Alexey Kljatov describes his process and workflow:
This is macro photography of natural snowflakes. I do it with low cost variation of well-known reversed lens macro technique: my compact camera Canon Powershot A650 at maximum optical zoom shoots through reversed lens Helios 44M-5 (this is lens from old film camera Zenit, made in USSR). This gives much better magnification and details compared to standard camera’s macro mode. I shoot short serie of identical shots for each snowflake, and later average them (take arithmetical mean of all serial shots). This helps greatly with lowering noise level and revealing subtle details, unseen in every single shot (these details masked by noise). I use dark gray woolen fabric as background and only natural light, cloudy gray sky.
Images and text: Alexey Kljatov