Snap DC

All photos available for print and licensing >

When people think about Washington DC, one of the first things that come to mind is the White House. But for some reason, it’s never a real go to spot for me to go capture images. There are several reasons for this regardless of who’s residing in the house.

  1. The White House is located in a spot where it’s not great at either sunrise or sunset. The only way to get a really nice sky in the background is if you are lucky with one of those days where the color takes over the whole sky. Those days are so hard to predict that it’s just easier to be closer to one of the monuments as opposed to the White House.
  2. The security around the White House keeps getting increasingly stricter. Since I first started out in photography, you could actually get pretty close to the gate and no one would say anything. Now, you have to be a least across the street. With all the tourists all cramped up in one little sidewalk, it’s so difficult to get a great shot.
  3. If you are want to take your White House shot, try to bring the biggest zoom you can. It will be the only way you can get a close up shot without a lot of people in your image. This image was taken with my 70-200mm at 93mm.

This image also happens to be an image I took just for my book, Snap DC and had never been published before. I definietly remember the day I took this because I remember I parked my car, walked all the way to the White House, and then realized I left my camera in the car. OMG how does that even happen? I swear, only me.

So if you’re interested in more Washington DC photo tips like this, check out Snap DC on Amazon. Just remember to bring your camera with you 🙂

My camera settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/200th sec and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm ultra zoom.

All photos available for print and licensing >

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.

fog, tidal basin, winter, weather, umbrella, stranger, candid, washington dc, national mall, moody, cherry blossom trees, trunk, photowalk,

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.

Click here to read more

All photos available for print and licensing >

Continuing my thoughts on being a photographer and writer

From the feedback that I got yesterday about being a photographer and writer I can see that I’m not the only one who feels like it’s difficult to express themselves verbally. After all, photographs are a visual representation of a 1000 words right? What more do we need to say?

I’ve started to read the book, Henri Cartier-Bresson Interviews and Conversations 1951-1998. From its title you may guess that Mr Cartier-Bresson did not consider himself a writer. In fact he’s published several books, most of which he did not write the words in and I found that to be very interesting. I’m not done with this book, but when I am, I’ll for sure write a book review like I do with many other books that I read.

But Henri is such a influential photographer that I would think many people would love to hear his exact thoughts about photography, art and his life in general. Maybe he was like me and did not know how to do it. But as I’ve taken the commitment to be more thoughtful and concise with my writing, the more I’ve learned from it as well. I’ve learned that there is more to the story than just a pretty photograph. There is so much preparation that is involved (whether you realize it or not), timeliness and even whether or not you executed your planned intention. The ability to verbalize this and to make sure to clearly send the right message makes you really think about the words you use and how to use them. I could re-write the same sentence like 10 times and it still not come out right.

Regardless, in the past two years I’ve have come to realize how important words are. I still would not consider myself the best writer in the world but I definietly try my best. Reading/listening to books has really helped me come up with my own writing style and learned just how free I can be in this new form of communication.

As seen in my recently published book, Snap DC. LOL

This image was taken about 20 minutes before the previous image. I figured that if I’m writing about the same thing, having similar images would be ok. But can we please get rid of that Lincoln Memorial scaffolding? 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

My camera settings were F16 at 1 sec and ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm ultra zoom lens on a tripod.

PS Happy Halloween!

 

All photos available for print and licensing >

Some of you may not know but I’ve been writing this blog since March 2010. It was then that I commited to posting a new image every monday-friday and I have not broke that commitment once. To be fair, sometimes the blog posts will go up a little bit later than others but they are always there!

However when I made that commitment, I never said anything about writing. I have never considered myself to be a person who can easily express their feelings or view point. I feel like I know what I mean in my head but when it comes to verbalizing it, it can be difficult. You know what I mean?

So if you read my blog in the early days, you would have seen my image and then one or two sentences max. I remember it was such a hassle and torture to even do that. But it was in January of 2017 where I commited to be more than just a photographer. I wanted to be more thoughtful and practice the art of writing. Thanks to my friend, Mel for the encouragement!  So I stepped up my game and have been consistently taking pictures and writing about them more thoughtfully for almost 2 years. I will say it was a struggle at first but the more I do it, the easier it gets. I even find myself looking forward to writing sometimes. I think it’s the sense of accomplishment that I feel after writing something I’m proud of. Don’t get me wrong though, some days are easier than others. For example, I wrote a book talk/speech for a photo club I presented at last week. It took me about 1 hour to write a speech that I loved so much. The icing on the cake was that people came up to me to tell me how inspired they were by it. I was on cloud 9 for the rest of the week!

I have a lot more to say on this topic so to be continued for tomorrow…. LOL

My camera settings for this image is F5 at 1/80th sec at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm ultra zoom on my gitzo tripod.

All photos available for print and licensing >

Last but not least is my favorite image in the whole series. I took this image at the very end of my time shooting sunrise at the National Mall. As you can see I started this week off right outside the Lincoln Memorial, then I went inside, then back to the reflecting pool, and went up the stairs to go to the Lincoln and ended right back inside the Lincoln Memorial. The whole hour I out shooting the sunrise I just walked back and forth between the two landmarks. So instead of coming out with one image, I was able to come out with 5 really cool images that I love. So next time you go out to photograph any location, I hope you keep this series in mind. I think it is a cool example of how many different perspectives you can get if you just keep walking.

By this point the sun was fully out and shining bright inside the Lincoln Memorial. My natural tendencies would lead me to go right but this time I felt the need to go left. I began photographing President Lincoln through the columns but I wasn’t happy with the images that were coming out. I was about to leave when I stopped in the corner of the interior and noticed all the amazing shadows the columns were creating. To be honest, I waited for about 15 minutes for someone to show up. Some kind of foreground element to make this image a little more interesting. The closest thing that I got was the shadow figure on the left hand side. Someone who looked like they were about to come in but for some reason did not. Either way, I still love all the lines and repetition in this image.

My camera settings for this image is F8 at 1/125th of a second at ISO 640 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

All photos available for print and licensing >

Since I’ll be away this week, I thought it would be kinda cool to pre schedule these blog posts to illustrate the importances of moving your feet while shooting. What I mean is that photographers can get so comfortable when they find one composition that they end up staying in that same exact spot for the entire sunrise, sunset or whatever period of time. To me, there’s little worse than coming home and finding a whole memory card full of the exact same images. I personally feel like I didn’t push myself enough or I could have missed an opportunity. Even something as simple as turning around and seeing what’s going on behind you can even lead to a more interesting image.

So everyday this week there will be a new image but they were all taken within an hour of each other. I would stop at each place for about 10 minutes or so. However long I felt was necessary and then kept it moving. I walked from the edge of the reflecting pool to the center to the other side of the reflecting pool. I would walk up and down the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial steps. And even go back down to the reflecting pool when I saw something cool happening over there. None of the images will be the same but all taken in the same area. I hope that you’ll find inspiration from this and keep your feet moving!

This particular image is one of the very first ones I was happy with this Sunday morning. Despite what you may think it wasn’t taken at the reflecting pool either. It was on the Lincoln Memorial steps. There just happened to be this beautiful puddle right and I stood behind it to capture the Washington Monument. I think my favorite part of this image is the little gap you see in between the trees and the reflection. I think it makes it much more interesting than if it were just a perfectly symmetrical image. The colors ain’t bad either 😉

My camera settings for this image is F11 at 1/40th of a second at ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens handheld.