ANGELA B. PAN

Is it me or did Thanksgiving creep up on you too? I can’t believe it’s next week! In the past I would have already known what dishes I’m making but this year I have no clue. I have not looked at pinterest once! I need to get on that this weekend.

But in the meantime I have been going through some of the images I’ve taken recently of the fall colors. It was like I spent a week straight photographing different places around the Washington DC area to capture the color but didn’t have time to go through ALL the images. But this trip to Shenandoah National Park was definietly a highlight.

Shenandoah National Park isn’t exactly in the Washington area but it’s a great place to escape to when you need a little time with nature. On this trip I went with my friend, Larry and we were both pleasantly surprised by the sunrise color. In the past, we haven’t had much luck with color in the park. Mostly a lot of cloudy, foggy days.  So as soon as I saw that color come out, I was super excited to switch to my 16-35mm wide angle to try to capture as much of the sky as I could. I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not but lately, I’ve been really liking to have a blurry foreground element and have something in the mid-ground in focus. That is exactly what I was trying to do here with the huge rocks that I was standing on in order to capture this image. What do you think?

My camera settings for this image is F4.5 at 1/40th sec at ISO 1250 with my 16-35mm and Larry let me borrow his Sony A7III for the day.

And if you have any Thanksgiving recipe suggestions let me know! Something on the easy side 🙂

I took this image at the same time I captured this one. Except at this time I did not know my batteries were dying. I was too busy enjoying the beautiful light that was peaking through the Japanese cherry blossom trees and kept on shooting and shooting away.

This whole cherry blossom season has been very cloudy. I think there may have been just 1 or 2 days that I was out that we actually had some sun out of the 2 weeks that they were here. So I was super excited to see the blossoms glowing.

You can’t tell, but I was standing next to my friend, Jarrett while capturing it. He’s the kind of friend that we never make plans to see each other but we always run into each other while taking pics. I always enjoy running into him, especially around the tidal basin because we have so much in common. He’s the type of person that you can say anything to him and he’ll have a funny story to tell you about that. So if you ever run in to Jarrett while taking pics, just ask him if he likes fried chicken. LOL.

So now that the cherry blossom season is pretty much done for this year, I some how forgot to mention this everywhere but on my newsletter that I updated my cherry blossom guide. LOL. I was in the shower the other day and realized I hadn’t put it on social media or anything! It was definietly a doh moment! So better late than never? At least you can use these tips for next year? Sorry about that. Here’s the link if you still have any interest.

My camera settings for this image is F8 at 1/160th of a second at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens handheld.

A little break from all the pink spring flowers for some yellow ones. I captured this image behind the George Mason Memorial. It’s a little hidden gem that’s so close to the Tidal Basin but I don’t know how many people actually know about it. It’s kind of an empty space and I believe there’s still construction going on in the very center of the memorial. Regardless, it’s a great way to escape the crowds of the Tidal Basin but still capture some beautiful flowers.

What originally caught my attention about this space were all the beautiful magnolia trees. You can see them sort of in the center layer at the edges of this image. But once I actually started composing, I liked the yellow flowers more. They were just so beautiful and whimsical. I love how there are even more yellow flowers in the center layer, in between the magnolia trees.

The whole time I was editing this image, I was thinking of my mom. Her favorite color is yellow and she loves gardening. She doesn’t grow flowers or anything but she has a full fledge garden in her backyard of all kinds of fruits and vegetables for the spring/summer. In fact, she’s had a garden in every house that we’ve lived in and I have so many memories with her in those gardens. Whether it’s picking the fruit and vegetables that I wanted to eat or her making me pull weeds and laying out the soil because I was eating her fruits and vegetables and I had to contribute in some way. We’ve spent a lot of time outdoors together and that may be one of the reasons why I love being outside so much. Interesting that I never put those two things together before…

My camera settings for this image is F8 at 1/250th of a second at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.

You know, I photograph Washington DC a lot. LOL. A lot of the time it’s at sunrise. And lately there hasn’t been a real sunrise that has gotten me excited to shoot, except for this day! I woke up a little earlier than usual and made my way down to the National Mall. Driving in I knew it was going to be a real good one. It’s really hard to say how, but I can just tell by looking at the clouds. Needless to say, I was super hyped.

I knew right away that it was going to be a great photo day. I wanted to make sure that my feet kept on moving as I walked through the Lincoln Memorial, the Reflecting Pool and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I try my best to experiment with different compositions at the places I go to the most. I really don’t like going home with a SD card full of the same exact images. So the only way to prevent that from happening is to keep on moving. But something was calling me back to the Reflecting Pool. I knew it was going to be THE place to capture this amazing sky.

As soon as I turned the corner from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, I stood in awe. It was AMAZING. My favorite is seeing the perfect cloud reflections in the water. In order to capture it all, I had to get real low. No tripod, just balanced my camera on the ground and hoping my winter shivers didn’t move the camera too much. It literally looked like the sky was on fire. Couldn’t have asked for a better morning!

The settings for this image is F8 at 1/20th of a second and ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Cherry Blossoms! On one hand I wish they would stick around longer than a week at a time. On the other, I think it’s what makes me appreciate them even more. They’re so delicate and beautiful. My favorite is when they look like kernels of popcorn jumping off the branch.

My trick with cherry blossoms is to photograph them off the tripod. That’s right, no tripod at all. Unless you’re shooting the sky at sunrise or sunset, I feel like the tripod can be restricting. Especially when you’re trying for new angles and points of view. I tend to put my camera as close as I can get to them and start composing from there. They make for great foreground elements as well a good way to frame and using the branches for line. I particularly like this image because the cherry blossoms are coming at you from every which way. Some may say the ones in the very front should be in focus, but I like the out of focus ones the most. It adds an extra element of depth that you wouldn’t get if they were in sharp.

This was shot early morning, right after sunrise. So my camera settings for this image was F/8 at 1/1000th of a second ISO 1000. Not sure why my ISO was so high. That must have been a mistake. If I were to do it again, it’d probably be in the 100 to 200 range. Results would be the same but I’m sure during post processing I had to denoise it to get rid of the small specks.

Here’s hoping we get a normal winter this year and the snow stops falling in February instead of March like it did this year! A lot of these suckers didn’t’ get to full term this year 🙁

If I’m ever feeling frustrated or less than confident about my work, I tend to just go to my cherry blossom images and then I feel all better. Theres something about them that makes me so happy. They are also easy to shoot. They have all the built in elements of composition right there. Line, shape, form, color, frame. You just have to be creative with it. Plus it’s really hard to take a bad picture when they’re at peak bloom. Anyone can do it.

Since I’ve been shooting the cherry blossoms for 7+ years now (I know, crazy right?), every year I challenge myself to create something different. Even though they are the same trees at the same Tidal Basin, they’re always look different. My favorite from last year was playing with framing and the year before that was incorporating people into the shot. This year was definietly the surprise element of fog and creating some images with the muted tones. I also had a great time playing with puddles since weather was a huge factor during this year’s festival. So I guess the point of this story is to challenge yourself. I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes I take the same pictures as everyone else. I think it’s fine, but get those out of the way first. Move on from those and try to see something new. Change your perspective or walk in a different direction than everyone else. You’ll be surprised by what you see. Even if you’re used to always shooting on a tripod all the time, leave you tripod in the car this time and see what comes up. You may be happy with your results.

It’s not all shooting though. Once you’re in front of the computer, try a different way of processing or even cropping. This image was actually a horizontal image that I cropped to a vertical. I felt the composition was much strong like this but didn’t see it until I saw it on the big screen.