Winter

This image was created in serendipitous circumstances. I was out with my camera after a night of intense snowing in Vienna, Austria, it was quite early in the morning, because I wanted to capture the clean fresh white snow. I knew that the best chance to get a shot of a pure white snow blanket on the streets would be in the huge imperial gardens of the Schönbrunn palace. Once there I wandered through the narrow paths and alleys looking for the one with the least tracks and the purest snow. While doing that my attention shifted ever more from the snow to the leading lines that seemed unavoidable, so I decided to make those the main focus of the image. Long leading lines of black and white stretching into an infinite distance, fading into grey shapes felt like intensifying the feeling of penetrating cold and emptiness that surrounded me. The scenery was literally frigid, devoid of life, barren, a landscape too abstract for my liking. So once I picked my favorite spot I decided to stick around and wait. After about half an hour of trying not to freeze, this lonely old man crept out of a small side alley unto the main track I was focusing on. He was wearing a bright red jacket and that was the moment I knew I had the perfect element of contrast to create my image. A few moments later, as luck would have it, the old man stopped dead center on the snow covered path and stood there for a few moments, motionless, perhaps he too was taking in this moment of great emptiness, the vastness of the empty snow covered lanes stretching seemingly endlessly into the horizon. Unbeknownst to him, there was another who was there first, me!