A Gray Afternoon in Hoquiam

Last week I took a nice photowalk along the Grays Harbor bay in Hoquiam, Wash.

It was an unseasonably warm afternoon, but overcast, as it typically is during the winter here on the Pacific Coast.

Since it was so warm, I decided on a long walk all the way out to Moon Island, by the airport and the sewage lagoon. As I was walking by Old Cannery Park, however, I got distracted by a barge being loaded with wood chips at the Port of Grays Harbor terminal.

I have frequently photographed the elevator and dock of Terminal 3 from this area, but rarely when there's a barge at dock there. I ducked off the road just west of the park, into a wide area of mucky wetland and mudflat, where the driftwood gathers at high tide.

I took a lot of photos of the barge and terminal, looking for the best composition.

Willis Enterprises grinds logs into woodchips just across the road from Terminal 3. Later, as evening approached, I returned to the road and photographed their gigantic front-end loaders pushing the mountain of wood chips into the other end of the conveyor. You see those photos by following the link above.

I didn't exclusively photograph the barge; I also spent some time exploring the driftwood. The big, upright stump in the following series has been perched in that spot for years.

This piece is relatively new. At least I can't remember photographing it before.

The grooves worn in this one are intriguing. I wonder if the rope is responsible. Maybe it was used to tie up a large vessel.

The two pieces in this post's opening photo are perhaps my favorites.

The mudflat had a lot more sand in it than I remember from years past. This fall we had some rainy weeks with high water; perhaps the sand was deposited then.

This series of the patterns made by the runoff shows the sand well. It also shows the curvature of my convex 18-55mm lens; I like the effect and chose not to use lens correction when I was working the photos in Photoshop.

This line of dock pilings was probably part of the cannery that the park gets its name from.

As I mentioned, I returned to the road as afternoon turned into evening. After photographing the front-end loaders at Willis Enterprises, I did finally make it out to the mudflat in the Moon Island area for this final shot of a wild chunk of driftwood. You can just make out the airport lights on the horizon, if you expand the photo.

Thanks for viewing!

A Couple Final Thoughts

All photos for this post were taken with my Canon 80D and its 18-55mm kit lens, which is a bit unusual: lately I've been switching to the 75-300mm zoom at some point on my walks.

Grays Harbor is not named for the gray, overcast weather we have most of the winter, but for Robert Gray, the British sea captain who was the first white dude to sail into the bay back in 1792. (Source.)