities so can you know a little bit that the works that will be seen here may have been i i brought a sample of both flakes that i took like the first year and i have some that i actually took this year so i have a good mixture of some of the better flakes i mean the other thing we can talk about is i don't hundred to two hundred flakes you might get one that's really spectacular so that's the other big challenge they get a good flight and we'll be seeing some of these you know nowadays that really stand out yeah it's not like world that exactly you know and how about you q what are we going to see here i actually stuck with all made in vermont snow flakes so i didn't dirty the waters with any of pennsylvania snow flakes but you mentioned were smaller there are mostly so i found and i could be wrong this may be subjective but the snowflakes up here seem to be in the fifteen to twenty five degree range they seem to be larger i did some research and i found that potentially the media logical it's higher humidity based on the lake effect and other factors i don't know if that's the case but i would say that they're a little bit larger i've had better success up here again i don't know if that's just random or you know any anything to do with the differences in atmosphere but good good luck up here so far this winter i haven't had a look in the last week or two photographed that we can see maybe on our walls here if you can talk a little bit symmetry that the things that really stand out what makes a keeper when you're out there snapping away actually i've got one i think a lot so this is one i took  december twenty seventh of last year and  and the big thing about this i look for two things in a snowflake either the center's perfect and it's got a really nice design stand or overall the flake you've got nice branches off it as you can see with this the inside is very sharp but the outside is a little bit fuzzy but the thing is it's like caleb said if it's not perfectly flat it's very hard to get all of it in focus and this one just because of the depth of the and i don't know if i brought one will show two samples that i brought here this is actually kind of all around i just enjoyed that one pretty much it's got a very nice symmetrical  center i like the complexity of this and it also has in the negative space here kind of a snowflake within a snowflake the black snowflake design internally so this is one you know i just like overall very complex and intricate one other one it's actually not very common but snow can actually form typically it's make sixty degree angle so you get a six sided snowflake  very much less common or twelve sided snowflake so you can actually find these they're very rare but this is a it's not perfectly symmetrical but it's just an interesting you know design it's a twelve sided snowflake so  again kind of a one in the one thousand ten thousand that you might find having this design so the ones that i brought here i tried to really just give a representative of different sizes different complexities there's if you start studying snowflakes there's a whole naming convention behind them there's all sorts of different styles so i just chose some that kind of represent a broad landscape with snowflakes and a this season winds down about how many more weeks photographed expected to take or you know back to hold actually most of my better shots i take in march why do you suppose i don't know but that you're seeing with these some of the better bikes i would say the one of those that i'm going to have here probably have them taken in march but it's good to hear since i haven't been here yet in march in one location or is it portable where you could carry some of their around your work or do you still like bentley it would be portable but it would have to be in the car in the back of the car under cover but then of course that means the cars got to be temperatures outside so if you're going to drive when it's cold but so be it mine's probably a little more portable i made a kind of a hole stand that i can take and move it anywhere i usually s my quitman out about half hour before i shoot and i just shoot you know outdoors so i can set up anywhere noticed if i'm too close the neighbors they start me pretty odd leave that i'm scrunched down you know for hours in the  snow it's fun backyard works fine though your kids must get a kick out of it daddy's out yes yes no yes i have a two and a four year old and they have a large glass door and they just sit there for usually half hour at a time just watching me so they like to see the results too it's fun so i think this is going to be a really interesting exhibit you know people in vermont care about and love snow so they kind of have to make the most of it that's true and it's great to see great example the exhibit is called snapping snowflakes and it is going to be here a moment's build community t v hit thirty five west main street richmond in the same building as the former jon shoe shop and it's going to be running through the end of april and catches most working days and you can call us if you just want to make a special point to see the exhibit and they are going to be for sale would you like to support our local artists and do stop by and check out all the snow from thanks for joining us today