Here are some more snow-play photos from the other day's "Fun Day of Snow Play, Snowflake Photography, and Birds", as my brother Alan and his family are also visiting my folks here in Ohio.

Titi is Anthony's cousin, and first made an appearance on my blog at about the same time she made an appearance in life, and then here, here, here, and here (probably among others).

I grabbed Mom for a photo as she was heading out somewhere...

Here's an interactive sequence of Alan diving onto the sled. The dive wasn't as epic as some that came later (such [...]

Today was fun.

My brother Alan and his wife Natalie and their 4¾ year old Titi are also visiting my folks here in Ohio, and we had a fair amount of snow.

Titi's day started with feeding the birds with Grandma (as regularly happens here) for an hour. It was cold (14F / -10C), so when they came in from that it was time for some hot cocoa by the fire...

I had a nice reaction to the "Goldfinches in a Light Snow" post the other day, so I thought I'd try some more bird shots. I ended up being [...]

My winter trip from Kyoto to where I grew up in Ohio was via Tokyo, and on the way to Tokyo from Kyoto we had a nice view of Mt. Fuji, and of course, one must take a photo. Unfortunately the pilot neglected to mention Fuji was just outside the window until we were almost completely past, so the photo ended up being through the window at a fairly strong angle. The result is ho-hum, but there it is.

As far as from-an-airplane-window photos go, I much prefer the shots in "View from the Window Seat" five years ago.

In [...]

Lots of goldfinches at the feeders at my folks' place in Ohio. During the summer they're brilliant yellow (as seen in "Goldfinches on a Feeder" a few years ago), but they're less vibrant during the winter.

I didn't bring many lenses on this trip... I would have liked the 70-200, but I made do with the Voigtländer 125mm and some cropping. Good birding pics are very difficult and I certainly don't have the skill, but these are fine for me.

The bush was just a staging ground for the feeders. They'd all cleared away when I stepped out, and were [...]

I popped down to South Carolina to visit my brother Alan and to join him in a road trip back up to Ohio, and on the flight last night I sat next to an off-duty pilot for US Airways who lives on a 250-acre farm in Ohio and commutes to his flight hub in Charlotte for work. We had a nice chat.

He knows nothing of Japan, and enjoys farming, so I thought I'd put a post of random "farming in Japan" photos for him. It's somewhat of a challenge to find appropriate (but still unpublished) shots among the 130,000 [...]