by frost fractals
Sunday morning’s visual treat was to find our unheated solarium skylights covered over in the most beautiful and intricate frost patterns. I think this complexity is rare here on the west coast. It had been raining very heavily for several days, but cleared and became cold overnight. Notice some leaves trapped in the frost in the lower photos. The bottom photo (below) is taken of the roof glass on the outside, notice how thick the ice is. The sun’s rays quickly melted all away, a fleeting art installation.
“Mathematicians explain that both ferns and frost are fractals — self-replicating patterns — which makes them no less mysterious.” from Frost Smitten
Dr. Universe explains why frost on a window looks like plant life (leaves, ferns and such).
With this display of Jack Frost’s art, the mountain tops white with snow and the forecast calling for more cold weather and possible flurries, I’m now feeling in the Christmas mood. Is it because the first half of my life was spent in places with real winters?
December 5, 2004 in Nature, Photoworks by Marja-Leena
Did you take those photographs? They’re gorgeous! I’ve always been facinated by the patterns made by frost as well. We get a lot of hoar frost here and I took a lot of photos of it that actually turned out but then the disc they were on got corrupted. I was very sad and I’m just hoping we’ll get some more this winter.
Anyway, your images are beautiful! Thanks for sharing.
Ah, yes. The true artist sees beauty everywhere. These are lovely.
Thank you, Elise and Tom! We took over 30 photos and it was hard to choose the best, which still aren’t as beautiful as the real thing. I took the first two and my husband took the third one by climbing on a ladder, opening the venting skylight and sticking his head and camera hand out.
I love hoar frost too! With warmer winters here in the past decade it hasn’t occurred in a long time.
Just think what wonderful artistic inspiration in these designs. They need to be captured in glass in some way. You could make a forture! 😉
Hi Tabor, welcome to my blog!
Inspiring indeed, yet maybe it’s the ephemeral in nature’s artwork that would be very hard to capture. Even the camera could not do it full justice, or maybe the photographer 🙁
These are beautiful!