Nice render. I might have chosen a different angle though. The straight on view isn’t that interesting, especially when there’s nothing on the horizon.
I don’t remember a better realistic snow for Cycles! Thanks for sharing the setup!
Awesome piece of art indeed. And thanks for sharing that snow node setup!
Have to agree with harleynut97. This is gorgeous.
Wow! Great materials, I must say. I think the shadows on the snow should be much sharper, though.
Beautiful and very realistic. You did an awesome job on this!
Nice work.
Thanks for all your coments!
@Owldude, I’ve tried to keep all the light in the scene as realistic as it can get. I’m not sure if the shadows should be ‘so much’ sharper as you say. A little more… yes, then I would agree. 
As a beginner, I’m amazed that something like this is even possible. Wow!
It’s astonishing!
The snow looks so realistic. and I like the lightening.
awsome details !
This has inspired the heck out of me 
In particular (though I’m sure it’s blindingly obvious to those with more experience), when I read how you used the geometry vectors to determine where to apply snow to the trees I had a crazy eureka moment. I didn’t realize such a thing was possible, but now that I see how you’ve done it I am thinking of a zillion ways to apply that technique.
Thanks for opening my mind
Very realistic! I’ll have to try that snow, now that you shared the nodes.
Thanks for that!
How did you made all those planes on the trees for the snow actually. Did you come the tree and deleted all bottom parts manually?
The snow really is nice - some of the best I’ve seen. My only (very slight) quibble is that it seems to me the background blur is either a bit much, or perhaps that the depth of field should be shallower so that some of the modeled trees in the back of the scene are a little blurrier. Regardless, it’s a beautiful scene!
Its all done in the shader. I’ve used the Z value from the normal vector with some noise, to mix the branch shader with the snow shader.
This results that faces facing up get the snow shader, but faces facing down will not. Post #14 has a screenshot of the nodes.
@spotlope, yes, there’s a bitmore blur there than it should be, I tried first with a more detailed background, but didn’t like it… 
Aha okay thanks, i see if i can mimic this and get it to work perhaps. I thought youve added extra geometry like on the bench in the front. Now when i pay good attention in cant see this on the branches. Would be very tedious work to do so i think
Can’t add much to what has already been said. All true, great piece.