Some likes and subscribes would make me happy. :O)
Paddle day
The day was going to be warm and the wind was going to be down. That meant it would be a good day to go down to Jenner for a paddle. I also wanted to practice my video making skills on the harbor seals so I took all my camera stuff. And I wanted to try out my lapel microphone to see how it works on the kayak, so I rounded up that too.
Boat ramp
The boat ramp was pretty busy so it took a bit to get on the water. At least everyone was nice and friendly.
I had to park the car in my special place as there where lots of cars in Jenner and Jenner doesn’t have many parking places.
White pelicans
Anyway I launched my boat and started paddling across the river when I spotted the white things up river, white pelicans. I decided to get some videos of them before going down to where the seals are.
On the way over to the pelicans I went by this great blue heron that was doing some fishing.
I got as close as the birds would let me and took some pictures and some video clips. They were eating the underwater weeds which they seem to like. I’m sure there are plenty of bugs and little fish and crabs and things in the weeds too
Pelicans.
And more pelicans.
River’s mouth area
From there I headed on down to the river’s mouth area to check out the harbor seals down that way.
I shot some photos and made some video clips of the seals.
Trouble
I noticed this red thing on the shore. I went over to read what it said but couldn’t’ make it out, so I took a picture of it so I could read it when I got home. HUMMMMMMMMMMM.
Federal low says I can go on the river anywhere I want so that sign wasn’t a legal thing, so it’s just as well I couldn’t read it as I did go on down past there.
The wind blow me fairly close to the seals once when I was concentrating on making a video and these seal people up on the overlook started shouting for me to get away and waving me away with their arms. Of course that caused some of the seals to bolt. I know my seal rules and know how close I can get to satisfy the law.
I hollered back that the shouting was scaring the seals. They had to think about that but kept waving. I waved back a hi which really confused them. :O)
Anyway I didn’t leave just because they said to. Their hearts are in the right place but they go overboard. The seal colony is a matured one and doesn’t’ need protecting and like I said they scare the seals more than anyone, shouting as they do.
Shooting video clips
I shot some more video clips of the harbor seals.
Don’t they look like some lazy bums.
Big orange ball
After I got all the video clips I thought I needed, I headed on back when I saw this guy with the big orange ball. I stopped to ask him what the heck that was for. It turned out some state park life guards were trying out for a swim test. They were all done so he was headed in with the big ball.
I went over and shot some more video of the white pelicans but the camera’s battery was dying so those didn’t come out.
Boat ramp
Headed on in to the boat ramp.
There were two state park police at the boat ramp so I stopped to chat with them as I know a lot of the park guys now. I didn’t mention the run in with the seal people. They were in the park when we had the forest fire there a couple years ago so we had a lot to talk about.
Once home I worked at putting the video clips together to make this video of todays action.
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
