The Mind Creative NOV-Dec 2016

with the initial photograph.
He felt he could improve the
contrast and enhance the
detail if he presented the
crystal against a dark
background. To do this, he
painstakingly scraped away
the dark emulsion
surrounding the snow crystal
image from a duplicate of the
original negative using a
sharp penknife and steady
hand. The altered image was
then carefully placed upon a
clear glass plate and then printed, giving it a dark background.
Even after years of practice, this post-production process often
took as long as four hours for a complex snow crystal.
With 70-75 photographs per storm and notes on the
conditions under which they were collected, Bentley accrued a
considerable understanding of snow. In 1897, he became
acquainted with Professor George Perkins, a professor of geology
at the University of Vermont, and they prepared the first paper
on snow crystals published in the May 1898 issue of Appleton’s
Popular Scientific entitled “A Study of Snow Crystals.”
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