127/365 Snowflakes on the window

I've been waiting for the perfect day to try photographing snowflakes. This day was far from perfect, but it at least gave me a chance to give it a try! I'm looking forward to another day and location to do it again.

This photo reminds me of being a kid and finding things around the house to look at through the lens of a microscope. I distinctly remember being amazed to see the difference between sugar and salt on that scale, since they look so similar at a normal distance. Human hair was another object that was always fun to see on a microscopic level.


I find that same feeling goes with looking through a telescope. The first time I saw the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn with my own two eyes for the first time is something I'll never forget -- and those were sightings through a home telescope. I took astronomy during my freshman year of college, and we got to spend an evening gazing through the telescope on campus -- the largest in the state, and one of the largest in the world. Talk about mind-boggling! Seeing something with your own eyes that you've only read about in science books is pretty amazing.

Do you have a memory like this? Do you remember looking through a microscope for one of the first times, discovering an entire world under your nose? Or have you been amazed to see for yourself what in science books seemed so foreign?

Camera: Canon 40D with 60mm macro lens, 1/100s, f/2.8 at ISO 500 at about 5:30 p.m.