Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens

With a spare day in DC before my meeting, I met up with a friend and went out for a day of picture taking. It's really good to go out with another photographer for the sole purpose of taking pictures. You don't have to worry about whether you're going to have time to see everything, and you can watch each others' technique and maybe learn something. This time the venue was the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens. For those of you familiar with DC, this park is located in South East. For those of you familiar with South East, it is located in Anacostia. For those of you familiar with Anacostia, it is approximately at Kenilworth Ave and Eastern Ave. For those of familiar with none of this, it is in a bad, bad part of town where most people don't go without good reason. My friend and I set off with a set of memorized directions and no map. Quite to our surprise, we took a wrong turn and proceeded to drive for half an hour through one of the worst parts of the city before realizing our mistake. We saw at most, probably only one drug deal openly taking place on the sidewalk next to us.

The park itself is made up of a bunch of lily ponds and tidal pools. Tt was pretty disappointing as most everything was brown and unattractive. But, I think that was mostly because of bad timing during the year. I bet in the spring with everything in bloom, it would be nice to see. With some effort, you could still find a few nice things to take pictures of.

From National Aquatic Gardens

We liked to think that the police helicopter circling overhead the whole time was just there for our safety.