Ice relief

Snowflake photo: Ice relief (1798 x 1349)

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

This is medium size snowflake (around 3 millimeters from tip to tip), with beautiful relief surface. I was lucky with lighting of this crystal, so all surface details are clearly visible. This snowflake have good symmetry, except for tips of the arms, and unusual center: this pattern of rings looks strange when compared to straight lines on the arms. Anyway, this crystal is one of my favorites from all catch of January 2015.

This snowflake was captured on sheet of glass, with LED back lighting, using additional lens Helios 44 as magnifier (you can see article about snowflake macro photography, if you are curious about macro setup and techniques i use). 12 identical RAW photos, captured as quick series, was averaged to boost signal-to-noise ratio and reveal subtle details of the crystal.

Different processing of this snowflake - in colder colors and with more free space around crystal:

Snowflake photo: Ice relief II (2400 x 1800)

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

And here you'll find third variant - post-processed crystal, transferred to clear black background; and another snowflake, High voltage / Gecko's paw, with same processing:

This snowflake also available as Ultra HD wallpaper:

If you want to see more snowflakes, you can browse through all snowflake pictures.