mysteries of the upper air

"The mysteries of the upper air are about to reveal themselves, if our hands are deft and our eyes quick enough." ~ Wilson Bentley (1901)

The snow today brought to mind the fantastic photographic work of Wilson Bentley (also known as "Snowflake Bentley"), who in 1885 was the first person to ever photograph a snowflake. "Every snowflake has an infinate beauty," Bentley wrote in Popular Mechanics Magazine (1922). While Bentley worked under extreme conditions ~ he had to photograph in the cold, with only a few short moments to capture an image. I read somewhere that today a snowflake can be caught in Superglue, thus allowing the photographer more time to capture the image. For more information about Bentley, visit the Buffalo Museum of Science.