Penn Treaty Park and Fishtown: bridge views and brick

Penn Treaty Park faces east across the Delaware. Nearly everyone books it for sunset, when the sun is behind the city and the river is flat and grey. Booked at the other end of the day it is one of the best locations in Philadelphia.

The sunrise argument

The park sits on the west bank of the Delaware looking east. That is unusual in this city and it has one clear consequence: the sun comes up out of the water in front of you.

At sunrise you get the river turning orange, mist sitting on the water in the cooler months, the Ben Franklin Bridge catching first light off to the south, and an empty park. No dog walkers, no picnics, no football. Just the water and whoever you brought.

I know sunrise is a hard sell. Nobody wants a 6am call time. So here is the honest trade: a sunrise session at Penn Treaty gets you photographs that essentially nobody else in Philadelphia has, in a location that is otherwise very heavily photographed. If you are up for it once, this is the place to spend it.

It works best for couples. Getting two adults to a riverbank before dawn is a plan. Getting a four-year-old there is a different kind of project.

And if you will not get up that early

Fair enough. Evening still works, you just point the camera the other way.

At sunset the light comes from behind the neighborhood and falls on the park, the grass and the people in it, with the river and the bridge as a darker backdrop. Warm light on faces, cool water behind. That is a good photograph, it is just not a photograph of a sunset.

What does not work is standing on the bank at sunset expecting the sky over the water to do something. It will not. The color is behind you, over the rowhouses.

Blue hour after sunset is genuinely strong here. The bridge is lit, the river holds the last of the sky, and the ambient light is soft enough for faces without anything extra.

What the park gives you

It is a modest park and that is fine. What it has:

• Open lawn on a slight rise, so you can put people against the sky rather than against clutter.
• The riverfront edge and railings, with the bridge visible to the south.
• The monuments and the statue, which mark the site’s history as the traditional location of the treaty between William Penn and the Lenape.
• Big mature trees along the edges for shade and for framing.
• Benches, which sounds trivial and is not. Somewhere to sit is half of directing a nervous couple.

On a warm evening it is busy: dogs, picnics, kids, people watching the water. Not a problem, but not private.

The streets do the real work

If you only shoot the park you have missed the neighborhood, and the neighborhood is why people pick Fishtown.

The residential blocks are tight rowhouse streets with painted doors, stoops, iron railings, roller shutters and brick in about nine different shades. The commercial stretch along Frankford Avenue gives you murals, shopfronts, awnings and corner bars. Ten minutes of walking gets you three or four completely different backgrounds without leaving a few blocks.

What to look for, if you are scouting your own street: a block that runs east to west will hold low sun down its length at the start and end of the day, and a wall of brick opposite the sun acts as a giant warm reflector. That is where I put people.

This is the same working method as Old City, with newer paint and fewer tourists. If you live in Fishtown, your own block is very likely a better background than anywhere I would drive you to.

Parking in a rowhouse neighborhood

This is the friction point. Fishtown is dense residential rowhouse and the street parking is heavily used by the people who live there. On a Friday evening it is genuinely hard.

Practical advice: come earlier than you think, look along the wider streets near the river rather than the narrow interior blocks, and if you are coming from Center City consider transit. The Market–Frankford Line serves the neighborhood and walking in from a station is often faster than driving and circling.

Bathrooms: assume none in the park. The cafés and bars along Frankford Avenue are the practical answer, and that is worth knowing in advance with small children.

The river is colder than the forecast

Open water plus an unobstructed east-facing bank means wind, and it is consistently colder at Penn Treaty than it is six blocks inland. In October and November the difference is significant, and at sunrise in any season it is real.

Bring more layers than you think. A coat that comes off for ten frames and goes back on between them is a perfectly good plan and much better than an hour of everyone being cold and rigid. Cold shoulders show in photographs.

Who it suits

Engaged couples: the best case, particularly at sunrise or blue hour. The mix of open water, bridge and rowhouse streets in one session gives an engagement session more range than most single locations.

People who live in the neighborhood: obviously. Photographs on your own block will mean more in twenty years than photographs in a prettier park.

Families with older kids: good. Walking between park and streets keeps them occupied.

Toddlers: workable in the park, harder on the streets, where the sidewalks are narrow and there are cars.

Large extended groups: no. The park is small, the streets are narrow, and there is nowhere to put twelve people.

A family session here splits naturally: posed frames on the park lawn while everyone is fresh, then candid work walking the streets afterwards.