January 2009

2009 is the second winter in our house on the countryside. While the first winter was kind of well it was almost no winter at all 2009 we have seen a real winter. As I haven´t updated my website for a while I can say here that this winter lasted till end of March. Around christmas and new years eve there was not much snow at all but it was biting cold. But that changed in January. It started to snow right after the first day of the work on our patio and didn´t stop for almost 2 days. Of course that stopped the work and we were unable to continue until March. It snowed so much overnight that we became snowbound. This was the first time ever I was unable to go to work because of snow. Funny thing was that at the same time it only rained in Vienna so my colleagues didn´t believe me until I sent some pictures. I´m only 30 minutes away from Vienna but these 30 minutes can make a lot of difference.

The image shows my wife sitting in the dining room, waiting for the snowfall to stop. It didn´t. It snowed the whole day and in the evening out road looked like in image 2. On the third image you can see my wifes car ( on the right beside the litter bins ). We did not even try to grub it out. I had more than enough work to get my car ready to go to work.

Despite thestrong winter I tried to ride my mountainbike as often as possible on the weekends. The coldest conditions were around -7 degrees. This may not sound very cold but believe me it is if you are on a bike. So the last image snows my bike on such a cold but sunny day.

setting main shot: A-Mode: 1/40s@f8, 800ASA, 17-40L at 21mm

image 2: Nikon D300, A-Mode: 1/2s@f5.6, 1600ASA, 18-200VR at 18mm

image 3: Nikon D300, A-Mode: 1/50@f8, 200ASA, 18-200VR at 18mm

image 4: Panasonic FX100: 80ASA