English: Newly fallen snow crystals glittering in strong direct sunlight on a window sill in Gåseberg, Lysekil Municipality, Sweden. The clear, transparent ice crystals act like little prisms and refract the sunlight into small rainbows.

On a day with perhaps the heaviest snowfall this winter (2017/2018), there was high humidity and a temperature of −8 °C (18 °F); this caused the formation of big spectacular crystals of about 3-4 mm in diameter. The weather was changing constantly, with patches of blue sky alternating with clouds and snowfall. That made it possible to photograph good quality crystals in strong sunlight. The camera zoomed in on the most “glittery” flakes, yielding strong reflected glints in the snow which you can see with the naked eye. Due to wind and flakes falling on the window sill, focus stacking was not really an option and only a few of the shots were eventually stacked.

Three external Hoya macro lenses were used, x1, x2, x4, all simultaneously for maximum effect. The camera had to be hand-held to track the glints; that was acceptable, given the amount of light on the crystal and the resulting time of exposure.