A quiet night, a stack of books, a tuna melt on rye

You wouldn't believe what we finally got pics of.



Just happened today, so this one is still relatively fresh out of the camera. I did do some post, but I think I need to tweak it more. Not too windy, just cloudy: it's been a lot of rain and snow here and there and the day before was worse (ironically they said there were like 70 of them out there on that day compared to today's 40).

It's snowing, cold and windy to boot. Tried to get some fog in Asbury Park and instead got dangerously cold from freezing rain and strong winds. We've been trying to catch these guys outside though.

The only thing about these is that I think 80% of the shots are basically this, so not sure how much I'll share, but if you're interested let me know and I can show you how furry these guys are (the 100% images emphasize their fluffiness).

Teleconverter came in.

Okay, it came in like a week prior, but still. It's in. Reviews have said it's not officially supported for the 3-to-6 (300-600 f/4) so use at risk. I did a test with it at home in manual focus in case of any glass impact and it cleared without a problem. Other photographers said something very similar. Image quality is really solid despite the extra elements. Viltrox has found ways to turn me into more of a fanboy.

Speaking of which, dinged my fucking 35mm during a lens change, I'm so mad at myself for even letting that happen. It was in sand at least so a lot of the impact was reduced but fuck me I am going to bubble wrap my gear if I can't figure out a smarter technique when juggling my gear around.

On Friday, Michelle has been tracking the Sandy Hook Facebook group to better gauge when the seals pop in and determined that the seals do not come in right before low tide but a time before that. She said it was a risk, but if we try to get there two hours prior, we might see a seal.

So here's the catch: low tide is at 5pm and rain was scheduled to come... at 6pm.

So under Michelle's calculations, there is a chance we'd see some seals if we pop in around 3-4, right before sunset.

So, one 30 minute drive later and we were the only ones standing around their favorite spot looking for the seals.

And we saw them! We saw them at 4:45pm, finally making landfall right as it was becoming near-impossible to see them, lol.

I did get to field test the 3-to-6 teleconverter combo at least. It works, though the focus range takes some getting used to, but it's very promising.

But also any images we have of these seals is at unusable ISOs, so not much in the way of our progress lmao

Aside from this,

My head is still in holiday mode, meaning I am having a hard time getting myself back into workaholic mode. I'm not saying this as a way to say "I hate my job" (this is still the best place I've worked at so far), but I am saying I'm annoyed at myself for taking this long to getting myself to wind up. At least I had a meeting with the boss and gave her a laugh when I talked about that Niagara trip.

Yesterday was relentless rain in cold weather which, seen it, done that, so spent it at home and did some chores, worked on a model kit. Not much to write about.

I'm chronologically parsing through photos and made it to Niagara Falls. There's a lot here, obviously, and a fair share of it not that good; mostly tourist shots but snapshot stuff so fairly boring by my standards. There's good stuff in here though, just... ironically not too many in the places where I paid for it lol

I'll set up a photo post before I step out.