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Nathan Myhrvold's Dazzling High-Resolution Photographs of Snowflakes (fastcompany.com) 58

Posted by EditorDavid from the no-two-alike dept.
Nathan Myhrvold is a former CTO of Microsoft, co-founder of the equity company Intellectual Ventures, and the founder of "food innovation lab" Modernist Cuisine (which among other things resulted in book of remarkable food photography).

But he's now photographing the intricate designs of snowflakes, reports Fast Company: Over the span of 18 months, Myhrvold built a camera with a microscopic lens and then shot in the freezing locales of Fairbanks, Alaska, and Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. All to capture individual snowflakes — millimeters across — in sparkling, high-res detail.

Myhrvold captured his snowflake specimens by setting out black foam core when snow was falling. He then used a tiny watercolor brush to grab individual snowflakes and place them on a "cooling stage" under the camera. Cold is key — even the camera itself and the plate he places the snowflake on must be left outside and chilled in order to photograph the snowflake before it melts. But that's not the only element to keep those snowflakes cool: He also uses special, high-speed LED lights that don't generate as much heat. The cold is also important to a snowflake's shape, says Myhrvold, who shot his specimens at temperatures between -15 and -20 degrees F. You might call this the snowflake sweet spot: They form into the "best," most complex designs between these temperatures.

The results are simply dazzling... "Sometimes to see nature's beauty you have to travel to the Grand Canyon or get up late at night to see the stars," Myhrvold says. But with snow, all you have to do is pause and look down at your mitten. "It's a beautiful thing."
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Nathan Myhrvold's Dazzling High-Resolution Photographs of Snowflakes More

Nathan Myhrvold's Dazzling High-Resolution Photographs of Snowflakes

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  • Living in the subtropics I have to travel for a few thousand kilometers before I can see snow.. :)
    (Not that I want to, it's not a pleasant thing to me.. But I can enjoy its beauty through through this sort of work while being warm and far away from it.)

    • Yeah, while I live in N Florida (mid70s today) I've had snow in my yard 4 times in my almost 50 years of life.

      And every year multiple times a year I run the well all night to a) keep it from freezing up on me and b) create a bunch of icicles in some convenient trees/bushes that my kids really enjoy/enjoyed (oldest are 17 and 20 and over it, youngest is 10 and is asking "is it cold enough yet?")

      Used to go to Minnesota in late November to visit family, and lemme tell ya - snow sucks. Fun to look at and be in

      • Used to go to Minnesota in late November to visit family, and lemme tell ya - snow sucks. Fun to look at and be in for about 4 minutes, and then you are cold and wet and miserable. At least this southern boy is.

        As someone who's lived in the mid-Atlantic region all their life, you're not missing anything. Cold and miserable is the perfect description. It's even worse when the wind blows.

        *waits for someone from Minnesota or Alaska to chime in and claim it's not as bad as some make it out to be, the same peo

    • Dealing with harsh winters and almost getting frost bite once when I was crossing a busy New York street, and setting foot on what I thought was packed snow and ending up over ankle deep in slush, I've concluded that snow is best seen at a distance, unless you are at a ski resort.

      • I lived Mid-Atlantic and NJ at an impressionable age. People who pay perfectly good money to access snow have something wrong with them. Except if they have a nutty dog who has fun in snow.

    • Since all snowflakes are unique, why did he have to travel to Goose Fart, Quebec and Frio de Cojones, Alaska to shoot them? Are they more unique in those locations than elsewhere? Why not just go out your front door (assuming you live where there's snow) and start shooting? Seems more like an excuse to play with technology than anything too revolutionary, given that Wilson Bentley [wikipedia.org] was doing this in the late 1800's with camera plates carved out of dinosaur teeth or something.

      If you want to do this yoursel

      • Article states that the best snowflakes form between -15 and -20.

        I guess he has the resources to whatever he wants, and he wants to chase cool snow.
        More power to him, I guess.

  • Yes, we have had plenty of high resolution photographs of "snowflakes" for years.

    This entire comments section will be about the 2 legged kind, not the frozen water type.

  • I don't get it, I expected to see portraits of people with MAGA hats.

  • High resolution (Score:5, Informative)

    by devnullkac ( 223246 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @03:06PM (#60826290) Homepage

    For all you URL hackers out there, fastcompany's image server hands out an arbitrarily high resolution version of the first snowflake (the highest I tried without a server error was 9100x5119: Ice Queen [fastcompany.net]), but only 1280x960 versions of the other two: Yellowknife Flurry [fastcompany.net] and No Two Alike [fastcompany.net].

  • mod article overrated (Score:3)

    by dfghjk ( 711126 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @03:21PM (#60826344)

    This article wouldn't exist if it weren't Nathan Myhrvold who uses his name to promote himself as an elite photographer, among others of his overrated "renaissance" talents. While his technical (non-managerial) contributions were quickly replaced at MS (hpfs anyone?), his industry contributions as a patent troll are well known. Scourge.

    Interesting story, Myhrvold for at least a time was a technical contributor to "Luminous Landscape", a pure subjectivist photography snob magazine where non-technical people went for the finer points of a technology they didn't understand. He was billed as a technical top gun of the mag and he wrote an article on depth of field, an article where he demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding between aperture, format, and DOF due to his lack of understanding of the difference between physical aperture and f-number. You know, the EXACT kind of thing he was there to explain to people and something fairly well understood today. Myhrvold is all Microsoft money and arrogance, not nearly as bright as he bills himself to be.

    Also, snowflakes are not designed, they do not have "intricate designs" but rather intricate structures.

    • You really can't just enjoy pretty pictures, can you?

      • Re:mod article overrated (Score:5, Informative)

        by ufgrat ( 6245202 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @04:11PM (#60826512)

        Sure.

        But Don Komarechka's been doing this for awhile, without having to invent ridiculous cameras.

        https://skycrystals.ca/snowfla... [skycrystals.ca]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          Nice, and the the page is about the images, not the photographer. Also, imagine using a strobe!!!! Funny how a strobe doesn't melt the snowflake before getting the image. If only Nathan Myhrvold had invented that!

        • The USDA took thousands of electron micrographs of snowflakes. Not only of classical single crystal flakes, but also aggregated crystals to examine their structure (IIRC originally about how snow packs and melts annually)

          Lots of cool images here:
          https://sgil.ba.ars.usda.gov/s... [usda.gov]

          Publication:
          https://www.tandfonline.com/do... [tandfonline.com]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mattr ( 78516 )

          Thank you very much. I had known Bentley's work but not Don Komarechka's. Thanks to you I just bought his ebook, which comes with an interesting short ebook on water droplet photography too. It is a wonderful book, only $20 (45 for the hard cover) and he also has a poster coming out - the proofs are available now. Very satisfied! The section on colored snowflakes is also fascinating, I had been interested in those as well.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        I can enjoy pretty pictures, but the article isn't about pretty pictures, it's about Nathan Myhrvold, as is everything Nathan Myhrvold does. Also. /. is "News for Nerds", not "pretty pictures", and the "News for Nerds" aspect of this article is worthless. As though no one has thought of NOT MELTING the snowflake before getting the image, and the technology for doing this has been around longer than Myhrvold has. It's called a strobe.

        Nathan Myhrvold is the Mark Cuban of photography, and of everything else

      • You really can't just enjoy pretty pictures, can you?

        That's what I said to my mom when she found my stash of Playboy mags, but no, long lecture and grounded for a week... without the mags.

    • I'm sorry. Trump screwed up America and people are dying of COVID. There. Now you have something you're more familiar with and you can let the rest of us enjoy another story

      Also, snowflakes are not designed, they do not have "intricate designs" but rather intricate structures.

      You have intricate autism.

      • Let's see how you will fare under Biden and his mandatory lockdowns. I genuinely hope that America keeps ahead of China even despite Biden.

  • Wow (Score:5, Informative)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @03:28PM (#60826366)

    Myhrvold is still trying to get remembered for something other than being a patent troll, eh? Guess the cookbook didn't do the trick...

    Nathan Myhrvold is a patent troll. That's all he deserves to be remembered for. I hope some third party takes the time to cut that information into his tombstone.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      DMCA take down notices for any posts of snowflake images any time now.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • If I'm still around when the guy dies, maybe I'll put together a GoFundMe to purchase a big, ornate headstone:

        "Here lays Nathan Myhrvold - Patent Troll, Poor Programmer"

        Then I'll just need to hire a couple people to help make the switch.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          LOL, didn't expect to find people who appreciated what a mediocre turd this guy is. I met Nathan Myhrvold while he was at MS in a technical role. Didn't get it. I had a conversation with him much later that confirmed how overrated he is. He is mediocre and arrogant.

          I would enjoy learning more about this bug in Word and his relationship to it. Even more, I want to know what asshole put the A20 dependency in the MS linker in the pre-286 days, I really hope to learn it was him. Seriously one of the great

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dfghjk ( 711126 )

              ahh yes, that one. Never knew that was it's own special thing vs. general incompetence.

          • Wasn't the problem also that Intel didn't give the 286 any way to switch from protected mode back to real mode? So once you switched on the 286 features you were stuck with them and couldn't go back to exact 8086 emulation for running one of these crappy applications. Hence the need to hard-reset the processor using gate A20.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Yes.

      He's also not a distinguished photographer, just a rich one. Also not a distinguished programmer, just a rich one. His foundational idea in computing was to clone IBM TopView, that raging success story. Stealing other people's work appears to be a defining characteristic of his life. Copying TopView apparently led to an early gig at MS, though, the very definition of the blind squirrel finding a nut.

      • This is crazy. I thought Myhrvold was like a great guy, making the cookbook and all. I've been studying cooking lately and have been wanting to buy a copy of the $700CAD Modernist Cuisine... But now maybe I don't need to. I'm thankful to have read all these comments. I feel relieved in not having his book.

        He was featured on the Michael Pollan series on Netflix called "Cooked", and shown to be a super great smart guy.

  • At first was I worried about the loneliness of his hobby, how it involves little to no people at all, almost like he chose it on purpose and to be away from people. But I do have to hand it to him that he is looking at snowflakes and not butt holes like millions of people on pornhub. So I think he is doing all right.

  • Pointless (Score:3)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Sunday December 13, 2020 @04:05PM (#60826496)

    Why would you want to take high resolution photographs of millenials?

    • "Snowflakes" existed scince the caveman days

      "The 'greatest generation' are snowflakes" "Baby boomers are snowflakes" "Gen-X'ers are snowflakes" "Millenials/Gen Z'ers are snowflakes" I've heard it all.

      We need to change this record, it seems very broken.

    • Jeesh common man. Millenials these days are home owners with two kids and a mortgage. There's a whole new generation ruining your world to complain about now. Broaden your horizons.

      • What's the name of the latest versions?

        • Generation Z has had a few names. I remember Digital Generation and Internet Natives. Though this year they got a catchy name of Zoomers and I feel like that name is the one most likely to stick going forward.

          Makes sense too, Millennials didn't get their name until about 20 years after the first were born either.

      • "new generation ruining your world"

        Ooohh goodie! I can't wait to see how Generation ZZ or Z2 (whatever) ruins my world when they are born and grow up.

        I hope they ruin it with more expertise than my generation (Gen-X) did! :O)

        • I'm sure they will. Personally as an early Millennial I already can't stand the "zoomers" taste in music.

  • Nothing of value ever came out of a meeting and people who use innovation in a sentence don't have any.

  • I got a vast collection of every MyLittlePony character, even the ultra rare unicorn one!!!
    I have never shared my collection on 3rd rate image dumo sites like Pinterest.
    Willing to trade with anyone interested.

  • Ken Libbrecht, a physics professor at Caltech, has been doing this for years. I've a boy of his images copyright 2003. http://snowcrystals.com/ [snowcrystals.com] http://www.its.caltech.edu/~at... [caltech.edu] And he credits Japanese physicist Ukichiro Nakaya who was taking snowflake images in the 1930s.

  • BTW, article from July 2017, giving an update on Nathan Myhrvold's laser mosquito zapper, that he touted back in 2010:
    https://nymag.com/intelligence... [nymag.com]

    Here's to hoping that some Chinese bootleg manufacturer will start cranking them out for sale on Alibaba.

  • I used to strongly dislike Nathan Myhrvold by association, knowing nothing at all about the guy. Because I lived through the emergence of Linux/GNU/FOSS, and remember well how Microsoft abused its market dominance, keeping the world in the dark ages with (at that time) inferior Windows products, browser wars, embrace and extend, and generally abusing its monopoly.

    But ... I don't think Myhrvold is particularly evil, and it was fascinating to learn a bit more about the guy in an interview I came across in the

  • OK, so he along with tons of other people take photographs of snowflakes.... Not sure how this is news since the pioneer of the field was doing this back in the 1930s and even used candles and all kinds of crazy things to take some absolutely amazing photographs of snowflakes and to print them in beautiful ways:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    There is even a museum in Vermont dedicated to his work. I have a few prints of his taken directly from his original negatives. If you are ever in that area I
  • I thought these were going to be pix of a MAGA rally

  • The God of snowflakes, including photos, is Kenneth Libbrecht. His website includes more than everything you'd ever want to know about snowflakes, including building a photography rig to do so: http://www.snowcrystals.com/ [snowcrystals.com].

    The setup he recommends is fairly expensive. You can get very good results using a "reverse mount" for a wide angle lens (like a 10mm). A dedicated macro lens can help simplify focusing, etc.

    Another great snowflake photographer is "ChaoticMind", who's real name escapes me at the moment

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