ANGELA B. PAN

This past weekend I am glad I was able to go out and capture the super snow moon at sunrise (moonset) with my friend Zack and a few others. Zack picked a great location at the Tidal Basin so that we can see the moon with the Rosslyn, Virginia skyline. To my surprise, we had a great view of the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial as well.

A clear sky made for a great showing of the moon but I love how you can see some of that early morning sunrise glow on the buildings to make them shine a bit. I’m not going to lie though, even with all that sun shining down on us, it was cold. Like, wear 3 pairs of pants cold. But it was worth it because I had a great time with my friends.

Here’s another view of the moon when it was a little bit higher in the sky. I was looking for an interesting foreground so I used my friend, Andy to sort of give a little context as to what it was like seeing it in person.

The snow moon setting over Rosslyn, VA as seen from Washington DC

My camera settings for the Rosslyn image are F9 at 1.320th sec and ISO 500. The camera settings for Andy’s image are F9 at 1/16th sec and ISO 640. Both captured with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm.

Taken back in December, somehow I missed the rising of the supermoon. I’m not sure how it happened since I marked in on my calendar but I wasn’t able to capture it. In my opinion, catching the moon rise is always better than the moon set. I think the moon appears to be much bigger or maybe that just depends where you are standing, but it’s always exciting to watch it come above the horizon. And if you miss the moon rise, the next best thing is moon set, right?

So I woke up super early in the morning. 3:30a to be exact. I met up with my friend, Larry, who seems to have no trouble waking up at that time since he does it on a regular basis. Not always to shoot, but I swear, this guy does not sleep. We wanted to try to capture the moon setting over the Lincoln Memorial but when you’re up that early, it’s still going to be a while. We decided to walk around the National Mall and find some cool compositions in the mean time.

I really like the way this one turned out. Although the warm red color is caused by light pollution, it’s a really cool effect that showcases the color transitions that I’m always talking about. You may not have noticed this but there are some cherry blossoms growing on those trees too! It’s weird because some of them actually start blooming in the beginning of winter. They die off pretty quick but you know me, if there are cherry blossoms, I will shoot them.

Speaking of which, they’re supposed to be peaking in two weeks! Can’t waittttttttt. First comes the magnolias which is like the pre-party. Then the main event! Holllllaaaaaaa

My camera settings for this image is F4.0 at 6 seconds at ISO 80 on my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.