These extraordinary close-up pictures show a perfectly formed single snowflake moments after it settled on a snowdrop flower.

Wildlife and nature photographer Andrew Fusek-Peters captured the stunning images after a recent snow flurry.

He was taking pictures of snowdrops near his home in Lydbury North, near Bishop's Castle, when he snapped the snowflake using a powerful macro lens.

The jaw-dropping image revealed its unique hexagonal crystalline structure as it lay on the flower stem.

County Times:

Close-up pictures show a perfectly formed single snowflake moments after it settled on a snowdrop flower. Picture: Andrew Fusek-Peters / SWNS

Andrew, 54, said: “I was photographing the snowdrops, there are so many boring ones of snowdrops out there, and I wanted mine to be different.

“There was a little bit of snow on them and I thought, well, that's interesting.

“I put my macro lens on and just decided to go in really close to see if I can see what the snow looks like.

“I had absolutely no idea until the photo came out that that I had literally caught this six-starred crystalline shape of a snowflake on the side of a snowdrop.

“You can't ask for more than that can you?

“It was perched on the side of the flower and I cropped in a bit of the photo, but I wanted to keep the yellow of the snowdrop so you can really see this wonderful flower that comes out in January.

County Times:

“So you've got a bit of colour, you've got a snowdrop and you've got a snowflake. I'm very happy with it, it’s a really, really good capture.”

Mr Fusek Peters said they were hard to get due to how steady he had to keep his hands when taking them on Tuesday morning.

He continued: “It was really difficult because the photo is stacked. So that means the focus is stacked one on top of the other.

“So that's how you get the depth of field and that's why the snowflake is so sharp.

“Because I think I did this by hand, it's really difficult to photograph something like this.

“Luckily, the system I've got has image stabilisation.

“I'm an old git and I've got tremors and so to keeping everything still is quite an effort to do that.”