Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley

Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley (1865 –1931) is renowned for his photographs of snowflakes and alerting people to their unique designs. He also took exquisite photographs of many ice formations in close-up, these beautiful images are his "frost studies".

“Always, right from the beginning it was the snowflakes that fascinated me most,” he said. “The farm folks up in this country dread the winter, but I was supremely happy.”             Wison Snowfake Bentley 

He started trying to capture their beauty in drawings through a microscope, then after many experiments he manages to photograph his first snowflake on January 15, 1885. He went on to establish that no two snowflakes were the same, this captured people's imaginations and his work was widely published in magazines.

"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." Wilson Bentley 1925

However, when Wilson went to publish his first book on snow, he got caught in a blizzard and caught pneumonia of which he died two weeks later.