Yards Park

Author's Comments

The Anacostia has been overlooked for most of the city's life, and Yards Park is part of a long, recent argument that the river deserves better. I am still making up my mind about the park as a whole. But the cable bridge works. It works in a way that surprised me the first time I walked it at dusk in early June, the steel lines catching the last warm light against a sky going cobalt behind them. The canal basin in front of the bridge is the compositional gift. When the wind drops, it mirrors everything above it, and a long exposure turns the whole scene into a kind of graphic print - hard lines above, softer lines below, the industrial bones of the Navy Yard holding the edge of the frame. Golden hour is the obvious window and I will not argue against it. But I have found the fifteen minutes after sunset to be the stronger photograph here. The sodium lights along the bridge come on, the sky still has color, and the canal holds both at once. Summer evenings bring food trucks and music and a crowd that is genuinely enjoying itself, which is its own kind of subject if you are willing to work with people in the frame. In October the crowd thins and the light gets cleaner, and that is when I would send someone who cares about the architecture more than the atmosphere. Come with a wide lens for the bridge. Come with something longer for the details along the canal. The park is small enough to walk in twenty minutes and interesting enough to spend two hours in if the light cooperates.

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