TITLE: No Two Alike

An estimated seven septillion snowflakes fall every year, but no two of these ice formations will look alike. All snowflakes have the same humble beginnings as a drop of water frozen to a tiny grain of dust or pollen floating through the air, but it is the fall itself that determines the snowflake's pattern. Each miniscule change in temperature and humidity affects the formation of ice crystals that form the snowflake. As each snowflake takes a different path to fall to the ground, each is experiencing minutely different air conditions resulting in different crystalline patterns. Each snowflake that falls is as unique as the journey it takes. In this case, their journey brought these three snowflakes to Fairbanks, Alaska, where I photographed them.

AUTHOR: Nathan Myhrvold (United States)

Nathan Myhrvold is photographer, chef, scientist, and author. As the former chief technology officer of Microsoft, Myhrvold embraces the power of technology to push photographic limits. He and his team build custom cameras, robotics, and software to capture the world in new ways.
Myhrvold’s photography has been featured in publications including Smithsonian Magazine, Digital Photo Pro, Popular Photography, Galerie, and Bloomberg Pursuits. He is the founder of Modernist Cuisine, author of The Photography of Modernist Cuisine, and coauthor of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, Modernist Cuisine at Home, Modernist Bread, and the forthcoming Modernist Pizza.
He pioneered food photography techniques to take the avant garde photographs in his award-winning cookbooks, which garnered worldwide recognition and led to the opening of Modernist Cuisine Gallery, the first gallery in the world devoted to food photography.
When not photographing food, Myhrvold travels the globe to visually document nature and wildlife. His recent innovations in snowflake photography have resulted in the highest resolution snowflake camera in the world. An avid researcher and lover of space, Myhrvold did postdoctoral cosmology work with Stephen Hawking and is currently developing new astrophotography techniques.