ANGELA B. PAN

Like I’ve mentioned before, I have quiet a few family members that live in the Northern California area so I’ve been a few times. And when I booked this trip to San Francisco, I wanted to make it a little different. I didn’t want to go to all the tourist attractions (which I did end up going to a few, but not as many as I would have before) but I just wanted to walk around the different neighborhoods and get to know the local side of San Francisco.

But the only shot that I had planned and definitely wanted to capture was this one. Up until recently, I had never seen anything like it. I love how the Bay Bridge is framed by the tall buildings and whenever I look at it, it totally reminds me of rice-a-roni, the San Francisco treat! HAHAHA. Wasn’t there a picture similar to this on the cover? or something like that. I can’t just be making it up.

So if you ever are going to be in the Bay area and want to capture something similar, here are a few tips I learned from capturing it:

• This shot is located on California St and Stockton St (I think). I heard that going on a Sunday morning is the best time to capture it because it’s going to be far less crowded and you’ll have a better chance of getting a clear shot of a trolley. So this was taken on a Sunday morning. I didn’t actually attempt to go any other morning.
• Be patient. The website says the trolley runs every 6-15 minutes. If you asked me, it seems like longer. I think I only saw two trolleys while I was there for an hour. Maybe I was there a little too early but still….
• Bring a long lens. In order to capture this compressed look, a long zoom lens is ideal.
• Hopefully when you go there will be no cars because you have to stand in the middle of the street to capture it. I’d suggest bring a friend with you so they can lookout if a car is on the way. If not, have you camera settings ready to capture this real quick.

My camera settings for this image is F4.0 at 1/400th of a second at ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

SURVIVEDDDDDDDD! I survived my first ever experience in camping. It was actually better than expected but more about that later.

A few little updates from even before we left for our trip to California:

I originally booked the trip so that I could spend more time with family. I have cousins in Palo Alto and in-laws in Lake Tahoe. But before I met up with them, I wanted to spend a little time in San Francisco just photographing the city. I was going to go by myself when very last minute, Andrew decided to join me on this whole adventure. I was so happy! This trip would not have been the same without him. When I’m talking about last minute, I’m talking we booked his flight 4 days before we left for the trip so I’m glad it all worked out.

Also I received my repaired A7II the day before I left for the trip. But funny enough it was also the same day that I was to receive my Sony A7III from borrowlenses.com. In effort to keep things simple and easy, I decided to just receive the A7III and ship it right back to Borrow Lenses. I didn’t even touch it. I just feel more comfortable with my own camera and I didn’t want to fumble around with a camera for my trip. I wanted it to be as easy and light as possible. Glad to have you back, baby *kissy face*

Last but not least, I got some of the most exciting news ever. Click here if you didn’t read my blog post from Friday. I still can’t believe I have prints and postcards in the bookstores of the National Mall. Please someone come and pinch me to make sure this is real!

This image was taken one more from Baker Beach, San Francisco, California. It’s funny because it was not foggy during the sunrise but as the day went on, it got foggier and foggier. This image was probably taken around 7:30a. We stopped by Baker Beach on our way to the farmers market. Andrew’s obsessed with the fruit in California 🙂 So am I. My camera settings for this image is F7.1 at 1/640th of a second at ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom.

Flew in last night from my trip out west. Since I preschedule these blog posts, I can’t tell what happened yet because I don’t actually know. I do know that I had a very good time though.

But if you’re reading this, it means I survived. Actually, that may be a bit early. If you see a blog post from me tomorrow, that means I survived because on this trip, I went camping for the very first time ever in life. Leading up to the event, I was nervous. I do consider myself an adventurous/try anything at least once type of person, but camping was something that has not been very high on my priority list. I mean, sleeping outside with bugs does not sound like my idea of a good time. But we camped in Lake Tahoe! And based on the images that I’ve seen, Lake Tahoe is amazingly beautiful. So I’ll let you know how it went soon. Hopefully.

In the meantime, I love coming home and seeing this view. I used to always fly in and out of Dulles Airport which is in Virginia. But something just clicked in my head where in the past few trips I’ve taken, I made it a point to fly in and out of Regan National. I personally think the airport itself is nicer, but if you’re sitting on the correct side of the plane you get cool views like this. I’m lucky that I live pretty much in the middle of the two so while booking a trip, I can be flexible. But nothing feels more like home when you’re driving and you see the Washington Monument in the rear view mirror 🙂

My camera settings for this image is F7.1 at 1/8th of a second at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

I received some of the most exciting news ever right before I left for my trip to California. It’s so exciting that I still can’t believe it’s true.

I have 8×10″ prints and postcards selling in all 5 of the bookstores in the National Mall!!! AHHHH!

I’ve actually known about it for a while. Maybe since October 2017. But I did not know when it was actually going to happen. At first it was expected to come out in March but March came and gone and it wasn’t there yet. So the longer it got delayed, the more I questioned if it was actually going to happen.

So now that it’s August, I could not be more thrilled. As soon as I got word that they were in the stores, I jumped around the house for 2 hours. There’s no way to sit still after news like that. But by the time I found out they were in the stores, they had already been there for a week. Within that week, they had almost sold out of all the postcards and had already made an order to reprint them. Wow. Can someone seriously pinch me?

I asked my friend, Andy, to meet me at the National Mall to help me film my reaction. If you’re interested in watching, click here. He actually had no idea why we were there so it was fun seeing his reaction too!

If you’re ever in the National Mall, please check them out. Some of the proceeds of the prints and postcards go back to the National Mall to help preserve and maintain our beautiful monuments. A really amazing cause that’s a win-win for everyone!

Special thanks to the National Mall for using my images and for being so beautiful. And shoutout to Andy for being so awesome!

A few weeks ago my cousin, Vincent gave me his old film camera. It came as a total surprise and I was really excited about it. It’s been forever since I shot with film but then I started getting all these questions in my head. Like, would I still remember how to use it? Where do I buy film? Where do you even get it developed? When would I even use it? Questions that I had never even thought about for at least 10 years.

In the past year or so, I’ve realized that film has kinda been making a come back. I see more and more people uploading film images onto their instagram and I never really thought anything of it. I’m not really into instagram fads so I never really considered it for myself but since I was gifted with a camera, I might as well as take advantage of it. We popped some fresh double “A” batteries in it and I opened the back to see if there was film in the camera. Oops, there was. Oh well, I figured a light leak here or there could be cool. HAHA.

I started taking pictures around their house just to test it out. After my first click, I lowered my camera to look at the back of it and immediately laughed. It was a habit that I had obviously created and never really realized. Even my nephew, Axl, asked to look at it after I took the picture. The 3 year old was confused about the fact that “it wasn’t that kind of camera”. LOL.

So I brought it peach picking with us and here are the results. Hope you enjoy.

Also, let me know if you’d be interested in seeing more film images. This was kinda fun and it definietly made me slow down and really think about what I was shooting. Considering the fact that I was limited to 24 frames (when I’m used to 1,000+), it was so different. OHHH and that film shutter sound 🙂

Its funny though. I got the roll of film developed and put onto a flashdrive. I pulled them up on my computer when I got home and the first thing that came out of Andrew’s mouth was “it looks like an instagram filter”. HAHAHA!

Thank you all so much for your amazing feedback on Snap DC. I think I check amazon almost everyday just to read the reviews. They make me so happy and I’m so glad everyone is getting so much value out of the book. If you haven’t already, sign up for Snap DC’s newsletter list. I just updated it so that you’ll receive a free photo itinerary for a 1, 3 or 5 day trip to Washington DC. It really is the perfect supplement to the book and it was so much fun to create.

Obviously, the Jefferson memorial and the tidal basin are in the book. Lately, the tidal basin has been my go to place to go shoot. I love the reflections but there’s always something interesting to photograph there. If you look close enough at this image, you can see the bus loads of people visiting the memorial. This was taken around sunset so the memorial is packed with tourists. In the book, I discuss my favorite places to photograph at the tidal basin including the spot where I was standing to take this image. Andrew and I were the only ones there and to be honest, I probably got the better image of the memorial than anyone who was that close to it.

So to find out all the knowledge I have accumulated throughout my years of photographing the Mall and surrounding areas of Washington DC and check out the book and don’t forget to download the itineraries! I’m pretty sure the most frequently asked question I get on social media is, “did I move to the Mall?” The answer is no, but it would be so much easier if I did 🙂

My camera settings for this image is F7.1 at 1/250th of a second at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.