ANGELA B. PAN

I went out to take pictures this past weekend on a whim. No real plans, I didn’t even know if the sunrise was going to be good or not. I just missed shooting. I felt like it had been a while since I had been because the week before I didn’t have a chance to go out at all. So I went out Saturday morning to one of my favorite places in the world, the Lincoln Memorial. The weekends are so fun at the memorial. This may sound weird but its a totally different vibe. There are so many more people who are out enjoying the sunrise with you and since it’s a weekend, they have the time to just sit and enjoy. Of course there are still runners and bikers, but there are just more people in general sitting on the steps and enjoying life.

So with my 70-200mm in hand, I thought I would photograph the memorial instead of the sunrise. The sunrise wasn’t that great anyways…

Looking at this image makes me so happy. Happy because the two girls there are obviously having a great time so early in the morning. At this point I think it was about 6a. But I also like how President Lincoln is behind them sort of watching over them. Usually when I’m out taking pictures I think about photographing in 3’s. 3 points, 3 people, 3 whatevers. So I when I captured this image I liked how that rule of 3’s still applied. The third being President Lincoln.  A little different from the other two, but I still think it works!

Plus their matching outfits make it even better!

My camera settings for this image is F5.0 at 1/640th of a second at ISO 800 with my Canon 5D Mark II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

I’ve consistently been writing this blog for years. I love doing it but from time to time I feel like I’ve run out of things to say and I’ll start making things up. LOL.  I figured that’s not the right way to do it.  So I’m hoping I could get your feedback. I figured I could get a list going and it would help me create more content of things you would like to see.

If you have just 10 minutes, I’d really appreciate if you could drop me a line and help me answer some of these questions:

What brought you to this blog in the first place? How did you find me?
Are you a photographer? Tell me about your photo background. Or are you a travel kinda person and just here for the images? If so, tell me about your travels!
Is there anything that I can help you with? Whether it’s improving your photography, finding places in Washington DC to photograph, etc?
What keeps you coming back to the blog?

Thank you in advance for any feedback you can provide me. Feel free to send me an email: [email protected] or hit me up on any of my social medias: @abpanphoto or anything! I’m pretty much everywhere.

As for this image, I took it a couple of months ago with my friend, Christa. I remember it being a really cold evening but that didn’t stop us from photographing the sunset. As soon as I stepped out on this terrace, I fell in love with the location. It’s just such a unique point of view of the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial. I honestly never realized how close Regan National Airport is to the National Mall. So awesome!

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 0.4 seconds at ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm lens.

I have good news and I have bad news. Since you don’t have a choice in the matter, I’m going to tell you the bad news first.

Bad news is that my Sony camera is taking longer than expected to repair. Turns out it needed much more than just a little tune up and there’s a pretty significant amount of things that needed to be done to it and an even longer list of camera parts that need to be ordered. So in the end of it all, I think the camera repair people will have my camera for almost a month before I get it back 🙁

Even worser news is that I leave to California exactly 1 week from today and I don’t think my camera will be back in time.

I don’t want to bring my Canon camera with me to the west coast. I just don’t want all the extra bulk. So the good news is that I have rented a new body from borrowlenses.com, the Sony A7III. I talked to my friend, Larry about it. He just happens to be the most knowledgable person I know about Sony products and he has already warned me about falling in love. So I feel like am prepared to not like the longer battery life, dual memory card slots, and the focusing. But I’m super excited for my trip!

This image was taken a few weeks ago. The same time I took this image with my Sony A7II. I just love the stillness in this image and the crazy beautiful reflection. Days like this make waking up at 4 in the morning so worth it. I also really like how the image goes from blue to orange.

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/640th of a second and ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Whenever people ask me about places to photograph in Washington DC, I always have to ask follow up questions because there is just so much to see in our little city. If you wanted sunsets, visit the National Mall. If you want cool interiors, visit the Library of Congress. If you want to know my favorite museum? It’s is hands down the National Gallery of Art. I think it is one of the most beautiful spaces we have in the district. Every time I walk in, I feel so refreshed and so excited about what I’m going to see.

The gallery is so large that it is actually divided into two separate buildings and my favorite is definietly the east building. There you’ll see the more modern art, it’s the side of the gallery that changes out more often, but I also love the BEAUTIFUL light you get through the windows while you’re walking around the concourse. And of course, you can’t forget that NGA wall! It’s a staircase that is just so beautiful and minimal, it’s been photographed a million times. But each time I see an image from here, it’s like I forgot how beautiful it is and fall back in love.

And if you do get a chance to visit the gallery, don’t forget to check out Multiverse by Leo Villareal. It’s a moving walkway that sort of connects the East and the West but it’s will probably be the coolest moving walkway you’ve been on. NOTHING like what you see in airports. HAHA.

I really wish I could have included museums in Snap DC. This would have been the very first place I would have mentioned to go visit. I just can’t express how much I love the National Gallery of Art.

My settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/8th of a second at ISO 100 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

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This was totally an experiment but I really like the way it turned out. The car trails are so dynamic that I kinda wish that I captured it horizontally, instead of vertically. That way they would have taken up more space in the image but I had no idea how cool it was going to be.

I captured this on a Friday morning so luckily there were quite a few cars driving around at 5:30a. I saw a whole line of them waiting to turn so I propped my camera down and just waited for the green light. I didn’t spend much time trying to capture other exposures but this was definietly the best one. The key was to wait for them to turn and drive past you while standing in the median. But I think one of the coolest parts about this image is that you can see the red, yellow and green lights.

Looking at it again, I already have new ideas of how I could improve upon this image. That’s one of my favorite parts about daily blogging. It constantly pushes me to create new images and talk about them once they are complete. Even if I’m not totally happy with them, I see each of these posts as kind like a sketch book where I can go back and see some of my older images and improve. But OMG, googling my images from years ago, like 5 or even 7 years ago. My images have changed sooo much. It’s kind of funny (but also hurts my eyes in a way too LOL). So grateful to be growing and falling in love with my images over and over again.

My camera settings for this image is F18 at 25 seconds ISO 400 with my Canon 5D Mark II and my 17-40mm wide angle lens.