ANGELA B. PAN

I know I’m extremely late to the game on this one. Like almost 6 years late, but have you seen the movie “Finding Vivian Maier”? If you haven’t, it’s on Netflix and it’s definietly a must watch especially if you’re a creative but more specifically a street photographer. Holy Cow. I was blown away by this movie.

First of all, Vivian Maier’s work was so good and to think she shot everything on film too. I feel like with film (as opposed to digital cameras) is much more planning and thinking involved. Especially since film takes a little while to shoot and reload, but also since you can’t even see what the image looks like after you’ve captured it. It’s like praying you got something good but never not knowing for sure until your roll is developed and then it is sometimes difficult to go back and recreate that exact moment. It’s actually a bit terrifying when you sit down to think about it.

And that Rolleiflex. OMG how cool was that camera. I love how the viewfinder was on top so that you could sneakily take photos without people really knowing. I feel like I can sort of do that with my Sony A7II but not to the extent that Vivan did.

But second of all, how cool is it to find a huge trunk of negatives and seeing such amazing photographs. I loved how you got to know her and her personality through her images and the stories of people she connected with. It was very interesting how she sort of recreated herself for different people. I think when I think about her images her self portraits stand out the most to me in my head. She was such a mysterious woman and to see what she actually looked like was very nice.

Anyways, you may have noticed in 2018 I really tried my best at street photography and it’s something I really enjoy but something so different for me. Vivian Maier is now a huge inspiration to that and look forward to capturing more on my travels 🙂 This image was taken in Aruba while we were sitting down for breakfast. Across the street was this man who just seemed so content with the morning. He was basically screaming for me to capture this image.

My camera settings for this image is F8 at 1/1000th sec at ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm.

You know what’s funny? As I was shooting this, I noticed I was the only one who was getting up close to the US Capitol building. There were quite a few tourists out there with me. I think a bus pulled up while I was there and so many of them were taking selfies in front of the Capitol. But no one would even get near the fountain. Weird, right? Maybe it was the Capitol police with their guns that looked so intimidating. Or maybe they were just not trying to get into my shot. Either way, I was all alone taking this picture. I’m not complaining though. It was really nice to be the only one. Who knows how many people got pictures of my back side though. HAHA.

On this evening, it looked like it was going to storm but I don’t think it actually did. The clouds were super dark. I couldn’t tell with my eyes if they were moving but once I slapped on the Ice Neutral density filter 10 stop, I could see that they were making this really cool effect. Like they were all racing out of the Capitol dome. I really liked it so I tried different angles and came out with this one. This one came out particularly awesome because you can see some reflection in the water and may I add the symmetry of the building’s architecture is probably the coolest part of the image.

For some reason seeing dark and moody images of the Capitol always reminds me of President Underwood. So now that House of Cards season 5 is officially back on Netflix, I think you know what Andrew and I will be doing on our flight back home from our trip. Oh man, can’t waitttt. This season is really going to be good!

Is it wrong to say that this reminds me of House of Cards? Is it also a mistake to say that Andrew and I have already finished the 4th season? Man, I hope we don’t have to wait another year to find out what happens next to the Underwood campaign.