Snow Crystals | Wilson Bentley via Iconic Photos [Shared]

Snow Crystals | Wilson Bentley via Iconic Photos

The image displays a collection of twelve snowflakes arranged in a 3x4 grid against a black background. Each snowflake is intricately detailed, showcasing unique patterns and structures. The snowflakes vary in design, with some featuring more complex and symmetrical patterns, while others have simpler, more delicate structures. The central snowflake in the middle row is particularly prominent, with a complex and symmetrical design. The snowflakes are monochromatic, with white details on a black background, emphasizing their intricate designs. The image appears to be a page from a book, as indicated by the page number 180 at the bottom center.</p>

<p>Provided by @altbot, generated privately and locally using Ovis2-8B

When Wilson Bentley died in 1931, his hometown newspaper eulogized him thus: “Longfellow said that genius is infinite painstaking. John Ruskin declared that genius is only a superior power of seeing. Wilson Bentley was a living example of this type of genius.”

A fine accolade for a photographer. Born in Vermont to a family prosperous enough to gift him a microscope at his 15th birthday, Bentley, for the next half a century, would go on to perfect a process of photographing snowflakes on black velvet before they melted away. Having grown up on a farm where the annual snowfall was 120 inches, Bentley’s obsession with precipitation began early, and sustained him throughout his life. As a young boy, Bentley would hand-draw pictures of snow crystals, and in his lifetime, Wilson made over 5,000 photographic negatives of dew frost, snowflakes, raindrops, clouds and fog. He wrote the entry on ‘snow’ in Encyclopedia Britannica.

Look at all the snowflake photos and read the article Snow Crystals | Wilson Bentley via Iconic Photos

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