I live in  Korneuburg. This is a small town not very far upstream from Vienna, capital of Austria, an Alpine Republic in central Europe. The Danube River runs past Korneuburg and through Vienna.  The river has been highly regulated as it was a wild alpine river and frequently flooded towns and farmland. In our area the main stream is straight, but the side arms are left pretty much alone. There is some logging done and wild boar and deer are hunted in season and end up being served as tasty dishes in the Wirtshäuser of Vienna and environs. These are some Polaroids taken on a day in March '08. I was out pulling the camera around in a cart. I spent some 8 hours in the woods. It was a very pleasant day. I make Polaroid exposures to check composition and exposure (and to have something to scan).  Then I make two exposures on film. I develop the film in HC110B and Pyro and make proofs, but this activity can lag long after I've scanned the Pols.

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From some pictures I have been taking weekly at a local bog since Feb...the pathway through the bog is actually part of an old railroad corridor that has been turned into a snowmobile trail in winter, and a multi-use trail during the other 3 seasons (no ATVs)...amazing access to a habitat/landscape otherwise difficult to penetrate..."staring" in a sense at one place for a full year to see how my shots evolve. I make a simple triptych from each trip and am trying to build a set of pictures based around an entire year's worth of visits.

I have to admit that I took this one before Mark's Picture Window project, but it is also Close To Home, and I have been meaning to post it. This is one of the last snowfalls of the winter (March I think). The train car pictured is filled with rotting materials of some sort, and an old seat has been torn out and sits just behind it. I like finding remnants of the railroad sinking in the bog reclaiming it...found a dumping ground filled with old glass bottles/cans, train parts at varying points, stone supports of some sort along the corridor in spots, and this one train car.

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This is the brook that runs behind my house, but I took it a few 100 yards down the road on my way to work this morning. I love fresh fallen snow!

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This is out the back door, but really only gives a bit of the effect. There's something rather delightful about a blanket of leaves in the yard (until they have to be removed.) We've got a few trees around the house, and this is what they give us on a yearly basis. Even my brother-in-law, who has seen pretty much everything, was impressed with our annual crop of leaves.

A tad of Scheimflugin' to get the slope into focus. Sean, it must be contagious: I had to turn up the SATURATION slightly. Does this work at this size?

One thing I like about living in the country is the privacy. Our home is surrounded by trees and even when you look up; it's like a private screening of a favorite movie, or something. This photo is from earlier this year, when there was some discussion about a "Night Gallery". Tim

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 The last two weeks have been spent battling the worst cold and lung infection I've ever experienced, and now that I've gotten to the point where I have enough air to go for a walk, the temperature has dipped to minus twenty degrees Celcius. Actually, it's minus thirty when you factor in the wind chill (for Americans that translates as dangerously cold), so walking around with photo gear still isn't an option. Thus, I am forced to recycle a shot from August.

It's not uncommon to come over the crest of a hill in this area and find someone moving cattle. Normally I'm in a vehicle when this happens, but on this occasion I was on foot as I was out for an evening walk with my camera. These cattle seemed a bit spooky around people so I had to crawl through the barbed wire fence to the right and stay out of the way for ten minutes or so until the herd had passed.

In terms of being  "wildness close to home" that is my home that you see at the upper left of the image. This is what where I live actually looks like and it is far removed from the more exagerated images that I'm wont to post over at my site. This is me being honest for a change.

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After reading Mark's post earlier this afternoon, "A pre-hanging event", I couldn't help but do a hunting related post of my own in the "wildness" gallery.  From my office window I have a perfect view of my neighbor's old maple tree.  Last fall I sat down at my desk like I do every morning, took a sip of coffee, and paused to process the unexpected addition to my favorite tree.  Turns out my neighbor  uses this tree to hang his kill before butchering and processing the meat.  He believes strongly in eating what he kills, and I believe the "hanging" part of the process has something to do with draining the blood and improving the quality of the meat (feel free to correct me on this).  The same thing happened a few weeks later when a black bear appeared one morning in the tree.  Unfortunately that was prior to stumbling across "The Landscapist", so it never occurred to me to make photos of this event.  I may have missed my chance.  Turns out my neighbor refuses to bait what he kills as it is against his hunting ethic, and most bear hunting involves various types of baiting.  The bear was a first for him as well.  The above photos are of this fall's buck.

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More death and decay, and... eegad! photo manipulation! But I gotta do it anyway... 

Where do these guys go when their time's up? Into the wilderness, I suppose - composte heaven. 

click thumbs for big...Across from our house there are trails leading to Saranac Lake High School and various other parts of town.  I discovered these two abandoned sleds over the summer beside one such trail.  While taking these pictures last week, I also noticed an embankment about 200 feet off the trail with more discarded machinery circa 1970 and older...boats, cars, sleds and innumerable parts from all three are half buried and sliding down into the woods.  Aaron's photo and mention of snowmobiles in the previous post made me want to go through my pictures again and begin developing a series around these sleds/etc. rusting away in the woods behind our high school.

I have a few reasons for wanting to do this.  First, there's nothing more "wild" than snow measured in feet and machinery designed to travel over it at ridiculous speeds.  Second, debates over how sleds impact the wilderness ethic of the park are always raging here and also of interest to me.  But most important to me on a personal level, my friend and high school teammate was killed in a snowmobile accident about 7 years ago.  It's interesting to me how I react to all these "things" with a camera in my hand.