I started doing the most important materials of the scene, the black wood of the museum and the snow. Both take up enough space of the image, are affected and affect the lighting different ways. I also modeled the kamakura lamps in the snow.
I picked an HDRI for my chosen time and set the lights in their real positions, set up the vray physical camera and did a test render to see if the actual lamps were enough for the scene, or I would need to put some false lighting to get to the mood I wanted. I was satisfied with the initial result and decided to continue on this path, only slightly changing the settings of the camera to brighten the image a bit more and add a lamp post to the back of the scene for aditional detail.
For now I will work on improving the wood material (adding randomness and better reflections to improve the level of detail seen on dark places), the grass poking on the snow and mask the frozen area of the stairs (now she is fully frozen).I also noticed that the wood facing the camera was too dark and decided to reinforce the lighting in the stairwell.

11.30 hours from the beggining.
Modelling is almost finished. The next step is setting up shaders

After the modeling is almost done , and the camera position is set .
I intend to move forward and start with materials and lightning .
Hope to make my ideas get shape until the end of the month .