This shows a part of Haines … while a small town, it is larger than shown here. This is salt water and the mountains in the background are around 7000′ (2133m) in elevation. My aunt and uncle lived here for much of their adult lives and I wintered over there in the mid-70’s. The other side of the close landform is the Chilkat River. A view upstream is below.
These are both shots taken from the same spot on the beach at Fort Worden State Park. I just turned 90 degrees and faced south for the second shot. I was shooting Portra 400 film with my Pentax 645N. With the shot below, I exposed for the clouds and sky and the foreground was completely in shadow. I tried to ‘recover’ the details in the shadows, but it quickly became full of speckled grains … and we aren’t talking sand grains. With a digital camera, the shot below could easily have been adjusted to show normal looking details in the shadows. The technology we have these days is wonderful.
This is along the shoreline section of Olympic National Park. The sunsets aren’t always this dramatic, sometimes they are just gray and drizzly. But when it stops raining, it can be stunning.
The central coast of Washington is a prime location for driftwood. The rivers coming down from the Olympic Mountains carry a lot of logs that have been washed out of the forests. In addition, all the logged off areas also generate a lot of drift when the heavy rains wash logs off them. They certainly provide an interesting texture to the shoreline. Since this section (at least) is part of the National Park, the drift remains for the next big storm to move them along the beach.
An ocean beach is a great place to see clouds. This is the Pacific Ocean from Kalaloch. A lot of the pacific beaches in Washington are part of the Olympic National Park. I liked the rain squalls visible below the clouds. You can also see several people at the waterline. This is good razor clam digging during the typical short season (spring) … some of my earliest memories are of razor clam digging.