Thames River at New London

Author's Comments

New London is a working river, and that is the photograph. The Thames here is not pretty in the easy sense - it is industrial, busy, layered with the gray geometry of bridges and the occasional dark shape of a submarine moving downriver toward the Sound. I find that honesty more interesting than postcard light. The City Pier at blue hour is where I set up. The Gold Star Bridge upriver becomes a long horizontal of small lights, and the water at that hour goes the color of slate with just enough warmth left in the western sky to separate the bridge from what is behind it. Long exposures work here. The river has current and chop, and thirty seconds of open shutter will smooth it into something that reads almost like fog. If you are lucky, a submarine will transit while you are there. They tend to leave early, and the sight of one moving south against the dawn is genuinely strange - low, dark, almost reluctant in the water. I have only caught it twice in maybe a dozen visits, and both times I came home with photographs that do not look like anywhere else I have been. Winter is underrated here. The light is harder, the air is clearer, and the crowds, which are already low, disappear entirely. Bring something warm. The wind comes off the Sound and finds you.

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