Why I Own Canoes and no Boat as Such

This keeps poking into mind, but I dismiss it, because my mind is made up. So go figure. Maybe it's telling me I should share it. But it's not as if I have any advice to help you, just a slice of my story for entertainment. The previous post today might be helpful, if you buy from Amazon.

Years ago now. A decade ago and more. I had a deep, deep longing to buy a boat. I would even keep it here in the lot. We have a Condo Association that forbids the likes, but back then, no one bothered. (Now they fine you if you put a tarp over your bicycle on your own porch.) Problem was, the highest amount I had in my savings those years was about $700.00. I had got back into getting articles published, but as yet, I was spending most of the earnings on outings. I remember paying as much as $135.00 for boat rental and bait at Dow's.

Since the middle of the previous decade, I've advanced my finances considerably, just by freelancing. Even so, it remains like a separate micro-economy. I get articles published for earnings as little as $30.00, and only a relative few pay as much as $700.00. Low figure payments matter essentially, though, because earnings build over time. But we're still not talking about very serious money.

But buy a boat? Since I buy $1500.00 lenses and the like, it's easy to see I can afford one, but I depend on my two canoes. And continue to rent from Dow's. And when we go to Florida, rent a big one. I like to go out in Fred's 14-foot V-hull, too. Storage fees would be outrageous and the distance from home a problem.

I prefer to spend money on photography. The three books of photos I've been planning on for at least the past six years--Lake Hopatcong, the Raritan River System, Round Valley--these may be no more than a pipe dream, but they motivate my picture taking. The way I see it, if I can recapture the words that sailed into my head while on the job at Shop Rite, investing more than 5500 dollars now in D850 photography--this figure does not include my many lenses--puts me on a adventure full of mystery, because there's really no telling how I may or may not profit, but at the very least, it does satisfy my addiction to the images I produce.

My wife's realism--I will not profit one iota. It's all for my own pleasure. My old Nikon D7100, which I haven't sold,, is good enough for the highest-end outdoor magazines. I paid 800 for that.

But I am obsessive. That answer just doesn't satisfy me. I've seen my own results from the D850, so I know I can get shots even editors of lesser magazines have salivated over,. I can never get close to  these with my D7100. I have to pay high price to satisfy what I see, but why not? I earn the money.


Adventure in the Underground Economy

Everyone Buys Amazon so Beware

Tuesday night, I weighed choice between buying a subscription to Microsoft Office 365 or buying Office 2019. Two choices, the latter. A download or a key. In the process of search, I clicked on "key" in Amazon, which I later recognized was a mistake. I was simply curious about what Amazon might inform me. Well, not enough. I drove to Best Buy to talk to real people.  I had bought my new Asus laptop through Best Buy. There I saw 2019 with the key for $249.99, (I would have just installed my old 2013, but I hadn't uninstalled it from my former computer, now partially dismantled.) On Amazon, the key version was $218.99.

I regretted not buying from a real store. Giving them my business,. But 32 bucks. To me, that's a lot.  I got home and told my wife all about my encounters and the price, and she said, "That's why Best Buy is going out of business. Everyone buys Amazon."

In the meantime, I joined a few photo forums and posed questions about any advantage of One Drive 1T for D850 photography. (Office 365.) I judged the advantages are dubious at best. The Publisher feature might have come in handy if no commercial publisher cares about my book, but I see I can buy it separately for like $59.99, and besides, other applications for sale might be better.

So. I went to Amazon to place my purchase, saw the price had gone up to $249.99, and immediately remembered that moment I clicked on "key" the night before. I felt certain they had raised the price on me. I searched and searched for a better price. I certainly wasn't gong to fall for a knock-off or malware "tech" support, but I did find one seller that seemed aboveboard, though I would have to wait on shipping. (We have Amazon Prime.) I judged that I've grown up enough not to rely on a seller I can only judge seems OK.  I play it fast and loose with inexpensive fishing tackle, and so far, have not been ripped off, though I've waited as long as a month to get items. It's different with software. I really want to be certain what I'm installing on my computer is good. (I once bought a $1500.00 Nikon lens from a Manhattan seller Ken Rockwell does not recommend for $1199.99, and it works perfectly OK, but my days of taking chances like that are done, I hope.)

I tried to switch to my wife's account. Didn't have her password. She was asleep. It was not worth $32.00 to wake her.

I bought it. Recounted this to her minutes ago. Immediately, she said, "They raised the price on you. You need to go to a computer with a different IP address. Wouldn't have mattered, had you switched to my account."

"I could have gone to the library."

"Yes, and accessed your account there....But you would have got it a day later."


How's the WH?

A Big Slowdown

Hoped to take my laptop in today to have files transferred. The new Asus with a solid state drive has arrived, but I find what I've read about installing Lightroom on the new computer challenging, and want to go over it with my wife, who is better technically skilled than I am.

I just got off the phone with Nikon USA. On it for more than an hour. I went to Round Valley with my wife on Sunday, and found my refurbished D850 doesn't focus. In the process of technical support, I also found it doesn't even select proper ISO and shutter speed automatically. I did learn, before I made the purchase, that Nikon has no return policy, only warranty service. Had I paid some $300.00 more at Adorama, I could have returned the camera. I am pleased Nikon is paying for the shipping. I also somehow lost the invoice that proves purchase, which came in the box, so I asked if they would please email another. The past month has been chaos, and though I knew I needed to hold on to that invoice, it got away. You would think a business would have no problem with that. I made the purchase two weeks ago. Surely it's on record. All else about their offering me a refurbished unit after finding my previous D850 was damaged by salt water beyond economical repair is there. I'm left with no positive word on the issue to assure that I can get this camera insured. She said she would try. Now I'm wondering if it's a Catch 22, and when I go to the warranty service process, I find I need that proof of purchase, even though they have record of this. Surely it's not that bad, but in the past, I sent in my D7100 for work there, and they did not do it. I had to send it in again. Then the work was done.

Small business is competitive and serves you well, if such a business is to survive. The tech on the phone was patient, I give her credit for that.

Refurbished cameras go through intense quality control. At least, they're supposed to. What else can I infer from this debacle, but that someone did not do his job?

Update: I got the invoice by email from Nikon. Good. Yes, I needed it to get warranty service.

Lenny, Were Trout Stocked?

Lenny, my friend Oliver fished the river over your way recently. I'm wondering if it was stocked this past spring or fall. He caught nothing, fly fishing nymphs.

It's not Just a Matter of "Serious" Photography

One image of six Nikon sent me. I had figured the salt likely did the camera in, but when the repair estimate came at $392.00, I felt complete relief. I don't know, I guess naivete spares one from fear and anxiety. Maybe that's the typical price of a freshwater dunking. I've read that water does not harm electronics, only an electrical short does. Since a Nikon D850 is always on to some degree with a battery in it, I figured maybe it didn't start--after silicone sucked all the water out--because of a minor short. At best, we would have taken the camera immediately to UPS on the Keys and sent it to Nikon. If it was still wet when it got there, maybe less chance would have existed that corrosion would have set in. Could Matt have attached his laptop to a printer at the public library there, for the label Nikon provides? Probably not, but we could have phoned Nikon for further advice. 

Hindsight.

The camera beyond economical repair, I believe Nikon is offering me a refurbished D850. I'm not sure what I will do yet, but I feel completely unwilling to compromise on the model. Had I found a refurbished D850 a year ago, when I bought this one brand new at over $3500.00 with tax, I would have bought that for sure. I was so nervous about what value I was getting at such high price. And it took me about six months before I comfortably felt I had chosen well. 

It's not just a matter of being "serious" about photography. I have friends on FB who shoot amazing shots with lesser cameras, and who go afield more often than I do, people who I tend to think of as better photographers. When I really get down to it, it's what I told Fred Matero before I bought the camera, that I get turned on by images I create. What I could do with my D7100 far excelled what I could do my D60. Enough use of my D850, and I felt the same way about it in relation to my D7100. I'm just looking for subtlety in some of my images--most of them don't please me--that turns me on. If I were a heavy smoker, I could easily spend the cost of a new D850 in a year, just to feel that meditative glow. (Or worse, not feel anything but relief.)

You crave results. Once you know a little of what you can do with a D850, you don't go back. That's not to say I no longer appreciate results I got with my Pentax K1000 manual 35mm camera. I even appreciate results I got with throw away cameras, which I used after my third Pentax camera got ripped off, before I could afford my fourth. (The first two got ripped off also.) But once you get the better drug, my experience suggests, you can't get the satisfaction you crave again from lesser. You admire the better shots of the lesser, but what you're after--that counts.

Do I ever feel nostalgia for simpler days, simpler means? Yes. But I get over it.

Mirrorless cameras, by indications I gather, may fairly soon replace on the market brand new DSLR cameras like the Nikon D850. I could go with Nikon's latest now. Tests indicate it has more dynamic range, which means the color is better. But it's not only cost when it comes to lenses and the added cost for the camera itself that turns me off. 

Let me explain the lens cost first. The lens I lost when the kayak tipped is, by all indications, useless now. I haven't yet taken it out of the airtight box with silicone, but surely salt did it in. It's an excellent lens. I paid only $80.00 for it used, because it is a dated model from 1985, when it then cost $950.00. In today's dollars, a hell of a lot. The lens is as sharp or sharper than some recent models. It won't work on a mirrorless. I would have to shell out plenty more for 50mm. But as I say, not only is cost prohibitive. Recent DSLR lenses, like all of the others I own, will work on a mirrorless only by use of an attachment, and that just doesn't feel right. It's gimmicky. Besides, the attachment costs more money yet. 

When I really get down to it, I'm just not yet ready for the better drug. It's even questionable if the drug itself is safe yet, because this new type of camera is still experimental, by which I mean Nikon is producing new models quickly in an effort to get one right. 

If I ever make a lot of money, I'll surely go mirrorless. And use lenses made for the camera, a big expense. I am looking for monetary results from photography, but casually so, as there is little, if any, real hope that I can gain earnings of much gainsay. It's about my personal pleasure. Magazines do like excellent images. I'm not saying it doesn't help. But no one earns much from magazines, unless they can afford to quit the day job and freelance full time, the sort of career that's always rubbed me the wrong way, because I want to create art from words, not just get every magazine assignment of many sorts I can fill on a full-time basis. 

When I went on FB in 2011, I sent Jim Hutchinson, then the former managing editor at The Fisherman, a personal message with my friend request. "I remember you," he said, "because I never had to edit a word you wrote."

The Kayak Adventure

Hackettstown Stocking Summary 2019

They stocked tiger muskies in Lake Musconetcong, for example, a situation my son & I don't like, but that's just as. Pickerel and bass were fully enough for us, and when the pickerel population crashed after chemical treatment for water chestnuts, we were saddened by it. But we like to see the bass still doing well, and for all we know, the pickerel are back by now, too. Haven't fished there in awhile.

Stocking Summary

Kayak Adventure at Big Pine Key and No Name Key

Patricia is patient with our fishing. I expect her to be resentful, but she never reveals any of that. Besides, I am so proud of her for choosing this vacation in 2007, when Old Wooden Bridge Cottages and Marina was Old Wooden Bridge Fish Camp. Imagine a wife who, on her own, unsolicited, does that for you. Finds a fish camp and says let's do this, even when she doesn't fish. On Ocracoke Island, she comes with us on the charter, and when we go to "the dock," she calls it, Avon Pier, she stays in the rental home and reads. She likes her quiet with Sadie the black Labrador. The last occasion  in 2012 at Old Wooden Bridge on Big Pine by the bridge over Bogie Channel to No Name Key, she spent time by and in the pool, while Matt and I boated and fished three days, although we've always taken her out on the boat for hours when we have fished inshore. She is utterly terrified at the thought of going out to sea. 

Matt and I pulled a stunt that second day out there this year, too, although I know I could have handled a little worse. 

After we finished the third day at 4 pm, we did no more fishing, but we were up for whatever Trish wanted to do Friday (Saturday we went to Key West), and discussed options, settling on kayaking. The literature about the service speaks of an eco-tour, and why is it I am uncomfortable with the description? Because it hits me as pretentious. Ecology is a science, or should be, and paddling in nature isn't an eco-tour, it is simply an exercise of the body involved in an exploration (of nature). It may also be described as an adventure, since danger is in fact involved, and this post will give you an example of suffering a very unfortunate accident. As my wife later remarked, such an accident is par for the course, when you take risks as we do.

We paddled from the Old Wooden Bridge establishment along the bridge to No Name across the channel, and then we turned under to the left, paddling along mangroves to find where the little tidal creek empties. We followed this flow, often by pulling on limbs, to a very shallow little bay, a distance of perhaps half a mile. We found mangrove snappers in the creek, some as large as eight or nine inches, and though the water was clear and I tried to photograph some, this wasn't quite successful. I got a few good shots of a black-crowned night heron that seemed quite unafraid of us, although I could have done better with my long 70-200mm lens. My 50mm prime lens was installed. I didn't bring my bag with other lenses, because attempting to reach backwards where I would have strapped the bag did not impress me as practical. My camera was secure around my neck. 

It was a nice paddle. We didn't see a whole lot of wildlife, but jellyfish and hermit crabs caught our interest in the little bay, as did some sort of land crab on limbs we grasped. 

When we got back, Matt had no trouble landing and getting out. My wife and I pointed our double kayak into shore. I noticed the water was deep where I continued sitting as Trish prepared to get out, while I ventured the thought that once she stood aside, Matt would pull the kayak forward so I could reasonably get out. 

What happened within seconds was a disaster to minor degree. Let me first insert an anecdote. In 2011, Matt and I swam in the steep surf of Point Pleasant, New Jersey, the water about 10 feet deep very few yards from shore, the two of us animated by a very good mood. We both called Trish forward. The waves were big. She doesn't even know how to swim, and we should have known better, but we had thrown care to the wind. 

What do you do when a big wave hits you? Let it take you. She resisted. Her right knee shattered. She had to be taken off the beach and to our car in an ATV, and then directly by me to Ocean County Hospital, I believe is the name of it. In Bedminster, she underwent surgery right away, but the knee has never been perfectly right since.

It buckled suddenly as she tried to stand, and she fell back on the edge of the kayak, tipping it. I went directly overboard into that deep water, my $3500.00 camera, and that 50mm lens, thoroughly submerged in salt water for about three seconds. 

I got out and went directly to our cottage to begin salvage efforts. I did find that the camera is amazingly waterproof. "For thirty-five-hundred-dollars, it should be," Trish said. Well, if only quality were just that secure. There was no water inside the lens chamber. No water in the battery chamber. But not only did some get into small portals, I put the camera in the sun, and that resulted in condensation on the LCD panel near the start button. Not a good sign at all. The memory card I knew was unaffected. All of my photos on it, all are spared. In a very real way, that is what is most important. 

Trish and I went to the Winn Dixie, and she asked for a small cardboard box, got one, and bought beef jerky with silicone packets, along with duct tape. Thus began efforts to get the water sucked out of the camera in an airtight box with silicone. I asked Matt to go on his laptop and order more silicone from Amazon Prime. When we came home, it was here for us. I put the camera in an airtight box with plenty of silicone packets for a week. The lens remains as yet in another. (That lens is sharp as can be and cost me only $80.00, an old model that used to be expensive.) 

I finally tried turning the camera on. It did not work. So I phoned Nikon USA, on Walt Whitman Road in Melville, New York. Two of the greatest literary figures in American history. I have always enjoyed dealing with Nikon service for this reason. It's costly, but what the hell. Melville was a popular adventure novelist who earned money by those books...until he wrote Moby Dick, and everyone believed he had gone mad. He finished his life as a low-wage clerk, but his was the glory. He wrote the great American novel. So what is money, anyway?

Apparently, and I do hedge, Nikon can repair my camera. The man on the phone was confident enough--maybe. This was salt water. I haven't heard back as yet. Shipping by UPS with insurance cost $71.00. I like my camera, but just between you and me, I was tempted to hope it gets lost. 

I suffer--on rare occasion--from persecution mania, which is neither paranoia nor the mania of manic-depression, but a most intensely negative state of feeling things have gone desperately wrong. It is a mania, which means the mind is agitated and unhinged, but again, it is not the ecstasy of mania in a manic state. Quite the contrary to those wonderful feelings. After the salvage effort was complete, I went into my room, shut the door, and suffered. Philosopher Bertrand Russel has written that the worst unhappiness possible to a human being is persecution mania. Why my psyche goes to the extreme is a mystery, but it does on rare occasion. 

What is money, I asked. Well, when I overheard Trish on the phone with the car rental agency, talking about instating Matt as a driver for $75.00 so they could go out, I got out of bed and called that off. I shot a look at Trish, and she seemed accepting of me. I hadn't behaved badly, but she knew I was in a bad way. Well, now I was going to be OK, if she would have it. Apparently so. Money to the rescue. Together, the three of us rode to No Name Key for a hike, which I enjoyed. We all did. Would you think after hell, an hour later this would be possible? It happened. The object of persecution had been how damn hard it was to have earned $3500.00 as a writer, but in reality, the situation was in play. 

Trish said, "You'll find a way to profit from this." After all, I certainly did profit from the submergence of my D60 and my favorite lens in the Salmon River. Not only did I place as a finalist for the Brookwood Press Writing Award by account of that loss, I was quickly prompted to buy my much better D7100. That advanced my work greatly.

I'm not saying I'll have to buy a new camera, but what was really the worst of what happened? The financial loss, or the plunge I took into my bad mental state? The latter never damaged me, but it does suck when it happens.     

Not as sharp as would be in the middle range of my 70-200mm lens. This is an image cropped out of a much larger frame. Besides, more focus is on that stick in front of the heron. I got other shots much better, which even when cropped, seem to have magazine quality.