ANGELA B. PAN

We’ve been having a lot of stormy weather lately in the Washington DC area. It seems like almost every day I’ve been getting warnings on my phone about rain or thunderstorms. I’m not complaining though because it feels great to break up some of the hot, humid summer days. But with all these rainy days, I’m always thinking about the water levels at the Tidal Basin and how bad the flood walls need to be repaired.

Even though I took this image last summer, it reminds me of what it’s probably been like at the Tidal Basin right now. It’s pretty ridiculous to see how much the Tidal Basin gets flooded, even on a day that doesn’t rain that much. To be honest, this particular day was the worst I’ve ever seen it. The sidewalks are flooded and it has become un-walkable. At some point, I had to walk up the slight hill, up to the sidewalk in order to get around trees and the flooding in order to walk along the Tidal Basin. It’s crazy!

If you’re are just as concerned as I am about your grandchildren seeing the Tidal Basin in all its beautiful glory, including the iconic cherry blossoms, please consider taking the pledge from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It’s a national treasure that needs to be preserved.

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 1/250th sec at ISO 640 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.

We have been getting some crazy rain in the Washington DC area. The past week has been especially hard on Frankie who doesn’t like getting wet at all. He immediately wants to run back into the house at any signs of rain.

But with all this rain, I knew the Tidal Basin would not be doing so well. Even with a normal amount of rain it gets bad, but this has been exceptional. Earlier this week I decided to go check it out. To be honest, it wasn’t as bad as this day but it was still crazy to see. As soon as I walked up to this bench, I had an idea for a selfie. I wanted to sit on top of the bench to try to create a sort of pyramid between me and the two monuments. But it didn’t quite work out like I had planned.

Like I said before, I’ll be shooting with my Canon for the next few days. It’s been so long that I’ve even held it that I kinda forgot how to use it. So I set the camera up on a tripod and was hoping to set it on a 10 second timer to execute my vision. I didn’t think to bring my remote and I could only find the 2 second timer. I even tried googling it real quick but found no answers to where I could find a 10 second timer. So two second timer it was.

Man 2 seconds is FAST! Here are more attempts. I think it’s pretty funny but still would have rather have found the 10 second timer. What’s even better is that I have at least 10 more of these “images” on my memory card. After a while I just had to give up. LOL

After a while I thought if I put my camera to the side then I could be a little closer and make it, but that didn’t work either. LOL. Oh well.

My camera settings for these images are F5.0 at 1/4th of a second ISO 400 with my Canon 5D Mark II and 17-40mm wide angle lens.

This image is nuts. I can’t even believe I captured it because it’s really not supposed to look like this at all. This has got to be the worst flooding that I have EVER seen at the Tidal Basin and I’ve seen it flooded a number of times before. For example, here and here and even here.

The sidewalks were totally not walkable at all. I didn’t have my rain boots on this day but that would not have mattered. At some points I think the water came up to my knees. At that point I would have needed waders. Which is a funny story because I actually have a pair. Don’t ask me how I was given a pair… just trust me in knowing that I look super cool in them.

In order to captured this, I walked along the grass the entire time. It was pretty sad to see so many cherry blossom trees just wading in the water. At some points I would even see ducks swim by in places that was supposed to be a sidewalk. It was almost like I was walking through a really weird dream.

The only good side to this is that the reflections were unbelievable. The water was only moving when ducks would swim by but otherwise it was like glass. The sunrise was way better than expected so I was super happy to be able to capture it all in the water and make it look even more dramatic with the reflections.

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 1/500th of a second at ISO 1000 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens. I noticed that a lot of the images I captured this day were in the shadows because I was walking around in the trees so much (with no tripod) so I had to bump up my ISO to compensate.

Yesterday’s sunrise was amazing. I checked my weather app the night before and it looked very promising. So I was excited to get out to the Tidal Basin, shoot sunrise and check on the status of the cherry blossoms.

You can see in this image that they are budding. I may have seen one or two trees that had a couple of blossoms on them but for the most part they looked like this. They definietly won’t be blooming this week. Hopefully by the end of next week. However the color in the sky and the cherry blossoms were not my main focus once I arrived. It was all the flooding that was on the sidewalks! There was so much water everywhere. A lot of the southern part of the Tidal Basin, close to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, had large puddles and some were so big that they were impassable. It had got to the point where I really regretted my decision of wearing sneakers instead of rain boots. It made the grass all muddy and overall a really swampy situation.

I’ve seen the Tidal Basin flood before, but there had always been a reason. This day for example was right after we had a huge thunderstorm so obviously it was flooded. This day was crazy foggy and there was a lot of moisture in the air so I’m assuming that’s why it flooded. But we haven’t had any rain or snow in almost a week. There really is no reason why the sidewalks should have been flooded like they were. It’s bananas.

So if you’re like me and want to do something about it, check out the Trust for the National Mall’s website so we can help protect the Tidal Basin and Cherry Blossoms.

The camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/40th of a second and ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Ok, last cherry blossom image for a while. I know I’ve been on a cherry blossom streak but I’m lovin’ them this year and this one was absolutely incredible. This is from that same foggy morning when I lost tripod in the tidal basin also the same day that I captured this beautiful cherry tree. Actually you know what, that tree that’s almost parallel to the sidewalk is the same tree as the previous image except this is from the other side it. That morning was crazy incredible for photography. So grateful for my rain boots so I was able to stand in the middle of this gigantic puddle and capture the reflections. I’m pretty sure other photographers there was staring at me to get out of the middle of their shot. LOL. *just one more, I promise* says every photographer in the world.

But the sad part is that I should of never been able to take this picture. The flooding of the tidal basin at high tide is a growing problem that’s getting worse everyday. It’s due to the collapsing seawall that surrounds the basin. If it gets bad enough, it will be disastrous for the cherry blossom trees. Just thinking about it makes me so sad. So if you’d like to learn more about the situation or if you would be kind of enough to donate the cause, click the link here. If every visitor to the tidal basin donated just $15, then that money would really go a long way to preserve the wall and trees.

The settings for this image was F6.3 at 1/15th of a second at ISO 200 with my 16-35mm. The biggest thing I wanted out of this image was to really show off the reflections in the puddle. I think the bubbles in it were an added bonus but I’m not sure how they happened. Maybe it was me walking through the puddle? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯