Krista Duran Engler

On one of our many urb-ex missions in the old Navy Yard, Chris and I stumbled upon the old Naval Hospital. I had read about it previously online, and immediately recognized the white building flanked by two anchors—it’s doors sealed shut. It’s a lovely old building despite it’s rapid decay. We found a few open spaces but didn’t spend too much time inside since the heat was climbing and many of the hallways were pitch black. We plan on coming back though, with powerful flashlights and a lot of courage on my part. I’ve never seen a ghost but I would suspect investigating an old hospital would up my chances.

I’ve been working on a cool project, and unsurprisingly I’m most excited about the photographs I took for it. There’s something so satisfying about creating every element of a project from scratch using your own hands. It’s rewarding and doesn’t happen often enough.

Chris and I have two activities that we love to do when visiting a new place: Urb-Ex and Photo Safari. A Photo Safari is when we load up our cameras and gear, and drive to a specific location with the intent purpose of taking photographs for hours on end. It’s the best kind of fun, and a good way to force yourself to take more photos. Urb-Ex is the funny sounding short name we gave to “Urban Exploration.” It’s just exploring a new area. Our trips to the Navy Yard are both, almost like a documentation of our urb-ex, as if to prove it happened.

Most of the buildings are either occupied or locked up, so our shots were mostly exterior, but we did find one building that we were able to get inside. I spotted a few others on our way out that we plan to visit and explore on our next trip.

I predict that I’m going to have so many photo posts from the Navy Yard that I don’t even know what I should call them. Part 1 of 50? I dunno. It’s hard to be descriptive when I’m just hoppin’ around the yard photographing whatever catches my eye.