Winter Magic, Magnified

Big Cottonwood Canyon | Angie Payne

Enjoy snowflakes with fresh eyes through macro photography

Photographer Angie Payne visited Salt Lake City on the hunt for snowflakes and other wintery scenes. “There was a fair amount of uncertainty involved with planning a trip around the idea of photographing fresh snow,” says Payne, “but Utah came through.” (Read: "How to Photograph Snowflakes — Nature’s Fleeting Work of Art")

For Payne, it’s the impermanence of snowflakes that speak to her most. “These little pieces of beauty fall from the sky and grace the world with their mesmerizing presence for a few moments before melting away or being buried under other snowflakes and incorporated into the chaos. On the rare occasion that I get to enjoy and photograph the intricate beauty of a single flake, it feels like time stops for a brief moment. There is a focused awareness and excitement that comes in those few fleeting seconds before the flake, in all its individual and absolutely unique beauty, is gone forever.”

Meet some of Utah’s fleeting, but precious, tiny ones.

"There’s a unique feeling that comes when you view something that’s truly one-of-a-kind, something that exists for only a few moments in the vast continuum of time and space. A certain bit of enigmatic something can be encapsulated in that tiny little miracle of nature, and that something is the closest thing to magic that I’ve ever found."

– Angie Payne

Because snowflakes are small (really, really small), photographer Angie Payne uses a macro lens to capture the intricate details. A true macro lens offers a 1:1 magnification ratio, meaning that the size of the snowflake in real life is the same as the size of the image projected onto the camera’s sensor.

"I realize I have an abnormal obsession with these little pieces of frozen perfection, but I swear there’s just nothing quite like these miniature works of art," says photographer Angie Payne.

"From the highest peaks of the Wasatch Mountains to the sidewalks of Salt Lake City, spectacular frozen works of art drop from the sky anywhere it snows."

– Angie Payne

Working with these teeny tiny frozen works of art is incredibly frustrating, because micro movements, a rogue breath, or any amount of wind can instantly destroy the scene. Luckily, the payoff is always worth it, and every once in a while a shot works out.

Fuzzy wool fibers catch flakes and keep them elevated for easy viewing; the wool also acts as an insulator to keep the snowflake from melting immediately.

When it isn’t snowing, look for other forms of frozen microscopic beauty, such as ice crystals and hoar frost that forms on plants when the humidity is high and the temperature is low.

About the Photographer – Angie Payne

Angie Payne discovered her love of photography while exploring nature and traveling the world as a professional climber. Countless days spent in the mountains of Colorado, and subsequent climbing expeditions to Greenland and French Polynesia, opened Angie’s eyes to the magnificence of nature and her desire to capture photos of it. Her early photographic pursuits involved an iPhone and inexpensive magnetic lenses. This simple setup was enough to ignite her iterest in pursuing photography more seriously, and in 2012 she purchased her first digital camera. Her current work is mainly concentrated in the world of macro photography, as she is especially obsessed with the tiny worlds that exist within bigger landscapes. Angie currently lives in Boulder, Colorado.