ANGELA B. PAN

Just going through some older images of the US Capitol building, I ran across this one. Most of the time when I look at these images, I remember EXACTLY when I captured them, what I was feeling, etc. But for some reason, I don’t remember with this one. Did I even capture this images? LOL of course but I’m not sure what happened. Maybe I was just busy that day or something and didn’t have time to go through them all and eventually I just forgot about them? OR maybe I’ve just been to the US Capitol so much that all my memories are starting to mush together into one? I know it had to have been a sunrise. Either way, I’m glad found this image.

This is actually the original.

I really like the way that it came out but as I was waiting for my computer to save the image, I thought about what it would look like with a vertical crop. I tested it out. Which do you like better?

Either way, I love the two bright colors right next to each other. It’s so unexpected but very interesting to me. And the most unexpected part about the image is being able to see the inside of the dome! Look in the windows. You can see a little bit of the interior. So COOL!

PS. I’m still trying to get a tour of the interior of the US Capitol dome. Those shots would be AH-Mazing. I think I’ve written to my representative at least 3 times and still no answer. If anyone knows how I can get in, let me know the time and place and I’ll be there.

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 1/50 sec and ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

Now that the spring flowers have basically come and gone. Everything in our area is looking very green. I’m really looking forward to all the summer flowers that bloom like the sunflowers and these lotus flowers. The best ones in the DC area are definietly the ones in Anacostia at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens. Its like rows and rows full of them. The only thing that’s not so great about them is that they are only open from 8:30a to 5p. Peak hours for the sun light to be shining down on them so they can be a little difficult to photograph.

My tip to photograph the lotuses during this time would to be find a large tree. Hopefully it’s casting it’s shadow on at least one of these lotuses so it would be very even lighting on the flower. They really can be really difficult to photograph under the extremely harsh light. If you can’t find one that’s in a shadow, then I’d recommend trying to shoot from the bottom looking up. They can look amazingly majestic from this point of view and the light shining down on them can really help. And especially with the pink color, they look great against a blue sky. I remember when I first found about these flowers, Kenilworth didn’t close their gate so I could walk in at sunrise. They must of learned from Great Falls Park to shut it down once it was closing time 🙁

My camera settings for this image was F9 at 1/800th of a second with ISO 250. I used my 100mm macro Canon lens and metabones adaptor to be able to shoot this on my Sony A7ii. My intention was to get the whole flower in focus and make the background blurry. I think the F9 aperture did a great job at doing this.