ANGELA B. PAN

Happy Friday! I’m really looking forward to this weekend because I’ll be going to a place that I’ve been wanting to go to for a VERY long time. I’m talking years. I’ll tell you all more about it soon but be sure to follow along on my Instagram if you’re interested in knowing beforehand. It’s not far from the DC metro area, so we’ll just be there on Sunday evening. I’m so excited!

In the meantime, here’s an image I captured a couple of weeks ago at McKee Beshers Wildlife Management Area in Poolesville, Maryland. These sunflower fields are unfortunately gone for the season, but I heard Burnside Farms in Nokesville, Virginia may be looking good. I’ve personally never been to that one but have been to the McKee Beshers sunflower fields a whole bunch. What’s great about the sunflower field in Maryland is that there are multiple fields. So if one field hasn’t peaked, you could drive to the next field and hopefully get a different result.

This particular image was taken in the first field, right before they were about to peak. I love how all the sunflowers are facing the camera.

But this image is deceiving, they were actually taller than me. The tallest ones were at least 6ft. So easy to get lost in the fields. Lost in a good way though 🙂

Have a great weekend!

My camera settings for this image is f5.6 at 1/2000th sec and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm

Finallyyyy a sunny day at the Tidal Basin. So far this cherry blossom season has been very cloudy, grey, and windy. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I prefer blue skies with my pink flowers. I think the color combination works so well together. So I was thrilled when we finally had clear skies and s-u-n.

This particular day I was not planning on being at the Tidal Basin, instead I parked my car along Ohio drive and I had every intention of staying on Ohio drive and shooting the cherry blossoms along the Potomac river. That quickly changed because I thought I saw some fog coming off the Tidal Basin and you know me and fog. It’s like a magnetic connection we have. I ran over to the basin and saw nothing. It was probably some kind of mirage or wishful thinking for some fog and cherry blossoms but either way, I’m glad I ended up there. Once the sun actually came up, the light hitting the blossoms was amazing! I couldn’t have asked for a better lighting situation. I could have asked for a better battery situation because out of the 3 batteries I had with me, I only had enough charge for about 30 minutes of shooting 🙁 I was so upset when the first battery started flashing the warning because I knew I didn’t have much left on the other ones. How could I forget to charge them?

Luckily I was able to squeeze just a couple of images at the very end of the battery life and came up with this image. I love the sunburst peaking through the blossoms. I think the flowers underneath that are the ones that I look at the most. They look as if they’re glowing.

My camera settings for this image is F22 at 1/125th of a second at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Not every photo shoot turns out well. Sometimes I’ll go out and not even pull out my camera and just end up walking around aimlessly. Sometimes I’ll snap a few pics but know that they won’t be my favorites. Other times the images need a little creativity in post processing and I feel like thats what happened with this image.

I went out one morning last week hoping for a colorful sunrise but ended up with some very blue, cloudy skies. The good news is that I found a new puddle and I’m really looking forward to capturing this same scene during a nice sunrise. There are a lot of puddles all around the US Capitol. So many great reflections to be found but I think what makes this one so unique is the fact that you can still see the US Capitol and some car trails to go in front of it. Very cool, if you ask me.

It was a little difficult to capture. Luckily I carry all my extra batteries and memory cards in this cheap, Forever21 makeup bag that is made of entirely plastic. I emptied the entire contents into my backpack and placed it in the middle of the puddle so that I could use it as a resting place for my camera without it getting wet. The key to this image was to get as low as possible and that was basically sitting on top of the puddle.

I liked the way that the image turned out but I thought that rotating it made it look even cool. It sort of adds an interesting element to it and reminds me of those ink blot tests. What do you see actually see in this image?

My camera settings for this image is F11 at 6 seconds with ISO 125 on my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Do you remember earlier this year when I posted this picture?