Winter is coming

Snowflake photo: Winter is coming (2048 x 1536)

Prints available at Artist website (mirrors at Pixels and FineArtAmerica), RedBubble.com, Society6.com.
Licenses for commercial use - at Shutterstock.com, Marketplace.500px.com.

This is another fernlike dendrite snow crystal from previous winter. This snowflake was not too large for it's type, around 5 millimeters from tip to tip. The only challenge with this photo was painting complex mask, which separates snowflake from background (painting these masks is the part of my usual snowflake workflow: they used to process crystal and surrounding background with different methods, and these masks need to be very precise).

This snowflake was captured January 2014 in Moscow, on large sheet of glass with LED back light, using Canon Powershot A650is and additional lens Helios 44 (mounted in front of camera's built-in optics for way better magnification than standard macro mode). 8 identical RAW source photos was taken as quick series, and averaged for better signal/noise ratio of final image.

I think, this is most traditional-looking snowflake that i've processed so far (or, maybe, this is another snowflake - Asymmetriad):

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.