From scratch

Snowflake photo: From scratch (1024 x 768)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica).
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com.

This is another snowflake of my favorite type: simple hexagonal plate. This one was around 1 millimeter in diameter. Interesting: "scratch" across the crystal is symmetrical on both ends (it seems to be a part of it's pattern), and pattern elements at opposite sides of this scratch, though looks similar, have differences in size and shape.

This snow crystal was taken on glass background with multi-color LED back light, using additional lens Helios 44M-5, in january 2014, Moscow. 8 identical RAW photos was taken as short series and averaged to raise signal-to-noise ratio of this picture.

This snowflake before and after processing (please click to view in 1:1 scale on Flickr):

And here you'll find even more interesting hexagonal crystal - Cryogenia, captured right before this one, within same hour:

If you want to see more snowflakes, you can browse through all snowflake pictures.
Here you'll find snowflake photo wallpapers in numerous resolutions and screen proportions, up to Ultra HD 4K.
And here is article about snowflake macro photography.