Freezing Snowflakes
Winter has come. It’s a beautiful time here in North Idaho, albeit a bit chilly, but beautiful nonetheless. This year we’ve had some really great snow and I could not resist getting my strobes out. I actually got the idea for this type of shoot about a year ago now when I was looking at the snow falling one night, and noticed how the snow flakes lit up brilliantly as they fell through the light of a street lamp. At the time I had just gotten some new strobes and was experimenting with them and realized I might be able to freeze some snowflakes in the frame of a portrait. So I gave it a try and some good images came out, but I’ve since been determined to perfect this.
So when I looked out the window the other day and saw some really nice, fluffly, snowflakes, I knew it was time to try again. My wife and best friend graciously froze their butts off for me so I could try some stuff.
My wife is absolutely beautiful.
I also grabbed my Zeiss classic Planar 50mm this time around as I just can’t get enough of that awesome Zeiss micro contrast. It was a little tough to get focus since the live view was quite dark, but I managed more hits than misses. The shutter here is set to 1/200 and you can see the two strobes — one in front of the subject, camera right — that’s our key light. One strobe behind the subject, camera left, firing across her back and lighting up all the flakes from behind her. I think it came out pretty good, although next time I want to try an even faster shutter, especially if it’s this fluffy next time around.
As one of my favorite photographers (Gavin Hardcastle) always says- OR, if you’re reading this, get in touch…
Same positioning of the lights here for the most part although I brought the key around a little more to produce a slightly more even lighting across his face. I’m a big fan of strong side light but it really didn’t feel right for this application, not to mention I was moving fast as I could so we didn’t all freeze.
Overall I’m pretty pleased with this, though I have some ideas for the next snow fall. Stay tuned.