ANGELA B. PAN

Greetings. About one month has passed since I posted my first COVID 19 update, I figured I’d send out another one.

In the past few weeks and even days, I’ve started realizing all the things I used to take for granted. I used to take for granted meeting up with a friend for lunch. I never even considered the fact that I would be unsafe walking past someone on the sidewalk. I took for granted being able to run to the grocery store real quick when we ran out of eggs. Now it’s a lengthy discussion with Andrew as to who’s going to go, what we want to eat for the next couple of days and if we have all the ingredients, fun snacks and even to make a note to look out for toilet paper (which we’re running dangerously low on!). Needless to say, it’s a crazy time where I’ve been feeling a lot of ups and downs. When I’m feeling up, I am productive doing things that make me happy.

A few images from an expired roll of Porta 400 film from cherry blossom season. I got these images developed from PhotoVision.

When I’m feeling down, I try my best to journal or write at least write down the things that I’m grateful for. Going on neighborhood walks has helped. Sitting down and expressing my feelings out to Andrew or friends on the phone has been great too. I’m still constantly thinking about what’s going to happen after all of this is done, when it’s going to be done but I just know all this uncertainty can’t be answered right now. When I catch myself feeling like this, I try to remember how I’m blessed to even have my health and almost instantly feel better.

From a walk on the Mt Vernon Trail before the stay at home order in Virginia.

I’ve also realized that every time I step foot outside my house, I’m concerned about the coronavirus. Even if it’s just to walk Frankie, I’m on the lookout to see who’s about to come near us and I feel so disturbed having those feelings. This has also hindered my photography. I’m not going out nearly as much as I used to but still feel the urge to capture images. I’ve taken a few pictures around my neighborhood and surrounding areas which has been nice.

Our local grocery store that I can walk to.

One day, Andrew and I just needed to get out so we decided we’d go fo a car ride. It was great to get out but so weird to see the streets of DC so quite. Frankie loved the little outing too. I also need to make a mental note that whenever I leave the house, I should bring my camera. I want to get better at that, especially since it doesn’t happen very often.

We didn’t get out of the car. Just enjoyed the views from inside.

While I’m home, I’ve been working on a few personal projects. One project that I’ve mentioned in my newsletter and on Instagram is that I’ve been scanning old family pictures. Luckily, my mom gave me a few photo albums before everything really broke out so it’s been keeping me busy. I’ve also taken the time out to scan images from high school.

A few family scans

But a majority of the time I’ve been trying to learn more. I want to take this time to try to improve my own photography. I love watching youtube videos of other photographers and attending webinars. I’ve learned that one thing that I don’t want to take for granted now is all this extra time we’ve been given. No more time spent stuck in traffic, no more time even commuting anywhere or even running mindless errands has given me so much “extra” time. All those things that I use to say that I would do if I had more time, I’m going to try to do them now!

I’ve also been going back and editing some older images. (L) Our first snowstorm in March 2018. (R) Surfer in San Diego in January 2019

But I think one of the most rewarding experiences so far has been running again. It’s been a great release for me. Andrew and I used to run a lot together when we first started dating. But after I ran a half marathon in 2015, I haven’t ran much. Running now has shown me how much stronger I have gotten over the years just by working out at the gym (which has now been replaced by virtual workouts). But in general, I feel less winded and my mile has definitely gotten faster. I am starting to feel really good when I go out for a run too. After all of this, I’m not sure if I’ll still continue running. But for now, I’m am grateful to be able to concentrate more on my health.

That’s all from me. This update was kind of all over the place with all the things I’ve been thinking about and doing but I hope you enjoyed it. Sending you much love and well wishes. Stay safe!

PS If there are any particular blog posts or photo content that you’d like to see from me, please let me know in the comments below! I’d love to use my skills to try to make you feel safe and more comfortable at home.

While fighting the jetlag in Taiwan, I loved being able to walk around the Tamsui district. There’s something about waking up early and then watching the rest of the city waking up. It’s so relaxing but then you can feel the energy getting higher and higher as the morning goes on. I love it.

This image was taken on one of those early morning walks when not a lot of people were awake except for a few who were fishing. What I think is most interesting about this image is that every single of these people is actually fishing. They just have their own style of it. I especially like the one who has taken a seat on his pink scooter as he waits for the fish to bite.

My camera settings for this image are F7.1 at 1/800th sec and ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 35mm.

I have gotten to the point that when I go out to photograph the sunrise in Washington DC, there will be times that I won’t even pull out my camera. It doesn’t happen often, but most of the time it’s because I don’t see anything that I haven’t photographed before or the light isn’t the way I want it so I save the composition idea for another day. Either way, I don’t get mad about it. I just think it happens sometimes.

This day was shaping out to be one of those days. I had watched the sunrise at the Tidal Basin but there were no clouds in the sky and nothing that really made it a particularly interesting morning. It wasn’t until this Great Blue Heron flew by until I felt inspired to actually pull out my camera. He landed on the edge of the Tidal Basin and was staring down the fish in the water. I honestly don’t think he even knew I was there. I just kept on creeping on him closer and closer until I captured this shot! He had caught a few fish while I was trying to photograph him, but I was so surprised I actually captured this. It was perfect timing!

My camera settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/640th sec and ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm.

The other day a friend of mine emailed me asking me if I had Iceland recommendations because they just booked a trip for the summertime. Oh definitely yes I do and basically wrote a book with everything I knew about traveling to the nordic country. All the pros, cons and everything I would do differently. To be honest though, there weren’t that many cons. Way more pros and exciting things to do 🙂

So after that long email, it made me want to go back and revisit some of my older Iceland images. It’s been 2 years since last time I was there but still have great memories of the visit. I’ve never been in the summertime so I definitely noted that it would be interesting to see what it would be like with almost 24 hrs of sunlight. It makes me wonder if sleeping would be difficult .

This image was taken on my last trip there. Vík was one of my favorite places we visited and it’s always on the top of my to-see places whenever people tell me they’re going to Iceland. This was an early morning shot and by early morning I mean around 11:30a in Iceland because we were there in January and the sunrise was around 10:30. It was amazing to get to sleep in for so long but so weird when daylight was only 4 or 5 hours.

An early morning fog had rolled in and seriously illuminated the mountains like I had never seen before. PS Is it me or do you feel like eating a piece of steak now? LOL.

Iceland is definitely one of those places that I could go back to time and time again and not get bored.

My camera settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/50th sec and ISO 200 with my Sony A7ii and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

I took this image almost a year ago during Cherry Blossom season on that one crazy foggy morning we had. If you look closely enough, you can make out the cherry blossom trees in the background. But my focus for this image were on the birds that were flying in the foreground.

I know there has to be quite a few fish swimming around in the Tidal Basin. It’s not uncommon to see a couple of people out there fishing in the mornings, once in a while you’ll hear a random splash in the water and there’s always birds circling. 3 indications that in fact, there are fish in the tidal basin. So there are usually always a fair amount of birds that are on the water fishing. (What’s even cooler is when you can capture them all flying away together.) I thought it would be interesting to see if I could get a cool image of the birds and the fog, so for a good 10 minutes my focus went from photographing the flowers to the birds.

Then this one guy started flapping his wings like he was about to take off. Bird photography isn’t always my thing so I just took a few snap shots and kept it moving. It wasn’t until I got home and could view this image large on the computer screen that I noticed all the cool ripples it was creating. I also really like the reflection within those ripples. Overall I am just really happy with the way this turned out. I think it’s a pretty cool portrait of the scary flying creature about to take off.

And if you don’t know, I’m not a huge fan of birds. 

My settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/125the of a second at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.

This is really funny to watch in real life. As the fisherman come back from their trip, the birds eagerly line up to see what they caught. There were seriously at least 50 birds all lined up.