While going through photos from the past year, I also happened to find these ones from December 2012. We were on our annual Christmas tree hunt — just like we did this year — and I took these photos after my brother had cut down their Christmas tree.

It was a lot colder, and a lot snowier back then!

Sidenote: it's funny how old the camera design on iOS6 looks now only after such a short time.

I was going through some photos from the past year and found this one from last winter. Wow we had a ton of snow back then!

This was taken with Olympus OM-D EM-5 and the magnificent Voigtlander Nokton 17.5mm f/0.95 lens.

Other than some sharpening and a bit of cropping, this photo is pretty much straight out of the camera. I really love this lens!

While hiking around the Garmisch area, by far the coolest animals we met were these cows. They were roaming around the fields on a public road so I decided to take my tele-lens and get some photos – from a distance. But as soon as they saw me, they charged at me like a herd of zombies and had me surrounded pretty quickly. 

While I've met cows and other farm animals while growing up, I still find them really fascinating–and sometimes a bit scary–to be really close to. Luckily these girls were more interested in our company than our flesh or brains. After getting to know each other a little bit, and some one sided licking, we and these gentle monsters parted our ways.

The next day, after hiking at Eckbauer, we decided to try our luck with Alpspitze. We woke up to a similarly foggy morning and the weather report showed no signs of clearing skies. 

After a spooky cable car ride in total greyness, we reached the top and started our descent. On our way down we walked past many, what must have been, picturesque spots but only saw the grey fog that surrounded us.

Even though the weather wasn't what we had hoped for, we enjoyed the hike as we had good company, food, and the entire mountain to ourselves. 

About one third down we left our little mark on the side of the mountain <3

Few weeks back we visited my brother and his girlfriend in Munich. Our original plan was to go straight to the Oktoberfest, but before getting stuffed with beer and pretzels, we decided to do little mountaineering.

We booked a hotel at the top of GraseckBahn, and before settling for the dinner, walked to the top of Eckbauer. The weather wasn’t the best for sightseeing as we could barely see each other. The fog was actually so bad that we didn’t know we’d reach the top until we almost walked head first to the lift station.

I took this photo last weekend while visiting our summer cabin. As the air temperature drops faster than the temperature of the lake, it creates a mist that beautifully wraps the entire scenery.

If you look at closely, you can see the wood used to build the Midsummer bonfire on the small island. In two weeks time it will be as high as the trees and burn throughout the night. 

​I was looking through some of the photos I've taken during this spring and found this self-portrait I took right before we went sledding in Wallberg. It was taken about the same time as this photo.

I also shot a short video of the sledge run with my iPhone, you can check it out here.​