ANGELA B. PAN

Another one from Saturday morning’s amazing sunrise.

I was walking up the Lincoln Memorial steps when I just had to turn around and appreciate the morning light. It felt so good on my back that I wanted to see what it looked like and I saw this scene. My favorite part of it all is the light that is shining right down the middle of the image.  My eye keeps going to the huge shadow it created of the guy walking down the steps. It looks like the shadow is as tall as the Washington Monument!

I don’t usually put a lot of sunbursts in to my images, but I do shoot them a lot. Sometimes I feel like they can be a bit overwhelming and may take away from the image. In this particular one, I think it works well. I think it helps create the mood of the light shining down on the reflecting pool and everyone walking around it. I also think it’s interesting how the light effects the people depending on where they stand. The people who are closest to the reflecting pool look so teeny tiny, I love all the layers in this image.

On a side note, how about all that rain and snow we got? Please magnolias. Please stay warm and intact. I’m not so worried about the cherry blossoms. I think they’ll be fine. A similar weather situation happened last year where we got ice and freezing temperatures right before they were about to bloom and they were fine, for the most part. In some ways it was kind of better because it deterred a lot of people from visiting the Tidal Basin. All good with me! But I’m not so sure about how well the magnolias will do since they’ve already started blooming 🙁

The settings for this image is F22 at 1/20th of a second and ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm handheld.

Am I the only who feels like this or can the week between Christmas and New Years eve feel really slow and sort of like a blur? Like you have no idea what day it is anymore or even what to do with yourself? I don’t know it’s felt like that for me in the past couple of years so this year I told myself I wasn’t going to do that anymore and remain productive during the week. That started yesterday, the day after Christmas when I woke up to take sunrise pictures.

I woke up and checked my weather app and it said it was 26 degrees and cloudy. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t exactly get me excited to wake up but I told myself that I was going to do it the day before so I did it.

Oh man, it was so worth it. The sunrise was beautiful! One of the best ones I had seen in a while. But the best part was when the sun was already up and that early morning glow hit the the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial doesn’t glow like that at any other time of day but sunrise. I love how it makes the memorial look orange. I was in the middle of walking down the steps when I turned around and saw this lady enjoying the sunrise as much as I was. I had to stop and take pictures. She had to have known I was taking pictures of her because we basically had a whole photoshoot together. LOL. Either way, it was such a great way to kick off that in between week that you just don’t know what to do with yourself.

The camera settings for this image is F8 at 1/200th of a second and ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm lens.

I’m not sure what has gotten into me lately, but I’ve been waking up so early. Like way before my alarm goes off to wake me up for sunrise, even early enough where I could scramble myself some eggs for breakfest and still be on time to watch the sun. Oh man. That’s early! It’s like I’m jet lagged…

But what else is there to do at 5 o’clock in the morning but go out and take pics, right?

Luckily we’ve been having some awesome sunrises around the Washington DC area. This particular morning wasn’t as colorful as I usually hope for but it was so moody. I’ll take it!

It rained over night and the steps to the United States Capitol was so reflective. You know me, I love a good puddle when I see one. So I was playing around with different angles and perspectives when I finally came across this one. Holy cow, I love how the trees look as big as the Capitol Building. One of my favorite things to do is to get down low and make whatever is in the foreground look bigger than what’s in the background. Its sort of a eye-mind trick thing but I think it looks super cool. And for some reason my eye keeps going down to the reflection and staring at the Statue of Freedom lookin’ like a squiggly line. It’s so interesting how that came out.

Don’t get me wrong though, I am not complaining about waking up early. I’m complaining about being super sleepy by 8pm every night. #grandmastatus So expect to see way more sunrise images from me soon 🙂 I’ve got a few lined up.

My camera settings for this image is F22 at 0.6 seconds and ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

So weird that it’s Wednesday, right? I feel like long holidays always throw off my sense of days. Not that I’m complaining at all. I love them. I got to spend time with family and friends and there’s nothing better than that!

Saturday we had a lot of rain. It rained all day and was super gloomy. So in my head that meant that Sunday would have a good sunrise. Even though I was still in my ‘long holiday mode’, I still managed to wake up in time to catch the sunrise from the Lincoln Memorial. I was super lucky too. The sky only had a little hint of pink for a minute and then it was gone. The rest of the sunrise was cloudy and gloomy. But you know what’s funny? Around this time of year, I always see young people hanging out on the steps of the Lincoln. I can only assume that they just started collage and it’s the first time that they have complete freedom. So they stay up all night, doing who knows what, and then thinks its a great idea to watch the sunrise over the reflecting pool. They’re never rowdy or disruptive, but you can definietly tell that they’re struggling to stay awake. LOL. I’m sure I did similar things when I was in college. But hey, at least they’re taking the time to appreciate the new day 🙂 Which they’re probably going to just sleep through anyways. You can see what I mean on the bottom left, next to the column. You may not have noticed it, but there’s someone laying down there “appreciating the new day”.

My camera settings for this image was F13 at 8 seconds ISO 200 on a tripod. Luckily, this early in the morning, no one cares about about your tripod.

I had the pleasure of getting a sneak peak of the Freer and Sackler gallery before the reopening in early October. Shout out to IGDC for the amazing invite. It was so cool to see all the beginning stages of the museum. I say the beginning stages because it is currently under reconstruction and some of the exhibits had been taken down. So it was interesting to see the ‘before’.

You can’t tell from this image, but one of my favorite parts was all the natural lighting. The museum is shaped like a square with an inner courtyard in the middle. All the hallways have these amazing windows that lets you look out to the center. The coolest part is that it even housed peacocks at one point! I would have loved to see them. Hence, the peacock room! We got to see it with the windows opened which brought in this amazing light. I’ll have to share an image of it later. But if you get a chance to see the museum when it reopens, definietly check it out. It was very beautiful and all the gold gave me the chills.

One interesting fact that I will always remember is that though it is a predominately asian art museum (with a little bit of American sprinkled in), the architecture is Italian Palazzo. This was because Charles Freer, the museum’s designer stopped in Italy on his way to Asia. He was heavily influenced by the asian cultures but wanted to incorporate the Italian architecture. I think marrying these two cultures was such a unique idea. If you walk around the museum, make sure to be looking up as well. The ceilings and arches are beautiful!

It was my first time visiting this museum and as you can see, I really enjoyed it. I can’t wait to visit again when it reopens. The image of the staircase was just a small detail but loved the texture and lines that it formed.

Every morning I have a routine. After I have settled into my desk and take care of the little things that need to be done, I will begin my day with processing an image. It relaxes me, it makes me happy and I feel accomplished once it’s done. I’m one of those photographers who enjoys the process of editing an image and I really believe that it’s at that time in front of the computer that your image really comes to life. Your emotions and vision become whole.

After I’m done, I’ll save it to a folder on my desktop called “haven’t blogged yet” and then uploaded the image to instagram. I usually come up with some little phrase or caption that suites the image but as soon as it’s up, I’ll mostly likely forget about the image. It’s kinda of those one and done things and then I’m on to working on the main focus for the day. However it doesn’t always make it on to instagram. I sort of have a love/hate relationship with the social media network. Most of the time, I love it. But there have been a few instances where the image just doesn’t look good. Whether it’s the instagram cropping, the resolution quality or even if it doesn’t fit well with the ‘grid’ view of my other images, there will be images that won’t even make it to my instagram. Is that being called being too picky?

On the flip side, people who follow me on instagram are the ones who are the first to see most of my images.

I have quite a few images in the “haven’t blogged yet” folder that have not seen the light of day on any social media. I still really enjoy them but sometimes, it just doesn’t fit well. They would only look good on my blog, facebook, and other social medias where you can see the whole entire piece. This is one of those images.