Concurrent with publishing this photo, I’m putting out a request on other social media asking my Chignik friends for more information on this vessel. I don’t know a lot about boats, but I’m fairly certain that this is a salmon seiner, perhaps built sometime in the 1940’s or 1950’s. It was aground, as you see here, about two miles up from the salt chuck when I noticed it tucked into the back of a wide river cove accessible only on high tides. The tide was out, the person whose skiff I was riding in was in a hurry to get down to Chignik Bay, so I settled for this passing shot. I always intended to go back and get additional photographs, but it never worked out. Years later, I saw what appeared to be the same vessel on a beach at Chignik Bay – perhaps towed there by someone who valued its history.

The lesson here, such as a lesson exists, is to be careful… mindful… about passing up shots – even if the composition is imperfect. No doubt every serious photography has in their memory banks a list of pictures that they passed on and later came to regret not getting. You arrive at a new locale, note a species of bird that is new to you, assume that they must be abundant there, pass on the shot and never see another bird like it. You keep telling yourself you’ll make a portrait of that special friend – and never create the right moment. Or you tell yourself that you’ll come back to make a photo of the stunning landscape before you. But way leads to way and you never return.

While no one can get every shot they’re presented with, some of the ones we pass on haunt us. They become very much like those big fish that got away, growing larger over time… until all those photos and fish meld into a single image of a monster of a Japanese Sea Bass emerging from the surf, shaking her massive head, and then dark tunnel vision as the white jig breaks free from her jaws and comes springing back through the air as your knees turn to rubber – that Sea Bass my own personal metaphor for In my life as a photographer: a rare Spotted Redshanks flitting around me as I cast flies to Chignik River Salmon, assuming the bird to be more common than it is; a Parasitic Jaeger stuffed so full of fish it could barely fly perched near me on shore the first time I hiked out to Tikigaq Point, again, making the assumption that this would be a regular occurrence I’d have other opportunities to capture; portraits of my friends and neighbors at The Lake… the “some other day” I was going to photograph them never arriving.

So, imperfect as this photograph is, I’m glad I got it when I had the opportunity. A boat like this will never again be seen on the Chignik.

I’ll update this post if I discover additional information.