To answer your question, Lonnit : IS lens can be wonderful thing! :) And good luck probably helped too. I think the slowish shutter speed was neccessary for this image to work at all. Post processing was conversion to b&w and contrast adjustment.
Lovely how the snow gives it the look of the pencil sketch PS effect. You can just feel the cold here. Well done. How is it this sharp at 1/30 in that wind? !!! ~ Lonnit