The Georgetowner’s Fourth Annual Photo Competition

As 2013 rears its flu-riddled head, weary from a long year of bitter political standoffs and tempestuous clashes of conflicting social mores, now would seem a good time for all of us to sit back, watch the sunset and remember that we all live under the same sky. Maybe we can look back over the past year and see it a little differently: a year of confronting our demons, overcoming our obstacles and learning our limitations. It could have been a year of achieving unprecedented feats, or perhaps it was a year when we were humbled by the realizations of our shortcomings. Thick or thin, the onset of a new year is a good time to take stock of the last 366 days in review.

The Georgetowner’s annual photo competition, like any annual competition, was founded to commemorate the preceding year. Our neighborhood teems with life, and as these photographs make clear, it is ultimately the smaller seasonal and daily occurrences that make up our memories and define us for ourselves. There are friends and families, summer days on the Potomac, and autumn evenings walking along the canal, with the timeless grandeur of our historic row houses serving as an ever-present backdrop.

Of all the standout entries we received, the camera lens most regularly seemed to settle on our neighborhood as a focal point for some of Washington’s most memorable landscapes and cityscapes, but the overwhelming submissions that flowed beyond Georgetown and into the wider limits of our city were impossible to ignore.

Sometimes, it takes a picture to capture the essence of a time and place. In Georgetown’s case, this is especially so, as time and place are bridged tenuously between the tradition of the past and the promise of a future. As we look on from Waterfront Park, past the Kennedy Center and into the city beyond, one thing remains in focus: we live in a beautiful place.