Jewelry with etched images of snowflakes, photographed by Wilson Bentley by vdeux on Etsy
Wilson Bentley (1865 –1931) is one of the first known photographers of snowflakes. Fascinated of snowflakes, he perfected a way of catching them on black velvet so that their images could be captured before they either melted or sublimated. He made photographing snowflakes his life project and managed to capture more than 5000 ice crystals in his lifetime. He told a magazine in 1925: “Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind”.
