ANGELA B. PAN

Last October I had the amazing opportunity to speak to my high school’s photography class. Click here if you want to read the story. Like I said before, the best part was connecting to the students. Its amazing how creative and passionate these students were but there was one girl in particular who stood out to me. Her name is Sumaiya. At that time her proposal for 100 cameras had just been accepted and she was about to embark on this amazing journey of inspiring and motivating others through story telling. If you’re not familiar with 100 cameras, it’s a non profit organization that empowers underprivileged students to tell their own story through photography.

Sumaiya, being only a junior in high school and the youngest person ever to have their proposal accepted by 100 cameras, is bringing her amazing efforts to Dhaka, Bangladesh where there are countless amount of children who’s voices are not heard. Watch this youtube video that Sumaiya and her classmates created.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to travel with them to Bangladesh but I still wanted to help them spread the word. To be 100% honest, I have never met such motivated, talented and intelligent young adults ever as I have seen from this group from Snapshot Project Bangladesh. They are seriously dedicated to their mission among their school, extra curricular activities, and  other responsibilities. So the biggest shout out to them.

If you’re at all interested in helping them or learning more about Snapshot Project Bangladesh, please check out their go fund me page and consider a donation or if you have any additional questions, check out their website or please feel free to send me a message. I’ll be sure to pass it along to Sumaiya and the rest of the crew.

My camera settings for this image is F8 at 1/30th of a second and ISO 500 with my sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

What may look like a beautiful sunrise image is actually a little shocking. This was a sunrise shoot that was hard to forget. It was the morning after a huge tornado hit the DC area and usually after dramatic storms like that, we’ll get dramatic skies. So I woke up early and made my way down to the Tidal Basin. I was super excited to see this beautiful sunrise and immediately parked my car. I started off at the pedestrian bridge that’s on Ohio Drive. A good starting point for any image at the Tidal Basin and to get a better view I wanted to get closer to the water. Man, I was shocked when I tried to walk down the ramp and realized that I wouldn’t be able to get down any further. The water levels were so high that it was covering half the walkway. That meant the entire sidewalk area  further down was flooded. I think I stood there in disbelief for a minute because I had never seen anything like it. So I quickly turned around and to find an area on the grass where I could stand. I figured standing behind this bench would give me the most accurate depiction of how flooded it was to give scale. I bet if I actually stood in the water, it would of been up to my shins. Craziness! I had never seen the water rise this high before. Can’t be good for the cherry blossoms at all.

At least the ducks were happy.

So if you wanted to help the National Mall fix this flooding problem, please consider donating. It will really help with the improve and restoration of the seawall that’s obviously being damaged by the water and reconfigure the foot traffic so the cherry blossom trees won’t need replacement every year.