The weather outside is well and truly freezing, and already parts of the country are experiencing the first snowfall of the season. This morning alone saw Twitter flooded with photos of freshly white rural landscapes in Ireland and the UK. But anyone can point their smartphone at a pretty snowy scene - a little bit more effort is necessary to capture the truly spectacular photographs, but it's absolutely worth it.
On his blog, Russian photographer Alexey Kljatov has explained how he managed to capture a series of beautiful, close-up snowflake shots by using only a relatively straightforward setup. He writes, "I capture snowflakes at open balcony of my house, mostly on glass surface, lighted by LED flashlight from opposite side of glass, and sometimes in natural light, using dark woolen fabrics as background".
He achieves this using the standard macro photography mode on a consumer-grade Canon Powershot A650. His only major revision is the use of "a reversed 44M-5 Helios lens from an old Russian Zenit camera", which he added to the small camera using sticky tape, screws and a plastic bag. However, Kljatov's 'homemade' technique proves how, with relatively simple adjustments, any amateur photographer can produce pretty amazing photos. Even if you can't find a Zenit camera, similar old camera lenses could be adapted to achieve similar results.
You can see a sample of Alexey's work below, and make sure to click here and visit his whole gallery of snowflake photos:
Image source: Alexey Kljatov
