Russian photographer Alexey Kljatov presented the world with the most amazing macro snowflakes photos. My Design Week shows you the technique behing these great shots, in his own words.

The raw material – he used a $50 lens taped to his camera, a Canon A650.

Technique: use the ‘camera-structure’ above to capture the snowflackes in his house’s balcony, mostly on glass surfaces, “lighted by LED flashlight from opposite side of glass, and sometimes in natural light, using dark woolen fabrics as background.”

“On a floor of a balcony I put the turned stool (legs up), on them – a glass plate.”

“From a small plastic bottle I cut central cylindrical part in the form of a tube (height 5.5 cm). This height I picked up so that the lens of the camera, pushed in a tube, will be at distance 1 centimeter from the bottom.”

“I shoot in small series with starting delay 1-2 seconds after focusing, taking away my hands off the camera. With free hand i illuminate snowflake with flashlight from under the glass. The flashlight shines through two layers of white plastic bag for more uniform lighting. This is enough for shooting even at night with minimum ISO and short exposure time.”

The result: “postprocessed snowflakes, cropped from full 12mp shots, mix from 2009-2013 years.”

Source: Abduzeedo and Joes Daily.