ANGELA B. PAN

While I was shooting the sunset on Pacific Beach in San Diego, CA, my eyes were strictly on the water. I was watching people run in and out of the ocean and the waves were glowing in the sunlight when Andrew stopped me and told me we had to go watch this bubble guy. I had no idea what he was talking about but I stopped shooting and started following him to the boardwalk. Apparently this guy comes out everyday to create these bubbles. I don’t even think he had a tip jar. He just does it for the pure joy of it which is so awesome. And he had a huge crowd surrounding him as well. Kids of all ages wanted to check out this bubble guy.

We only stood there for a few minutes but you can tell he was making everyone so happy. But don’t be fooled, these bubbles were no joke. These kids got so soaked when they bursted on top of them. It was kind of funny. He even had some dogs barking at him too.

My favorite part of this image is the actual bubble itself. I love looking at the left hand side where it has already burst and in the center, above the sun where it has so many light variations.  It’s so interesting to look at the different ‘stages’ of the bubble. But I also really like the children that are in it. They add so much to the story, especially with their hands.

Props to this bubble guy for doing this everyday. I’m sure he has so many stories to tell just from standing in this one spot.

My settings for this image is F/25 at 1/125th of a second and ISO 125 on my Sony A7II and my 28-70mm lens.

Flip flopping between Washington and California images. I hope that’s ok. Even though I still have so many images to go through from California, I still get the urge to go out and shoot. Especially when we get snow like we did last week! It wasn’t much and to be honest it was kind of disappointing. It was pretty patchy and kind of weird. I think we just needed more. Somehow we ended up in a snow hole where everyone around us got snow and we barely got an inch 🙁

But I was still able to make it out with my friend, Paul. We walked all around the National Mall and I was trying to find some new, interesting compositions that you can only see in the snow. I love how snow changes a scene. For this image, I was all the way tucked into a little tree cove but I think the most interesting part of this image are the lights coming from the street. It sort of reminds me of morse code. Like the cars and street lights are saying, “more snow, more snow”.

My only wish for the rest of winter is that we get one really good day of snow and I’d be happy. Then it can all melt away and I will run with my arms wide open to welcome in spring. Cherry Blossoms, where you at?

My settings for this image is F8 at 1/5th of a second at ISO 1000 on my Sony A7II with my 16-35mm lens on a tripod. To be honest, I think I was shooting handheld for a little bit before I set my camera on the tripod. I must have forgotten to change the ISO so that’s the only reason why my ISO is so high. Oh well, it still works 🙂

Being a photographer, I’ve learned a lot of really random things. For example, did you know that the Washington Monument in Washington DC was built to sway with the wind? Yea, that’s just in case we get a really windy day and the tallest structure in our Nation’s Capitol won’t snap in half. Isn’t that crazy?

Well, staying in San Diego for two weeks was no different. I learned so much about the environment I was in. For example, tides. Living in Virginia, I’ve never had to be concerned with how high or low the water is but in California, this information is so crucial. After the first one or two sunsets, I found myself looking at tide charts and figuring out how all of this stuff works. To generalize, I found that low tide occurs around sunset. I don’t know if that’s true all year around, but it was true in January. So I planned all my photo ops knowing that if I wanted to capture full strength waves, it had to be at sunrise.

This image was captured right at sunset. The tide was low but there was still a whole bunch of water still on the beach from earlier in the day. It made for the perfect beach reflections. My favorite part of this image is the tallest palm tree on the right hand side. The top of the tree looks like it’s standing on a toothpick. It’s crazy because when I came here the next day at sunrise, the water was all the way up to the wall. There would have been no way I could have walked on the beach unless I had plans of getting wet in the water.

My settings for this image is F11 at 0.3 seconds at ISO 125 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

This past Saturday, I attended my first ‘real’ demonstration. I say real demonstration because I was also attended the presidential inauguration last year.  I dunno if that counts or not but I’m counting it as a half because it was sort like half an inauguration half a protest.  And exactly one year later, I’m at the DC Women’s March of 2018.

I didn’t really know what to expect since this was my first real one. With my experience last year at the inauguration I just knew I wanted to go early, wear good walking shoes and stay warm. Luckily the weather was beautiful this past weekend and the perfect day to celebrate women.

So here are a few of the images I captured at the DC Women’s March 2018:

I did it! I walked on the reflecting pool! Until I heard a slight crack noise and I was gone at the blink of an eye.

Participants in the Women’s March near the Reflecting Pool

From the top of the Lincoln Memorial stairs

to the bottom of the steps. It was undeniable that these people wanted their voices heard.

Standing tall, even in trees.

As the day went on, more and more people braved the icy reflecting pool.  But with 60 degree temperatures, it was melting fast. I even saw a couple of people fall through the cracks.

There was even a guy with his bike on the frozen water.

Overall I left the demonstration feeling proud to be a woman. I feel like there’s nothing that I can’t do and no one is going to tell me otherwise. It gave me more motivation to want to accomplish my goals and make my stamp on the world. I heard there were over 10,000 people in attendance and I’m honored that I was one of them.

I heard that there are no direct flights from Washington DC to San Diego. Is that true or am I making that up?  I wasn’t sure if our search results were affected since we were traveling with a dog but that seems a bit odd…

Either way, it gave us a cool opportunity to check out Chicago’s O’Hare airport during our layover to the west coast. I had always seen this hallway on instagram and thought it was so cool. I’m so glad I got to see it while we were looking for the pet relief area for Frankie. LOL.

If you have never seen it for yourself, this is a super long hallway with rainbow colored lights connecting two different parts of the airport. Perfect for finding all different kinds of compositions and cool images. I even saw a group of girls taking some pretty cool portraits here. This image is the last visual I tried. We were on one of those moving walkway things and I figured I would try a long exposure to see what would come out. I balanced my camera on the hand rail which was a bit shaky but I thought the final result looked pretty cool. It kinda describes what it feels like traveling. Super cool but kinda hazy, am I right?

My camera settings for this image is F/14 at 2 seconds and ISO 125 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

PS, we never found the the pet relief area. It was all good though. Frankie was such a good boy on the flight, he didn’t even seem phased. He just sat on my lap the entire time. Both ways. I would love to take him on more adventures with us now that I know he is such a good traveler.

On our last day in California I thought about the places that I would miss the most in San Diego. We were able to see and capture a lot in the two weeks that we were there so there were a lot of places to consider. Each of locations were great in their own way but I decided that I’d only go to my absolute favorites on the very last day for sunrise and sunset. Somehow both times ended up being somewhere in La Jolla.

This image was from our very last ‘sunset’. It was so foggy at the Windansea Beach and the visibility was very low. It didn’t matter though. I was just so happy to be there. I love just sitting on the rocks, feeling that ocean breeze in my hair and taking in the whole scene.  It was really cool to see so many surfers out too. The waves were huge and I have no idea what kind of system they have in the water to make sure they don’t run into each other, but it was so fun to watch them ride. It seemed like at any given moment there was a surfer coming in and a surfer going out. But now that I think about it, I don’t think I ever felt the water myself. I just automatically assumed it was going to be cold and didn’t even try. LOL.

I’ll definietly miss San Diego, especially on cold weather days back home in Washington DC but I’m super grateful for the time we got to spend there. I know we’ll definietly be back to California sometime in the near future. I’ll be thinking about you beaches, palm trees and all organic green smoothies. (How did this turn into an eulogy?)

My camera settings for this image is F10 at 1/50th of a second at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens on my gitzo tripod.