We all know that no two are alike. Nevertheless, seeing a snowflake super duper uber close-up is still breathtaking and these macro photographs by Russian photographer Alexey Kljatov will prove that.
These images of snowflakes and snow crystals were photographed in Moscow by Kljatov, who simply taped a $50 lens (an optics Helios 44M-5) to his Canon Powershot A650, a point and shoot camera, as shown below.
His 'processed' shots of the snowflakes are multiple shots averaged to boost signal/noise ratio and reveal subtle details. You can compare his source shots to his processed shots in the image below.
Alexy photographs the snowflakes and water crystals in two different ways. The first is to capture the snowflakes on the open balcony of his house, mostly on glass surface, lit by an LED flashlight from opposite a side of glass, as shown below:
The second way is to shoot them in natural light, using dark woolen fabrics as the background, as shown in the photos below:
The results are astounding. Just take a look at these 25, photographed on a grey wool background and taken in natural light.
images courtesy of Alexey Kljatov (aka ChaoticMind75 on flickr)
Alexey describes the process in his own words here
More and higher resolution photos of these macro snowflakes can be found at his Flickr account.
Medium size snowflakes, around 4 mm. 8 serial shots averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio. Background: dark woolen fabric, natural light (gray clouded sky), external optics Helios 44M-5, january 2013, Moscow