Wilson Bentley (pictured) took the first known photograph of a snowflake by attaching a bellows camera to a microscope.

Wilson Alwyn Bentley, also known as Snowflake Bentley, was an American meteorologist and photographer, who was the first known person to take detailed photographs of snowflakes and record their features. He perfected a process of catching flakes on black velvet in such a way that their images could be captured before they either melted or sublimated, and elaborated the theory that no two snowflakes are alike.

A snowflake is a single ice crystal that is large enough to fall through the Earth's atmosphere as snow. Snow appears white in color despite being made of clear ice. This is because the many small crystal facets of the snowflakes scatter the sunlight between them.

A view camera is a large-format camera in which the lens forms an inverted image on a ground-glass screen directly at the film plane. The image is viewed, composed, and focused, then the glass screen is replaced with the film to expose exactly the same image seen on the screen.