January was a great month. Work in the office started at 10th of January and on 15th I headed to the austrian alps for a 1 week cross country vacation. So I had a lot of time to take images and I even foudn the time to renew the design of my website. On 21th it started to snow in the mountains and on the 27th winter came to Vienna. Within 24 hours more snow has fallen in Vienna than on any other day in the last 36 years. As Vienna is a 2 million people city and not used to lots of snow there was a lot of chaos. But I liked it because I really love the winter and the snow. I turned 36 these days and this was like a great birthday present for me.

I played tourist and took a lot of images in the inner city of my hometown Vienna with the D2H and with my new Sony T3. I photographed closeups in the butterfly house. I took a lot of birdshots after the big snow in Vienna and finally I spent a week in Ramsau ( Styria ) where I shot XC-races and the beautiful landscape in the alps.

I took appr. 5.000 images this month and that´s why choosing the one and only picture for January wasn´t easy. Finally I reduced my selection down to an image of Vienna taken with the Sony T3 and a shot from the XC-races - and I took the sport shot.

Instead of waiting for the winner at the finish line ( which was in deep shade ) I prefered to took my images on this spot where the skaters run over a little bridge. The Torstein, a nearly 3.000 meters high mountain, played the perfect background. I shot nearly wide open the blurr the background and keep the focus on the action.

settings: A-Mode, 1/6400@f4, Exp.Comp.: -0,7stops, at 200mm, VR off, 200 ASA, WB in Capture