ANGELA B. PAN

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2019! WOW. Not to total ignore 2019 but everytime I think 2019, I can’t help but think 2020 is just around the corner and that is just bananas to me. Like can you imagine people saying that they were born in 2020? The number is just crazy to me. P.S. Where are the flying cars at?

Anyways…

Much like my top travel images of 2018, I like to reminisce and look back on my favorite images from Washington DC from the past year. It makes me feel so fortunate to live in the Nation’s Capital. I love being able to hop in my car and within minutes be among some of the most recognizable and loved landmarks in the world. I feel extremely blessed and look forward to another year of capturing more images.

Click on each image to read the original blog post but I’ll try to add some additional light on these images now that I’ve sat on them for a while. In no particular order except chronological, here are my favorite images of 2018.

This day was definietly a highlight of the winter season. I remember we had some crazy foggy mornings but on this particular day, the fog happened in the middle of the day. Oh yea, it was raining too. Luckily, it was on a Sunday and I didn’t have much else going on. So what better way than to walk around the National Mall than with my friend, Birch. I still love how everything lines up in this image, even the little reflection you see in the puddle behind the lady is so interesting to see.

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Days have been going by so fast lately. Don’t you think? Or is it just me? Even though the days are longer, I swear I wake up in the morning and the next thing I know it’s 2p. If I really thought about it I think I took this image this past weekend but when I looked at my calendar, it was really from three weeks ago! That’s so crazy.

I captured this image at the IGDC sunrise meet up. It was a super cold morning and with no clouds in the sky. Usually those are the kind of days that I would rather sleep in (and by sleeping in I mean sleeping until 7a on a weekend) but I knew I would have had a great time shooting with my friends. I left my camera in my backpack for the most part. I was enjoying the conversations more than anything else. But as everyone was wrapping up and leaving, I noticed the sun burst peaking out of the US Capitol building.  So I shot it and didn’t really think much of it. It wasn’t until I got home and looked at the images on my computer did I realize I captured the reflection of the sun burst. How freakin’ cool is that?

Now that I think about it, I think it would be even cooler if I got some seagulls or something flying in the image and got a reflection of that as well. It would be really nice to have some kind of foreground element to this image. Oh well, there’s always next time. I’ll just have to keep that in my to-shoot list.

The camera settings for this image is F/22 at 1/50th of a second at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens handheld.

Day three of gratitude and I could not be more grateful for the DC photo community. When I first started out in photography, I thought I was the only one. I honestly thought that I was the only one from this area who enjoyed walking around and taking pictures. Obviously I had seen other photographs of DC before, but I had no idea who these people were or how to connect with them. So I spent the first 3 or 4 years all by myself.

After a while, I think I just got bored…

so I signed up for Instagram. My eyes seriously exploded. This is where all the people were hiding! I had no idea there was such a large community of local photographers and all their images were amazing! I decided to go on my first photo walk with IGDC and soon after that, Walk with Locals. It’s hard to describe the energy around these walks but I have nothing but positive things to say about them. And it’s so great because even if you don’t know anybody on the walk, you know you at least have one thing in common, a passion for photography. It’s so fun to spend a few hours with like-minded people creating. Ugh, I love it.

Now I love going out to take pictures with people, I’m no longer bored, and somehow I see things in a different perspective each time I go out. It has opened my world to new people and new places and I’m so grateful to the DC photo community for helping me do this.

This image is of my friend, Laurie one morning at the National Gallery of Art. She’s just one of the awesome people I’ve met through Instagram and thrilled every time we get to hang out.

The settings for this image is F/8 at 1/800th of a second and ISO 160 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.