ANGELA B. PAN

I captured this image on the same night as this image but it was also a few days after I captured this one. I obviously still have the same composition in my head but I wanted to see what it would look like during this beautiful foggy evening.

So I set up my camera the exact same way as the previous image and just waited for someone close to the Washington Monument to walk by. It took a while because it was oddly quiet for 8 pm at the National Mall, but still, I waited. I was so concentrated on finding a person in the background that I didn’t even notice a person was about to walk in front of me to create an even bigger shadow. I love the way that it turned out, especially since you can see the reflection of both shadows in the water puddle.

Now I want to know, which image do you like better? This foggy one or the image I captured early morning?

My camera settings for this are F4 at 1/30th sec and ISO 8000 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.

Thanks to Destination DC for inviting me to their Cherry Blossom Instameet this past Friday. The meet up time was set for 7am but sunrise is around 6:45 so I decided to go a little bit early to try to capture some images before I saw my friends. I arrived at the National Mall around 6am and headed straight towards the monument. I have been keeping an eye on the to the cherry blossoms around there for a little while and they were looking pretty good. And like I said in my last post, I really want to try to go to different places to capture them than the Tidal Basin. Well the blossoms did not disappoint! Even in the middle of darkness, you can see how plumpy they were looking. Yes, plumpy is a word in my dictionary. LOL.

But I didn’t bring my tripod because I didn’t want to have to hold it for the instameet. So in order to capture this image I took my backpack off and placed it on the ground. I still had my 28-70mm in there so I used it as a way to prop up the camera to shoot up from the ground. Unfortunately I didn’t notice I placed my backpack on a big patch of dirt and for the  rest of the morning I had dirt all over my back. LOL it was dark! So don’t do that if you’re planning on using your own backpack as a tripod. LOL. This was my first attempt but also my favorite. I love how the cherry blossom trees balance each other but there’s so much space in between.

Thanks again to Destination DC and the National Cherry Blossom Festival for hosting the event. And a special shout out to Stellas Popkern for the delicious popcorn. The black truffle with sea salt was so different but so good.

My camera settings for this image is F5.0 at 2.5 seconds and ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.