ANGELA B. PAN

I feel in love with Oregon. I loved every minute we were there. I felt so at peace and calm during our whole road trip across the state, I would highly recommend it to anyone who’s considering visiting the Pacific Northwest.

The real reason we went was to celebrate my birthday and to visit a place we had never been to. Portland was a city that both Andrew and I had heard was a fun place to be but never been. But we also knew it was the place to be if you like good food and weird things. Both did not disappoint!

Since this was our first time visiting Oregon, we didn’t really know what to expect. We’ve been back for less than a month, I already know of somethings that I would do differently. With that said, we will be back again. Both Andrew and I left with the feeling of wanting to see and do more. But I think that’s the sign of an amazing trip. Prior to the trip, I did tons of research on the Oregon coast on Pinterest and asked some friends who I knew had visited before. Through my research, I quickly realized that Oregon is a very dog-friendly state. Minus Crater Lake that doesn’t allow dogs in most areas of the park, Frankie was allowed everywhere else we wanted to go. So we booked 3 plane tickets off we went!

Here is a recap of everything we did and the things I would do differently next time:

Day 1: Fly into Portland

We arrived early in the afternoon, grabbed our rental car and went straight to pick up the essentials: Blue Star Donuts. I know I don’t normally give food recommendations but if you like fancy donuts, then Blue Star is where you want to be. I’ll have another donut recommendation later on our trip that ended up being our favorite.

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While planning for our trip to Oregon, Toketee Falls was high on my list of things to do. It looked so beautiful from all the pictures I saw and the best part about it is that the hike wasn’t too far. It was the perfect stop on our way to Bend, Oregon to get out and stretch our legs for a bit.

What you don’t see from all the Instagram and Pinterest posts is that this place is PACKED! Out of all the places we went to, this was by far the hardest place to find parking and the busiest trail. There were several times where we had to wait for people to pass in order to continue on to the trail. Regardless of how many people were there, it was still very cool to see and I’d recommend if you are in the area.

Although this was technically not on the trail, it looked like it could have been a short detour. There were a lot of people who were climbing around these rocks that Andrew and I decided to go down to see what it looked like. As Andrew was exploring, I captured this of him and Frankie. Yep, that’s Frank in the red backpack. He’s just not looking at the camera. LOL.

My camera settings for this image are F9 at 1/20th sec and ISO 1000 with my Sony A7II and 24-70mm.

By the way, I’m working on an Oregon road trip post with everything we did in the week we visited. Reflecting back on the trip, there were definitely a few things that I would have done differently and discussed that in the post. If you have any other questions about Oregon, please let me know. I’ll try my best to answer them.

In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying going through the images from the trip. It’s been sort of a slow process but I’ve been really happy with the results so far. Especially this one for some reason. By the time we arrived at Myers Creek Beach Viewpoint, the sun had already been up for a while. It wasn’t the middle of the day but we could definitely feel the heat from the sun. It made for harsh lighting conditions so I was a little bit hesitant to even attempt to edit this image. I remember being so excited about the water reflections in the sand that I started shooting right when I got out of the car. I captured this just steps away from the rental in the parking lot.  Although you can’t see any reflections, you can tell how glassy and still the water was. OMG

My camera settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/800th sec and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 24-70mm lens.

Before leaving for this trip, I had made a mental note of the new moon. I was so happy that we would be along the Oregon coast for it. I don’t make enough effort to photograph it in the DC area because we would have to drive at least an hour away to get to a decent place to photograph it. But in Oregon, it was so much easier to photograph the stars and milky way.

This image was taken at the Samuel H Boardman State Scenic Corridor in southern Oregon. We had clear skies all day so I knew this night would be perfect. Right before sunset, Andrew and I scouted different places I could go to photograph the milky way and decided on Meyers Creek Beach. One, because it’s so beautiful with the rock formations in the water. Two, because we would be able to park along the edge of the beach and not go very far to capture images. It was a win-win for everyone.

I had so much fun photographing these star images. I’m going to try to make more of an effort in the future to photograph the milky way.

My camera settings for this image is F2.8 at 10 seconds and ISO 3200 with my Sony A7II and borrowed a 24-70mm lens just for this trip. I wanted to test it out as an everyday lens but came in handy for these night shots because of how fast it is.

So on this girls’ trip, we had 6 girls. With so many of us, we are obviously going to have different sleeping schedules. There were about half of us who were earlier risers and the other half who likes to sleep in. I was in the early riser category so the first morning I woke up my fellow earlier risers and asked if they wanted to go on a walk.

It was perfect that we were staying in the downtown area so there were a lot of interesting things to see. We ended up walking to the Texas State Capitol and then made our way to brunch. On the way to brunch, we ran into this colorful wall with a few cute sayings on it, like “I <3 Austin” and this one, “The only magic I still believe in is love”.

I took a few pictures of the different parts of the wall and as I looked up, I noticed this man who was about to walk by. I took a few steps back and held my camera low so he wouldn’t notice I was taking a picture. For some reason, it immediately reminded me of this image I took in Aruba. Andrew had always liked that picture so when I got back from our trip and showed him this picture he said that it was cool. Without even mentioning anything, he referenced the Aruban image as well. LOL.

My camera settings for this image are F4 at 1/125 sec and ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.

A quick break from travel images for this one of the Washington Monument. Although it’s not the main subject of this image, I love the different perspective.

About a week before I left for Oregon, Washington was having some amazing sunsets. This was one of those evenings. I met up with my friend, Zack and we were running around the mall trying to find different perspectives to photograph the Monument and the sunset. We were about to cross the street when I noticed this ice cream truck parked alongside of the road. I thought I could find something where I could use the windows of the truck as a way to frame the Washington Monument or maybe even the front window as a reflection. So I yelled out to Zack, pointed to the ice cream truck and started shooting. He knew exactly what I was thinking. So we each grabbed our shots and was about to cross the street again when I noticed the screen on his camera. I asked him to hold it up one more time and captured this.

So we all that said, I thought this was an appropriate image to say Happy Grand ReOpening to the Washington Monument. Today is the day we’ve been waiting for so long in the DC area. I can’t wait to go back up to the Monument and capture it from the tallest structure in the city. To be honest, I may wait a little bit for the crowds to die down a bit but it’s on my to-do list for sure.

My camera settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/50th sec and ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.