ANGELA B. PAN

If I had to guess Sue’s favorite part of our 2017 road trip, it would either have been Santa Fe, New Mexico or the Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed Saguaro National Park but while we were there, we were in the middle of a huge heat wave. I thought Arizona was hot in previous visits to the state, but it was so HOT when we were there. Even after sunset and the sun went down, it was still so humid and hot. I even remember hearing on the radio that mailboxes were melting. That’s HOT! Holy cow. And how many times can I say hot in a row? LOL

Since it was so humid and hot, we only spent an hour or so around sunset in the national park. The rest of the time was spent in our hotel’s outdoor pool. We wanted to go when the sun was lower and maybe a little bit cooler, but that didn’t make much difference but you better believe there was lots of ice cream afterwards. Out of all the places on our roadtrip, I hope to visit Tucson again sometime soon because I actually enjoyed the time while we were there. It seemed like a super cute city with so much to do and see. We just didn’t get enough time. I just remember waking up the next morning and wanting to get out of the heat wave as soon as possible. The next stop on our trip was Los Angeles and that was nowhere close to being as hot. So we made our way over and spent the rest of our time in California before flying back home.

My camera settings for this image is F3.5 at 1/320th sec at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.

In honor of our road trip this past weekend, I thought I would use this week to reflect on all the travel and adventures my friend Sue and I have had together. We have been friends for over 15 years. It’s crazy how long we’ve known each other considering we’re just 16 years old. LOL Just Kidding. But it’s safe to say that we have lots of fun and embarrassing stories about each other. Just because we don’t live within 20 minutes of each other now, doesn’t mean we won’t be friends for life.

So this image is from our very first road trip across the country together. Neither one of us had ever been to New Mexico before so we ended up spending the majority of our trip in the state. We went all over but my absolute favorite place was definietly White Sands National Monument. It had been on my list to visit for forever and this road trip was the perfect opportunity to visit. But we were super lucky. The only night that we had planned on staying in Alamogordo, New Mexico was a night a storm was approaching. It was comin in hot right around sunset and made for the best moody skies. It was like a dream.

I distinctly remember being so excited trying to climb up these white sand hills but being so out of breath because 1. climbing up sand is difficult but also 2. because I was so excited to be there. ESPECIALLY with the storm approaching. I handed my camera off to Sue to ask her to take some pictures of me but I could barely get my sentences out. She looked at me with so much concern like “Are you ok?” And I just screamed, “Yea I’m just excited” and ran to my posing spot. LOL.

My camera settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/10th sec and ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.

If you caught my blog post from last week, then you will know that tomorrow I’m headed out on a road trip to Austin, Texas. One of my best friends in the entire world is moving there and asked me to ride along with her. I’m sad that she’s leaving but looking forward to spending just a little bit more time with her.

Similar to the road trip that we did 2 years ago, we’ll be spending our first night in Nashville, Tennessee. It was both of our first time in the city and I am looking forward to going back. I remember having a blast last time just walking down Broadway and checking out the live music and all the colorful lights. I expect to be doing the same this time around. After that it will be just a straight shot from there to Austin. Unfortunately we’re not stopping to go sightseeing or anything along the way because she wants to get down there as soon as possible but looking forward to spending a few extra days in Austin before flying home. So if you have any food or photo recommendations, please let me know!

Luckily we planned this trip after the Cherry Blossom peak bloom announcement so I know I’ll be back home just in time to capture the flowers.

Click here to watch our last road trip together – we drove all the way from Washington DC to San Diego, California.

This image is of the Arlington Memorial bridge on a particularly foggy day. I figured it symbolized our road ahead but also not looking forward to saying goodbye to Sue when I have to catch my flight back to DC.

My camera settings are F5 at 1/500th sec and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

So when I was trying to come up with a blog post idea for today, I actually google previous blog posts I created on this same day but in previous years. The best part about daily blogging is that I had at least 5 other posts I could refer to. The best part was that all of them were flower images too. That just added another check mark to the consistency tracker. LOL.

This blog post is paying an homage to the one I created on March 21st of 2016. Click here to see it. That image and this one were probably taken on the same day behind the Smithsonian Castle at the Enid A Haupt Garden. The best part about it is that in the caption I wrote, “I feel like if I ever had a book about my life, this would be the cover”. Well, the story about my life has yet to be written but little did I know that less than 2 years later, I would actually write a book. CRAZY! That image didn’t end up being the cover but I felt like that was foreshadowing to what really happened.

Fast forward 2 years, swap the magnolia flowers for cherry blossoms and it’s almost been a full year that Snap DC has been published. I still can’t believe it and it’s probably one of the projects I’m most proud of. I still get messages from people about how they’re using my book and feel inspired by it. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. And if you haven’t checked it out already, I definietly talk about my favorite places to capture flowers around the Washington DC area and the Enid A Haupt garden is on that list because of beauties like these.

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 1/400th sec ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

One of the awesome benefits of staying on the Strip while in Las Vegas is the freedom to just walk around and have so many cool things to see all around you. It’s also pretty awesome when you are still on east coast time on the west coast. So waking up for a sunrise walk on Las Vegas Blvd wasn’t a part of my plan but somehow just happened.

This was the very first image I took on the trip. I loved the way that the palm trees were framing each other but what really caught my attention was the sunlight hitting the side of the Mirage hotel and casino. Those yellow and orange lines are something I feel like you could only see in Vegas. I thought it made for a very cool backdrop and loved how all of this came together.

As I mentioned before, Las Vegas definitely has a very special place in my heart. I used to love visiting as a child so walking up and down the strip, pretty much alone brought back so many memories. Apparently not many people are around at 630 in the morning in Las Vegas so it was like I had the whole place to myself. LOL. And the Mirage used to be one of the coolest hotels to visit and I remember visiting pretty often. Mostly because I remember watching Siegfried and Roy and their white tigers. It used to be one of the best tickets around in the 90s so I was also glad to see how they are honored outside of the hotel with a statue. And I had no idea, but the Mirage actually has a pretty cool night show outside the hotel now. Similar to the Bellagio that you could just walk up and see it but this one is with a Volcano eruption.

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 1/320th sec at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom.

If you haven’t already, definitely, defnietly check out Pulse at the Hirshhorn in Washington DC. Besides Kusama, it has to be one of my favorite exhibits that I’ve seen in recent memory.

It’s sort of hard to explain because there are just so many different aspects to the exhibit, but basically it is centered around being human and your heartbeat. And to be honest, the Hirshhorn was the perfect place to exhibit this. I think the circular architecture of the building really added to the exhibit and made you look forward to the next room and what’s around the corner.

The image on top is of the first room you enter into. It’s a whole wall of fingerprints. At first it’s hard to tell what you’re looking at because of the variety of colors, but once you get a closer look it’s fascinating. The entire exhibit is dark so I thought it would be interesting capturing people walking past in a blurred motion.

LOL Here’s an image of me and my friend, Dave doing our best impression of E.T. in front of the fingerprint wall. I think my favorite part of this image is actually seeing Dave’s finger on the left hand side.

The last room of the exhibit is just lined with light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. At the end of the room is a stand with two electric hand holders where you’re supposed to wrap your hands around it and the lightbulbs in the room are going to flicker on and off based on your heart beat. It’s pretty cool to watch the patterns.

There is one room in between but unfortunately I did not capture any images from there. It’s similar to the last where there’s electric hand holders but you can watch your pulse as it travels through water. It’s pretty cool and you can see it in this video my friend, Andy of the exhibit.

So if you haven’t already, check it out Pulse at the Hirshhorn. You’ve got one more month to do so and you can read more information about it here on the Hirshhorn website. It’s definietly worth the experience.