Sandy Point State Park

Author's Comments

The bridge is the reason people come, and I will not pretend otherwise. The twin spans stretching east across the Chesapeake are genuinely arresting, especially at the end of a clear summer day when the sun drops behind you and throws warm light onto the steel. From the main beach the alignment is almost too good - the bridge lifts off the water at a flattering angle and the scale reads properly, which is not always the case with engineering photography. But the version of Sandy Point I keep in my head is a January one. The beach is empty. The light in winter here does something I have not quite seen elsewhere on the bay - low, clean, slightly silvered, the bridge rendered in cold blues rather than the warm oranges of summer postcards. You can walk the whole length of sand without passing anyone. The osprey are gone by then, but the gulls stay, and the water moves differently in the cold. In any season I would tell you to arrive earlier than golden hour and let the light come to you. The bridge catches the last sun before the beach does, and that fifteen minute window when the spans are still lit and the sand has gone into shadow is the photograph worth waiting for. Bring a longer lens if you have one. The bridge compresses beautifully from further down the beach, where the crowds thin and the foreground gets simpler.

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