ANGELA B. PAN

This time last week, I found myself wandering around Chinatown with my friend, Birch. It had been a little while since we caught up so we figured a change of scenery would be nice. With cameras in our hands, both of us were practicing our street photography skills.

Towards the end of our photo walk, we had made our way to City Center. They have a great coffee and gelato shop called Docezza that Birch wanted to photograph. So while we were standing around, I decided to capture a few images of my own of this man working while drinking his coffee. What attracted me the most to this scene were all the round shapes. The roundness in the overhead lighting (and reflections in the window), the roundness in the word coffee and even this man’s head played perfectly in the roundness. In the image to the right, I especially like how he’s holding the coffee with that little hook in his pointer finger that plays so well into the round theme.

My camera settings for both images are F5 and 1/80th sec and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

Thank you to my friend, Frithjov who told me about this location. He actually told me about it years ago and I have always kept it in the back of my mind to go and try to find some reflective puddles. But now that the fencing around the Washington Monument is down, I thought that Sunday was the perfect opportunity to go back and check it out. Also, I saw him while I was parking my car earlier in the morning which was probably another memory trigger to go back to the Sylvan Theater. LOL.

So after we were done capturing images at the Lincoln Memorial, Jarrett and I made our way over to the Washington Monument. It was such a beautiful morning with fast-moving clouds. I felt like I captured so many different images on our little walk but this one was probably my favorite. I love seeing the perfect circle the American flags created around the Washington Monument plus the tiny person even reflected a little in the puddle couldn’t be more ideal.

My camera settings for this image are F7.1 at 1/200th sec and ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.

Since the new year has started, I’ve been trying to go out with my camera as much as I can. I’m not sure what kicked my butt into high gear like this, but I’m grateful to live in a place where I can never get tired of exploring and documenting. In the past two weeks, I may have visited the Lincoln Memorial at least 5 times. Each time is different and I am still not tired of it.

But over the weekend, we had surprisingly beautiful weather. For the middle of January, I will take temps in the high 60s any day! So I was even more excited to be out with my camera. On Sunday morning, as I was walking towards the Lincoln Memorial, I got a text from my friend, Jarrett asking if I was out shooting. He had already been there for a while so he had already scoped out the scene. The rain we got Saturday evening left a huge puddle inside the Lincoln Memorial. After catching up a bit, Jarrett took me inside and my mind was blown by how clear and reflective the puddle was. I took a few shots and then had to ask Jarrett to step in for a few.

My camera settings for this image are F4 at 1/4th sec and ISO 1000 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.

This image was taken on the same day as this one. When I first arrived at the reflecting pool about 45 minutes before sunrise, I saw that the World War II memorial was beautifully lit with the fountain flowing. So I got busy trying to capture the image I had imagined in my head. After 10 minutes of being there, the fountains turned off at the World War II memorial. It was unfortunate because the image I had imagined had to do with the fountains. So I shifted my focus on photographing the Atlantic side of the memorial.  But then I didn’t even notice that the Pacific side was glowing with color! It was one of those mornings when I seemed to be a little off with everything but oh well. I was glad I went out either way.

So when I finally noticed the color, I ran with my tripod inside the memorial. You may see that I caught a little bit of the remaining color, but it was pretty much gone by the time I set my camera back up. Either way, I still think the reflection turned out so nice and crisp.

I should look up the fountain schedule thou. It was so weird that they turned it off at sunrise. I wonder when they turn it back on?

My camera settings for this image are F5 at 1/16th sec and ISO 1000 with my Sony A7II and 35mm prime lens.

After my drone batteries died, I hopped back in my car and started driving around a bit to see if I could find more spots to pull over and take pictures. Unfortunately, it was still early in the morning and there weren’t a lot of places where the roads had been cleared.

Fortunately, as I was about to give up and U turn it back home, I found a couple of these guys. It reminded me of being in Iceland. While we were visiting, we would always pull over all the time to check out the horses but in Iceland, they are wild. This guy obviously belonged to people and it seemed like he was used to visitors. As soon as I stood in front of their fence, a couple of horses spotted me and started walking over. They looked like they wanted some treats, unfortunately, I had none or else I would have given all my treats to them.

I love the way this portrait turned out. So unexpected but so fun to capture.

My camera settings for this image are F7.1 at 1/800th sec and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm.

I knew we were going to get snow for almost a week but I didn’t think much of it. Every time I checked the weather, it said the high was going to be in the 40’s so I figured if we did get any kind of snow, it wouldn’t stick or it would just end up becoming rain. I was wrong.

When it actually started to snow on Tuesday afternoon, it really came down. I was shocked when it was sticking to the grass and even created some slush on the roads. So I tried my best to capture it all on Tuesday around my neighborhood, but I wasn’t really happy with anything I captured. I went to sleep hoping the night air would be cold enough to keep the snow on the trees.

So I woke up Wednesday morning, packed up my drone and camera gear, and crossed my fingers that there would still be snow a little further out west in Virginia. I was right! I was so excited to fly, especially when the sun started to come up. The winter glow really came alive on the snow-covered trees and I couldn’t help but smile (even if I was by myself, standing in the shivering cold). I was getting wind warnings the entire time I was flying, but I’m so glad I pushed it a little bit further to capture this.

I really hope we get more snow later on in the season ❄️❄️❄️

My camera settings for this image are F2.2 and 1/640th sec and ISO 400 with my DJI Mavic Pro