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Yesterday I posted about a bird feeding frenzy at the Kamo river in Kyoto, brought about by a couple with a big box of bread. Today's post is a sequence of nine shots of one event, spanning 11½ seconds....

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Heading for the Bread Zone
T minus 1.39 Seconds
(man is off camera right throwing big hunks of bread)

The kite (hawk-like bird of prey mentioned yesterday) looks as if it tried to grab something from the water, but came up empty handed. But just after this shot, a hunk of bread landed in front of the gulls...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Gull Scores a Bread
time zero

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Easy Come, Easy Go
T +0.56 seconds
Kite has taken bread from gull

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Is There No Honor Among Thieves?
T +1.6 seconds
( check out those drumsticks on the challenging kite! )

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/3200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Clean Getaway
T +3.0 seconds

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/5000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nya-Nya, I've Got The Bread...
T +4.6 seconds

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/8000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Coordinated Attack!
T +8.7 seconds
a big nasty crow also covets the bread

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/6400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
On Your Tail
T +9.8 seconds

I'll take the opportunity to point out again as I did yesterday that this was all manual-focus work. I'm really happy with the focus I maintained during this fast-action sequence.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/6400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
T +10.2 seconds

The kite eventually went into some trees, and the crow and another kite hounded him for a bit before losing interest. What's sort of funny about this is that I don't think the kites were really all that interested in the bread, once they found out what it was. Often I'd see them drop large chunks, perhaps after realizing that it's not the small rodent they thought it might have been. There were dozens of them riding flying in circles (I think “riding the thermals” is the proper phrase) and so perhaps each had to get a taste for themselves in order to lose interest.

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Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2500 sec, f/8, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Blustery Mountains
looking north up the Kamo river, from Nijo Street
Kyoto Japan

I've been busy with a project lately (which explains the lack of posts lately), but took the opportunity of having lunch in town with Zak to enjoy the walk from home. Crossing the Kamo River on the Nijo-Street bridge on the way home, I noticed that the mountains were still blustery from a snowfall we had last night, though it was mostly clear and sunny in town.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/8000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Avoiding the Crowds

I noticed a lone heron was standing in the water near the bridge, while a big frenzy of birds jostled for bread near some people on a sand bar further up river. Not having had anything else pique my photographic interest on the walk, I decided to venture down to see what the fowl hubbub was about. I moved upstream to the center of the stepping stones seen dotted across the center the shot above for a closer shot of the action...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/8000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 280 — map & image data — nearby photos
Frenzy

I had only my Voigtländer 125mm with me on the stroll, though I wished I had the Sigma “Bigma” as I did when I shot the heron fishing along this same river last fall, for its longer reach. If I would have had more zoom, I might have been able to get shots like this...

That's an extreme crop from the “Frenzy” shot, and as such the overall quality is poor; but considering the magnitude of the crop, the sharpness of the two birds in the lower right is more than acceptable. That really pleases me because I didn't hold out much hope for getting the birds in focus, at least when they were flying (in a frenzy, you know). Manual focus is enough of a challenge for me in the best of situations, so I thought to use the opportunity of the frenzied birds to practice a bit, and this is one of the shots where I nailed it (or, at least, got lucky).

But everything was still too far away, so I decided to abandon the stepping stones and walk further up the bank.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/8000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 560 — map & image data — nearby photos
Heading For the Action

As I got closer, I realized that the white birds (gull?) were for the most part just a hazy bee-hive of unspecific activity, but the kites (large predators like hawks) were the excitement. There were dozens flying and soaring aimlessly around... sometimes quite close... so I focused my practice (so to speak) on them.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/8000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Soaring

I'm sure I looked fairly comical (or drunk) trying to track the birds as they flew around, almost losing my footing near the edge of the river more than once.

Occasionally a kite would dip into the frenzy to see what's what, scattering the gulls gathered at the couple giving the bread...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 heavily cropped — ¹/2500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
My Turn
what the big bird of prey wants, the big bird of prey gets

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 heavily cropped — ¹/8000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Leaving With His Plunder
kite takes a bite of the bread while in flight

The shot above is pretty strange because the bird is reaching down to take a bite mid-flight, but from this angle it looks almost as if he's grabbing his own head. You can see it better in the larger version, but because this is a crop from a much larger frame, the sharpness is not there.

I did get one nice well-focused shot of a kite as it flew close by... here's about the only good uncropped shot I got...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/5000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Kyoto Kite
higher-resolution shot

The size of the bird in frame is about the same as in the previous shot, but if you compare the larger versions, the second is much sharper because its using the full resolution of the camera sensor, as opposed to the first which crops most pixels out.

In both cases, though, I was happy to have achieved reasonably good focus (of these fast-moving birds with a manual-focus telephoto lens) so I'll mark today in the win column.

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Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm @ 460 mm cropped — ¹/800 sec, f/8, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Viewing The Ocean From 10 Stories Up

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 50 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/11, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hotel “Aqua”
from a mountain behind it
at the edge of nowhere on Shoudoshima Island, Japan
( see Anthony in the lower-left of this shot? )

We took a short trip in the closing days of the year to Shoudoshima Island a few hours southwest of Kyoto (2.5 hours by car to Himeji, followed by two hours on a ferry). It's a small island (about 12 miles × 6 miles) in the Seto Inland Sea, west of the Awaji Island that we visit from time to time. Shoudoshima is known mostly for being the only place in Japan where olives are grown. It's extremely mountainous with the vast majority of its meager population sprinkled around the edges.

Considering its “near nowhere” location, our hotel was the improbably large and nice Hotel “Aqua” situated in a tiny fishing village below a dam.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — 4 sec, f/2.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
View From the Harbor

Our plans were sort of last minute, so Fumie was lucky to get the last room available, but in doing so we went a bit more pricey than we would have gone had we had more choice, but the room was really quite nice....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — ¹/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Main Level
bedroom, living room, kitchenette, vanity, bath

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — ¹/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Up to the Second Level

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Second Bedroom

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
From the Second-Floor Sitting-Room Window

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — ¹/30 sec, f/2.8, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Welcome

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — ¹/40 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Settling In

This suite of rooms was really overkill for us, but if we're going to spend the money, it's great to have something so nice. (As much as the room was, it was still 40% less than the crappy-quality crappier-price Tokyo Disneyland Hilton, so in that sense Aqua was a great value as well as a great experience.)

You have to be prepared for food before you arrive... if you want to eat at the hotel restaurant, you must order at least three days in advance. There are no restaurants or stores (or anything) nearby, but we found an old mom-n-pop market about 15 minutes away.

We had the hotel's Japanese dinner the first evening, delivered to our room. Each dinner consisted of three bento boxes, and the food was really top notch...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 36 mm — ¹/80 sec, f/6.3, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Dinner

We had breakfast in the tasteful restaurant the next morning...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24 mm — ¹/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 4500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Restaurant

... and the food was equally good. When you order (three days in advance), you have a choice of merely “Western” or “Japanese”. We stayed two nights so tried both, and both were good.

There's a cozy common room with free Internet, DVDs and books you can bring to your room, etc.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 28 mm — ¹/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Common Room

Unfortunately, it rained most of the time we were there, but the rain hadn't started yet early on the first morning, so I took a bunch of snapshots from the balcony. It turns out that even though they were taken fairly haphazardly over the course of a couple of minutes, I could make them into a simple panorama...

I'm not big on panoramas because to do one well takes quite a bit of skill that I don't have, so when on a whim I gave Photoshop's automatic stitcher a first try with a collection of nine shots from the balcony, I was amazed at how well it worked. “Automagical.” It was a gloomy scene and, like I said, the photos that went into it were taken haphazardly, so for all that the result is okay enough. I'll have to put some effort into good shots next time.

In the end, it's still a boring scene, but our view from the hotel was what it was.

Nikon D700 + Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm OS @ 500 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/6.3, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ready To Check Out
during the one bit of sun we had

We had sun the second morning, but it was really cold (colder than Kyoto to the north) and very windy. You can see patterns in the water in the second shot above, and the area of sudden blurring in the final shot... those are the effects of localized wind gusts. It was pretty to watch them dance across the water.

Continued here...

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Apple vs. Microsoft since Balmer's Bold Statement
graph via Google Finance

An article I read today included the author's speculation that:

“the Verizon iPhone is expected to add a few more billion dollars to Apple's bottom line”

“A few more billion dollars” would be big money to me, but it's probably not all that big a deal to a company the size of Apple (the 2nd largest company in America). Still, it brought to mind something Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer said in April 2007, a couple of months before the iPhone was released. In an interview with USA Today, Mr. Balmer said:

This bit of hubris is pretty funny, especially with the luxury of hindsight, but most of what he says is actually correct. Let's look....

• “They may make a lot of money” — Check. Apple can't rake it in fast enough. It's #1 in smartphone revenue. Stock is at an all time high.

• “... the 1.3 billion phones that get sold...” — Right on track. According to Strategy Analytics, 327 million phones were sold in Q3 last year, making for 1.3 billion per year. (A quarter of those, by the way, are “smartphones”, which is the only kind of phone Apple has.)

• “I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them” — Sure, of course, no one could doubt Balmer's wishful thinking; who wouldn't want that kind of market penetration?

• “... 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get” — Not too far off, relatively speaking. According to the same report as the previous bullet, Apple's Q3 sales last year accounted for 4.3% of global handset (all phones, “smart” and simple) sales.

But of course, it turns out that Microsoft didn't get anywhere close to “60% or 70% or 80%” penetration in the global handset market, or any other phone market, and so Balmer's hubris comes back to haunt him.

Even in the (much smaller, but higher-margin) “smartphone” market that the iPhone completely redefined, Apple is already the worldwide market leader. In the US smartphone market, Microsoft, who was passed by Apple in the fall of 2009, now doesn't even get mentioned in this article yesterday about US smartphone market share: Android and Apple are about equal at about 25% of the market each, behind RIM (makers of the BlackBerry) at 34%.

In the global handeset market that Balmer was talking about in the first place, Microsoft seems to not even rate a footnote.

Hubris is fine if it buys you something, such as a politician spouting confidence despite trailing in the polls in order to “rally the troops”, but it seems pretty stupid for Balmer to have been so proactively publicly confident in this case. The downside to being wrong (being made to look like a total doofus in his capacity as head of Microsoft) seemed pretty steep compared to the possible upside.

Anyway, I think the Balmer quote is funny and I've been looking for an excuse to highlight it, so this Verizon iPhone thing (which makes no difference to me in Japan, of course) seems a good enough time as any. Since that quote, Microsoft's stock has dropped a bit, but Apple's has almost tripled. Can you guess which I have at the moment? 🙂

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The flood of photo opportunities I enjoyed last November at the start of Kyoto's fall-foliage season began with a visit to the Kongourinji Temple in Shiga. I posted about it in “First Taste of Fall Colors” and “Deep Sorrow at the Kongourinji Temple's Path of Jizou”, but the aforementioned flood has kept me from following up with the main attractions from the visit.

The main stuff still awaits, but today's post moves us one step closer.

The path to the temple's main garden leads through an area that seems as pretty as a small garden in its own right...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm — ¹/8000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Side Gardenesque Area
Kongourinji Temple, Shiga Japan

I took that photo from the spot holding the first of the 1,000 jizou (地蔵) statues described in the previous path of jizou post...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm — ¹/1000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Temple's First Jizou

The tourists in the first photo add a human element that I tend to like, but it makes for a prettier desktop background without them, I think, so here's a version suitable for that...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm — ¹/8000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

Desktop-Background Versions
Standard: 1024×768  ·  1440×1080  ·  1600×1200      Widescreen:  1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

Some alternate views...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm — ¹/2500 sec, f/2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Backdrop For Cherry-Leaf Colors

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm — ¹/800 sec, f/2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
I Love These Duo-tone Leaves

Desktop-Background Versions
Standard: 1024×768  ·  1440×1080  ·  1600×1200      Widescreen:  1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 @ 24 mm — ¹/3200 sec, f/2, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Garden Entrance
that way

Desktop-Background Versions
Standard: 1024×768  ·  1440×1080  ·  1600×1200      Widescreen:  1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 @ 24 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 220 — map & image data — nearby photos
Garden Entrance
the old sign above the door seems illegible to me

The path continues inside the wall for a while before it opens up to the main garden. At first, it runs alongside a small stream...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 @ 24 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 360 — map & image data — nearby photos
Stream with Moss-Covered Footbridge

... and then next to a side entrance for the main temple building, in which it seemed a video crew was at work at the time...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm — ¹/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 900 — map & image data — nearby photos

I tried a shot zoomed up a bit, exposing for the leaves outside in the background, and after some heavy massaging in Lightroom got something, though I don't know what...

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/500 sec, f/2.5, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos

Continue around the corner, and the main garden opens up before you....

Continued here...