Hains Point

Author's Comments

Most people who come to DC for the cherry blossoms never make it here, and I have always thought that was a small mercy. Hains Point is a peninsula that juts out into the meeting of the Potomac and the Anacostia, and if you drive or cycle to the tip you find yourself surrounded on three sides by water and a silence that feels implausible given the map. The trees that bloom around the Tidal Basin bloom here too, at the same time, and almost nobody is under them. I come in April for the obvious reason, but fall is when the place feels most like itself. The sycamores along the road go yellow, the river goes steel, and the low afternoon sun rakes across the water from the west with nothing to block it. Golden hour at the point is unobstructed in a way that almost no other spot in the city offers. You can watch the light leave across open water. At low tide the mud flats come up along the eastern edge and the herons arrive, standing very still in the way herons do. I have made some of my quieter photographs here, the kind that do not translate well to a small screen but hold up when printed large. Wide lens, low horizon, a lot of sky. The peninsula asks you to think about the river as a shape rather than a backdrop, and once you start seeing it that way the whole southern edge of the city reorganizes itself. Bring a bike. The loop is flat and the light changes fast at the end of the day.

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