ANGELA B. PAN

It’s been a busy fall season already! But I’m enjoying every minute of it. I love just driving down around my neighborhood and seeing all the colorful trees. So I obviously had to take a quick run down to Shenandoah National Park to check out the foliage around there. It’s become a tradition that my friend Larry and I will make a trip down and photograph the sunrise along Skyline Drive. This year, our friend Brande came with us too. It was a beautiful morning with photo friends.

In general, the trees were looking a little green along the drive so I think we were a bit premature in going. Regardless, it was great to watch the sunrise over the mountains. There were even little pockets of fog along the mountain range that made it even more special. But I didn’t get the shot I was looking for. I was either hoping for a really foggy morning making images look extra moody and gloomy or very colorful trees lit up by the sunlight. So since we didn’t get either of those, I’m thinking another trip to Shenandoah is necessary. Hopefully sometime soon!

My camera settings for this image are F11 at 1/30th sec and ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

Home from another amazing weekend in New York. I seriously love going to that city and I don’t think I’ve ever said “photo” so much in my life. But it was all worth it because PhotoPlus was so much more than I expected. To be honest, it was a little overwhelming. So while I’m still digesting everything that happened, here’s a little image I captured of the General Andrew Jackson Statue located close to the White House in Washington DC right before I left on the trip.

My favorite part of this image is how simple it is, but I also love the framing. The American Flag in the background is the flag you see on top of the White House and it was just in perfect alignment with General Jackson and his hat. Patriotic but effortless all at the same time. LOL. I think the cloudy day even worked well for this shot to simplify this image even more.

I plan on spending the day going through the images I captured in New York over the weekend. More about that soon!

My camera settings for this image are F7.1 at 1/40th sec and ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

As many times as I’ve mentioned my friend, Larry on the blog, I’ve finally taken a picture of him! LOL, sort of. This was taken from the Altaire rooftop in Arlington, VA. We were actually leaving the rooftop when he was a few steps ahead of me. I saw him walk past this divider, I told him to stop, and act like he was taking a picture. I think this turned out cooler than I had imagined! I loved how the silhouette turned out.

Also really looking forward to going to New York this weekend. Besides PhotoPlus, I plan on just shooting a lot around the city. So this is basically what I’ll be looking like if I were a guy with a backward hat on. LOL.

Let me know if you’ll be in New York this weekend too!

My camera settings for this image are F6.3 at 1/800th sec and ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

I have gotten to the point that when I go out to photograph the sunrise in Washington DC, there will be times that I won’t even pull out my camera. It doesn’t happen often, but most of the time it’s because I don’t see anything that I haven’t photographed before or the light isn’t the way I want it so I save the composition idea for another day. Either way, I don’t get mad about it. I just think it happens sometimes.

This day was shaping out to be one of those days. I had watched the sunrise at the Tidal Basin but there were no clouds in the sky and nothing that really made it a particularly interesting morning. It wasn’t until this Great Blue Heron flew by until I felt inspired to actually pull out my camera. He landed on the edge of the Tidal Basin and was staring down the fish in the water. I honestly don’t think he even knew I was there. I just kept on creeping on him closer and closer until I captured this shot! He had caught a few fish while I was trying to photograph him, but I was so surprised I actually captured this. It was perfect timing!

My camera settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/640th sec and ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm.

Along the way, I tried to capture all different kinds of images from the hike. This was my first time in Harper’s Ferry and seeing the viewpoint from Maryland Heights, so I was like a kid in the candy store with all these amazing views. When I saw this house, I couldn’t resist capturing it. It was just so cute sitting on top of a hill like that.

I pulled out my 70-200mm to zoom in on it. I wanted it to feel like it was the only house among the wilderness, even though it’s not really the case. LOL, maybe I still had Falling Waters in my mind. If you look closely enough, you can still see a little house close to the top right-hand corner of the image. Instagram vs. Reality.

My camera settings for this image are F6.3 at 1/1000th sec and ISO 400 with my Sony A7Ii and 70-200mm zoom.

This hike was pretty intense. A lot steeper than I had anticipated but I’m so glad we did it. Let me rephrase that, I’m so glad we did it as early in the morning as we did.

Living in the Washington DC area, Harper’s Ferry is only an hour’s drive from us. So I thought that would make it an easy drive to go for sunrise. We arrived at about 6:45 am, 30 minutes before the sunrise so when we got out of the car and we had to use our flashlights to find the trailhead. That was the easy part. Almost immediately you’re climbing up the side of the mountain and I was huffin’ and puffin by 7:15 am. LOL.

But the views during that early morning light was so nice. Once we finally arrived to this viewpoint along the Maryland Heights Hike, we were so happy we were the only ones there. We were free to roam and take as many pictures as we wanted and didn’t have to worry about being in other people’s way. I had previously read online that this view can get crowded. So I think we were really lucky we got there so early. But on the way down, I could see there were a lot of people going up.

So if you’re planning on going on the hike, I’d highly recommend going as early as you can. In case you were wondering, we only did the red trail. The blue trail was even higher up and a little more than I wanted to do so early in the morning. So the red trail was good enough to see the amazing views 🙂

My camera settings for this image are F6.3 at 1/400th sec and ISO 400 with my Sony A7Ii and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.