24 Ice and Snow Formations: From Frozen Bubbles to Lake Michigan Lighthouses

A bubble, a curled sheet and a spiral roll can all look like little winter sculptures. Their shapes are inviting, but they should not be given one catch-all explanation simply because snow or ice appears in the frame.

Start with the material and the support

A freezing soap bubble begins as a liquid film. Its appearance develops differently from a layer that formed against a solid object, or from snow that rolled into a cylinder. Our freezing-bubble feature looks at the first process through a credited video and research.

The large spiral is visually distinct from a thin coating that has pulled away from a surface. However, the photographs alone do not establish whether every shape was entirely natural or assisted by a person. The supplied copies need that uncertainty preserved.

Enjoy the detail without adding a false record

Unrelated claims about record hailstones do not help explain these images and have been removed. The more interesting comparison is how each form keeps traces of its starting material.

For repeated patterns around ordinary objects, explore ice on fences and trees. For ice moving at a much larger scale, watch the Lake Winnebago ice shove.

The twenty-four subjects restored to the collection

The full selection begins with frozen bubbles, Baikal ice, folded snow and flower buds, then moves to Lake Michigan lighthouses, ice blossoms, frost resembling lace and frozen lakes. Flowers, a tree, a fence and a pond follow. These are different subjects at different scales, not four interchangeable close-ups of ice.

The later images include a Chinese freezing-rain scene, berries, a pine branch, Arctic frost flowers, grass, an apple tree, the playfully titled “Fudgesicles,” more coated grass, rabbit-like frost forms, an icicle-covered bush, a snow roller and a leaf. Naming the sequence restores the range of the original twenty-four-part gallery.

Surviving credits include Alexey Trofimov, João Paglione, Robert Felton, Chip Phillips, Norman A. Bolduc, Svetlana Kazina, Adam Rifkin, Matt Stearns, Cindi Girard, Mark Adams, Alex Lau and Miranda Granche. A hosting-site credit such as Imgur is retained as supplied but does not identify an otherwise unknown photographer. The most useful comparison is how each image uses a familiar support—plant, building, fence or water surface—to make the winter formation readable.