ANGELA B. PAN

If you caught my blog post from last week, then you will know that tomorrow I’m headed out on a road trip to Austin, Texas. One of my best friends in the entire world is moving there and asked me to ride along with her. I’m sad that she’s leaving but looking forward to spending just a little bit more time with her.

Similar to the road trip that we did 2 years ago, we’ll be spending our first night in Nashville, Tennessee. It was both of our first time in the city and I am looking forward to going back. I remember having a blast last time just walking down Broadway and checking out the live music and all the colorful lights. I expect to be doing the same this time around. After that it will be just a straight shot from there to Austin. Unfortunately we’re not stopping to go sightseeing or anything along the way because she wants to get down there as soon as possible but looking forward to spending a few extra days in Austin before flying home. So if you have any food or photo recommendations, please let me know!

Luckily we planned this trip after the Cherry Blossom peak bloom announcement so I know I’ll be back home just in time to capture the flowers.

Click here to watch our last road trip together – we drove all the way from Washington DC to San Diego, California.

This image is of the Arlington Memorial bridge on a particularly foggy day. I figured it symbolized our road ahead but also not looking forward to saying goodbye to Sue when I have to catch my flight back to DC.

My camera settings are F5 at 1/500th sec and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Photographers, tell me if you feel the same way: Sometimes after you travel, you feel like you need to just sit on the images before you can dedicate the time to edit them all. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s the excitement of travel or something but I don’t know if I can do my best work right afterward I return home. Sometimes I’ll edit images along the way and be satisfied with them, but for the most part it’s always when I have had time pass where I’m really excited about an image. Am I the only who feels like that?

For example the image above. I have posted images from this same spot here and here and I really like them but I know I still have so many more images to edit and at the time I wasn’t too happy with them. I just needed some time to breath in between time to really remember the intention behind the image. So I ended up editing a whole bunch of images from Norway this past week. Some that I’ve posted before and redid, some that I have never worked on. I’m excited to share them with you  as time goes on:)

For this particular image, I love the mood that it is creating. Not only from the stormy clouds but the overall glow on the mountain sides and the ripples in the water. Norway is such a quiet country and I feel like this really conveys what it was like there. Ugh just looking at this image makes me want to go back. I loved visiting so much.

Just in case you’re planning on going, check out my road trip travel guide here.

My camera setting for this image is F10 at 1/40th sec and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm ultra zoom lens.

Hope you enjoyed the last two blog posts where I relieved some of my favorite moments of 2018. If you missed it, you can see them here and here. There were just so many images to choose from because I tend to like all my images LOL. but for some reason this one didn’t make the cut.

This evening at the US Capitol was pretty epic. There was barely any rain but the lightning strikes were going crazy. It was perfect. The only reason why it didn’t make the 2018 favorites just because I wasn’t able to capture the lightning strikes like how I’d hoped for. I was really hoping for a huge strike like this one I captured in 2016. Man, I think capturing that image has sort of made me a bit jaded from all the other lightning strikes I’ve been able to capture. Like this one is cool and all but… LOL.

But I do really like this image because of the composition. Those clouds were epic and I loved the way the sky turned from dark blue to purple when the lightning would hit. Just showing that little bit of of the US Capitol dome is all the information you need to know exactly where you’re standing. It was beautiful night and I was so lucky to even capture anything at all.

So let me know, were there images that you liked in 2018 that weren’t on my list? I’d be really interested in hearing your opinion.

Either way, I’m so looking forward to 2019! It’s going to be a fantastic year with hopefully a lot more photo opportunities like this one to capture that huge lightning strike I’ve been looking out for.

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 1/13th sec at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Is it me or is today the hardest day to get anythingggg done. Holiday hangoverrrr. Last night we celebrated Christmas with Andrew’s family and it was so fun. I made christmas cookies. LOL. My family is celebrating this weekend and I’m looking forward to seeing my nephews. I see them every week but still…

Hope you all got some fun photo goodies for the holidays.

This image was taken in the summertime. I remember capturing this particular sunrise so clearly because it was from one of those days that the Tidal Basin had been crazy flooded. But this day was probably the most water I had ever seen. My jaw dropped when I walked down there because it was above the park bench seats. It was so easy to capture reflections like this because there was just so much water. I have definietly made it a habit to wear rain boots whenever I visit the basin. Even if there hasn’t been any rain for days, you just never know now and it’s a sad.

My favorite part about this image is the cloud formations. I love the way it’s framing the Washington Monument and it looks so good in the water reflection. It makes me want to go back to that summer time weather. And don’t even get me started on those summertime colors. I love the transition from orange to blue.

Actually the last time I was at the Tidal Basin (earlier this month), the sidewalk was blocked off. There was no sign or postage saying why, so let’s hope something is actually being done about all this water and flooding. It can’t be good for the cherry blossoms.

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/640th sec and ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Here’s something interesting. The other day I was having trouble sleeping so I started surfing the internet. One thing lead to another and I ran across this article from the Google blog. I’m a month late, but I thought this was interesting enough to share. Turns out google now can credit the creator of images in google image searches! This is such amazing news. I personally know that a lot of my images have been shared without proper credit on social media so I can only imagine where they have ended up.

Click here to read the google article.

Like, yes I did take that image of the Tidal Basin at sunrise. Thank you google for the image credit! LOL. This image was taken on the same day as this image and this image. Isn’t it amazing how much the sky can change in about 30 minutes? The image previously blogged were when I first arrived at the Tidal Basin however this one was taken when I was about to leave. The water level was still really high but the it was the cloud formations that really caught my eye at that time. By the time the sun came out, it turned all the clouds orange. An explosion of color like no other!

My camera settings for this image is F16 at 1/125th sec and ISO 1000 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

I captured this image the same day I captured this one earlier this year in the summer. As a matter of fact, it’s probably the same exact bench just shot from a different angle. It was unreal how flooded the tidal basin was that day. It definietly makes for cool photos but it’s crazy to see in real life. The sad part is that it’s becoming more and more of a common occurrence. The silver lining is that I love the clouds in this image. It’s so subtle and really the only real color in the image that it makes it even more interesting to look at. Hope the cherry blossom trees will be ok in the long run!

Anyways, happy Friday everyone! Thank you all so much for all your positive feedback on the 2019 Dynamic DC Calendar. I’m so grateful for all your purchases and I can’t wait for you to see it in person. I CAN’T wait to see it in person. It’s funny because half the calendars that have been sold are from people not even in the Washington DC area. I love that!

And let me know if you have any plans for the weekend. I personally do not have any plans and I’m loving it. I feel like in the beginning of the year I was just keeping myself busy with all these events and meetups that it’s nice just doing nothing at all. Hopefully I’ll get some shooting time… with my film camera 🙂 If you need me, I’ll be one of those cool people with a camera on each shoulder. HAHA!

My camera settings for this image is F4.0 at 1/40 sec at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

PS I’m so ready for the leaves to start changing color. C’mon Fall! I feel ya. But don’t see ya! LOL