Before
After
The other day someone posted a link on facebook to some really amazing snowflake pictures. I thought to myself, “Hey, I’m a macro photographer, I can do this.” Well let me tell you it is not as easy as it looks. Out of about 100 images, this is the only one that came out even close to sharp. As you can see, this is a very small outtake from an image taken with a 100mm macro lens. Even the smallest amount of camera shake pushes everything out of focus. I was also having some issues with getting my snowflake capturing platform far enough away from the lens. I even tried adding some extension tubes to my macro lens. But, I have some ideas on how to do better next time. I just have to wait for it to snow again. Meanwhile, at least I can say my efforts at photographing snowflakes has been more successful than my efforts to photograph lightning.
In post processing I adjusted the exposure in levels then cropped to the snowflake and rotated it to a better angle. I edited out a lot of distracting elements using content-aware fill. I added some sharpening using smart sharpen. Then I took it into Nik Color Efex Pro where I added a solarization filter and a bi color filter. then I did a little more sharpening back in Photoshop.