The land looked wintry but I could feel that the end of winter was near when I pressed the shutter release button on this February day. The end of the winter was also the end of my mother’s life. I last saw her in December, at the end of autumn.

The last light fades in the Upper Austrian “Voralpenland”. Sadly, in more ways than one.

I take the sunshine on New Year’s Day as an exceedingly good omen for the year ahead. There will be love, warmth, sunshine, adventure, fun, satisfaction, success and happiness. Happy 2013!

Craving snow is wishful thinking in this country but frost, that we do exceedingly well. This is how the world greeted me on this December morning. The heavy frost on the trees and in the landscape crafted a sublimely delicate and almost monochrome arrangement.

The world looked beautiful this morning with the fog casting a mantle over the first frost of this autumn.

As I stumbled out of bed and staggered along the first floor landing with my mind fixated on my daybreak duties, I was greeted by the waning sickle moon rising over the Wiltshire countryside on this frosty, last day of winter.

The weather this morning – the temperatures as balmy as if it were spring already yet the rags of fog suggested a different season – inspired me to revisit my Austrian fog photographs.

To the photographer, fog is nature’s equivalent to lingerie – you can only imagine the details that you suspect are there but cannot see clearly.

The latest instalment from the life of a photographer. When winter and spring came in one day, stripping off in the snow and in public was mysteriously inevitable and intensely liberating. If you are too easily shocked, look away now.

An early February winter sunrise in the pastoral English countryside.