A short followup to my travel woes that I wrote about the other day....

It took almost three days, but I was finally able to get through to United Airlines today, to reschedule my trip back home to Japan. I'd originally been scheduled to visit a dear friend with a two-day stopover in Milwaukee, but that had to be canceled when United decided it would rather use the plane that was supposed to service Cleveland to instead service its hub in Chicago. (Probably a smart business move that benefits the most people, but the short end of the stick is the short end of the stick, and that's what I got in this case.) The best they could come up with is a flight to San Francisco on Friday, and then from there to Japan on Saturday.

I asked what I'm supposed to do in San Francisco between the 11pm arrival and the 11am departure; the lady said sheepishly that I could just stay at the airport. Sigh. I went and booked my own hotel. My flight was not canceled due to weather, but because United felt like using the plane elsewhere, so they should have covered the hotel, I'd think.

At least I'm “stuck” in a comfortable place at my folks' place here in frozen Ohio, helping out around the house between trying to call the airlines and taking pictures of frozen birds. So many thousands stuck at airports had it so very much worse. I'm only out two hotel nights, and I missed meeting friends I'd not seen in a decade, but I can remedy that with another trip when it gets warmer.

Continued here...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/1250 sec, f/4, ISO 2000 — image data
Target Acquisition

I was supposed to be visiting a dear friend in Milwaukee today, but the cold snap hitting most of The States created havoc with the air system and so I'm still at my folks' place in Ohio (where at the moment it's -12°F / -24°C with strong gusty wind). So today between trying to (and failing to) contact the airline to figure out my schedule, I tried shooting the birds out on the back deck again, as I did the other day. It was cold.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/4000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 4000 — image data
Peanut
targeted and locked on

I was in all-manual mode today, with both focus and exposure. The Voigtländer 125mm has no autofocus, and I can't trust the automatic exposure with it because the copy I'm using has had a CPU added with limited success (similar to the problems I had when I tried adding a CPU myself), so today I went all manual.

I explicitly wanted a fast shutter speed to mostly (but not completely) freeze wing movement.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/5000 sec × 3, f/2.5, ISO 2500 — image data
Absconding With The Loot
three-frame composite, 1/10-second separation

I tried something different for some of the shots today: instead of focusing on where the birds were, I tried to focus on where they would be, then hoped to get the double luck of them actually going there, and of me actually snapping the shot at the precise moment they were there.

Smashing the 10 frames-per-second shutter helped with the “preciseness”. In the shot above, notice that the focus is not on the peanut, but a bit beyond, and so it's the second “frame” that's in focus.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/5000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2500 — image data
Peanut Ballet

Did I mention that it was cold today? The first time I went out in the morning it was a relatively toasty 15°F (-9°C) with a light snow and no wind, but still plenty chilly for the birds...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1600 — image data
Fluffy

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1600 — image data
Monochromatic
except for the finches: goldfinches and house finches
オウゴンヒワとメキシコマシコ

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1600 — image data

As before, the finch feeder was crowded and offered a lot of birds coming and going...

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1600 — image data
Goldfinches

Desktop-Background Versions
1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600  ·  2880×1800

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1600 — image data
Sorta' Successful

My new focus idea (focusing where I thought they'd fly) needs some work... it rarely worked, and when it did I'm not sure it was worth it. The shot above seems to suffer from bad focus and motion blur even at 1/1250 of a sec.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2000 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1250 — image data
Another Successful Failure

Part of the problem was that the lens is manual-focus only, and is only 125mm. I would have liked the 70-200mm for this. Another part of the problem is that my fingers were freezing; the temperature was dropping like a rock all day (dropping 25°F so far today).

I couldn't be out there on such an inhospitable day and not feed the birds (as we're apt to do, as seen earlier with Anthony, on my laptop, and in close up), so I threw snacks to the woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches, and bluebirds.

If I didn't throw the snacks to them, they'd come looking, and I could use this to my advantage by leaving a worm on my knee and trying the “focus a bit beyond” technique and hope to get lucky.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2000 sec, f/4, ISO 2000 — image data
Not Lucky
focus is an inch or so behind the worm

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2000 sec, f/4, ISO 2000 — image data
Not Lucky
especially for the worm; focus is an inch or so behind the worm

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/2000 sec, f/4, ISO 2000 — image data
Lucky
focus is an inch or so behind the worm

It was cold. Did I mention that? By this time it was about 6°F (-14°C). My fingers were painfully cold within minutes of going out, despite wearing gloves.

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 400 — image data
Bluebird

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 2000 — image data
Downy Woodpeckers

Nikon D4 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 cropped — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.5, ISO 800 — image data
Skittish

This bluebird hovered (as best a non-hummingbird can) for a short time checking me out.

I suppose I'll try again tomorrow... both photographing the birds, and contacting United Airlines.

Well, that's a bummer. The forecast was for some bad weather overnight, so I thought I'd be smart and get a hotel near the airport to avoid having to drive up tomorrow for a 2PM flight out of Cleveland, but as soon as I got into my room at the hotel and checked tomorrow's flight, I found out that my flight for tomorrow (Monday) was canceled and reschedule for Thursday(!), but that's only the domestic part... my flight back to Japan seems to have disappeared.

My mom had just dropped me off, but I didn't have a way to contact her to come back and bring me back home, so I'm stuck here until after the weather clears. At least I've got a nice hotel to pass the time in. It's forecast to be an actual -15°F / -26°C tomorrow, with a windchill of -40°F (which is also -40°C).

I tried calling the airline (United Airlines), but they're understandably overloaded, and the phone system won't even let you wait on hold. I took the shuttle to the airport thinking I'd talk to someone there, but a chat with a stranded traveler in the shuttle convinced me not to bother, so I came back to the hotel.

I told the front desk that if they get full and someone's desperate enough to want to share a room, the extra bed in my room is open. I hope no one needs it.

Update later in the evening

Watching the radar, the line of approaching snow actually started to recede a bit, delaying the worst of the problems, so my mom came to pick me up and now I'm at my folks' place again. I don't know when I'll get out, but it's sure a lot more relaxing to be here! I still haven't been able to contact United Airlines, but saw on their web site that they'll waive all fees and any fare increases for adjusted schedules, which is very nice. I'll see how things look tomorrow and go from there.

Update the next morning

Cleveland has so far been spared the worst of the snow, and some flights are getting out. If one believes United's web site (which one should not necessarily do), half the flights from Cleveland to Chicago have long waitlists, and half have no waitlist. Seems unlikely.

I did find my transpacific return to Kyoto in United's online system... according to my current reservation as shown on United.com, they have me flying into Milwaukee on Thursday and then leaving for Japan, uh, the day before. Not sure how that's supposed to work.

The whole point of stopping by Milwaukee on the way home is to see my dear friend and best man at my wedding Ram Kulkarni, so I've been trying to find a way to get to Milwaukee or Chicago today, but United.com's system says that I have to actually talk to an agent to update my reservation, and when I call, after playing phone-menu hide-and-seek for a minute or so I'm so far invariably met with “I'd like to transfer you to an agent who can assist you, but unfortunately, due to high call volumes, all our agents are currently busy. Please call us back at a later time. Goodbye.” (Click the link to hear to audio. The intonation of the final “goodbye” is somehow teasing, as if daring me to waste more time.)

Update the second morning after

I tried first thing this morning, and actually got onto the hold queue. A moment after the on-hold music started, there was a quick and quiet additional message: “your hold time will exceed sixty minutes”. Doh! I appreciate being told. I'll try again later.

I eventually did get through: Continued here...

Bunch of Goldfinches
Google “Auto Awesome” Version

The other day I posted some Goldfinch photos that I took on my folks' back deck. I included that post's lead photo on my Google Plus “Select Blog Photos 2014” photo album, where I put a photo or two from most of my blog posts.

Google Plus has an “Auto Awesome” feature that can automatically do things to copies of your photos if you opt in, and in this case it decided to add the snowfall to a copy of the goldfinch photo. It's a simple snowfall animation that repeats every 4/5th of a second. Simple but nice.

They've since done it to other photos, but it gets old quickly, so I'll just share this one.

FWIW, I also have “Select Blog Photos” albums for 2013 and 2012. Each is sort of a quick photogenic snapshot of my blog for the year.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/8000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 — image data
Air!
Anthony at Grandma and Grandpa's, Jan 2013

The pictures of snow play I posted earlier today of my brother and his family reminded me that there's much from last year's trip here to Ohio that I still have not posted. At the time I'd done one Snow Play post, so I guess today is a followup.

These pictures of Anthony (age 10 at the time) sledding in the back yard are from exactly one year ago today.

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/6400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 — image data
Building a Ramp
with tender love and care

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/8, ISO 100 — image data
On Approach

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/200 sec, f/8, ISO 110 — image data
Liftoff!
a split second before I jump out of the way

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/200 sec, f/8, ISO 100 — image data
Crash Landing
(he crashes on purpose because that's more fun than not crashing)

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/320 sec, f/8, ISO 100 — image data
All Part of the Fun

He gained confidence as time went... here's a shot from 10 minutes later; he seems much more composed....

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/8000 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 — image data
Smooth Expert

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — ¹/6400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 100 — image data
Proud Pilot