"Friday" Fractal XXVI

My apologies for getting the fractal out a day late, and for keeping it simple. Just as soon as I started to get caught up with things, I caught a nasty little cold. So, here are the basics-I'll get back to more detailed posts as soon as my head clears. Thanks for your patience!

i-d292bfb05f8baf7e91602455274f6cce-closesf.jpg For this fractal, I chose to forego the typical Mandelbrot or Julia sets, and stick with a pure fractal coloring algorithm. I use "fractal Brownian motion" to color the fractals rather often, as the stochastic patterns lend themselves well to fuzzy patterns in nature, from fog and clouds to ripples in the Great Sand Dunes. In each of these cases, nature seems to prefer the edge of chaos; patterns which are almost entirely random... but not quite. The patterns created by fBm, from a distance, seem no different than the random "snow" you see on an untuned TV set. Yet, when you look closer, or use a 3-D perspective, as I did here, the patterns seem to fall into familiar drifts:

i-0858ee7b3c944fdf73c96598af535399-snowyfractal.jpg

At that point, the fractal resembles a different sort of "snow"--like fresh powder, fallen on a hillside in Colorado:

i-e6e91466c93fd6a292a19f13252d06c1-snowy.jpg

Freshly fallen Colorado snow.

As soon as I'm feeling a little better, I'll post more of the photos I've taken of this week's snowstorm. We had several inches fall early in the week, and it is snowing again as of this morning. As long as you aren't driving in it, and have a place to stay warm, it's quite lovely.

All images created by the author, fractals made using ChaosPro.

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