ANGELA B. PAN

Sometimes I’ll get into these zones and edit a whole bunches of images all at the same time, store them onto my desktop folder called “haven’t blogged yet” and then totally forget about them. This is the case with this image. I took it last week when it was crazy foggy at Shenandoah National Park and didn’t even bother posting it on instagram or anywhere else. Umm whoops?

In order to get into these zones, I’ll put on my ear phones and not even think about anything else other than the music I’m listening to and the image in front of me. It’s so fun. Although if you were looking through my window I’d look like a weirdo because I’ll be bopping my head and flinging my pointer finger around to the beat of the music. HAHA

To be honest, I’m probably done with Shenandoah National Park for the season. I’m going to try to concentrate on photographing more local areas to me like Great Falls Park and DC for the rest of the fall time. It’s not that I don’t love going, it’s just exhausting waking up so early in the morning, spending a couple hours there and then driving back. I usually won’t be home until the afternoon and it feels like most of the day has gone. But who knows? Maybe there will be a sunset shoot or night time shoot in my future? We’ll see!

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/40th of a second and ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and my 16-35mm wide angle lens.

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.

On my quest to take more cherry blossom images this year, I thought I’d leave this one for you for the weekend. This image was taken in 2012.  This is what the cherry blossoms should look like. Beautiful puffy white clouds along these delicate, windy branches. A glorious morning only shared by those who didn’t mind waking up before the sun. Ripples along the water created by a bird, a duck or slight gust of wind.

LOL I can’t keep a straight face anymore. I tried to be poetic. I’ll stop now.

Yea… So I took this in 2012, I have another version of this here but this one is a brand new one. I did not process it until now. The first time I processed the original image it was in HDR. For some reason it created all these unnecessary lines and colors along the branches called chromatic aberration. Trust me it is a pain in the B-U-T-T to get rid of. Man. I think it took me almost 3 days of fixing before I could get it just right for a client to print. So this version is vertical and it’s a little bit of a different point of view. The colors are definietly not as saturated but I much prefer this version. What about you? Which one do you prefer? Here’s the link again to the first one. 

If you’re wondering, I stopped processing my images using HDR a while ago. I just realized I was spending all this unnecessary time processing and editing that I didn’t have to be. I am really enjoying my workflow now which is only photoshop. Nothing else. If you’re interested in learning more about it, check out my video here.

Have a great weekend everyone. May the flowers be dancing above your head like the cherry blossoms in 2012 were. LOL.