ANGELA B. PAN

This past weekend was absolutely amazing for so many reasons. But most of all it was for the photowalk that happened Saturday at the Tidal Basin. Thank you so much to IGDC for hosting. I had the time of my life! Thank you to my friends who came out but also the new ones I met that evening. The weather was cloudy, the water levels were extremely high (the highest I’ve ever seen), but it seemed like everyone came out with amazing pictures. So before I share some of my own, I wanted to highlight some of my favorites from the walk. If you’d like to see more of what everyone created, check out #igdcsnapdc on instagram.

There were so many great images to choose from but here are a few of my favorites:

The beginning of our walk started at the Jefferson Memorial and we were greeted by prom! I love the way you captured this, @ciarasandborg

@pootie_ting, the framing in this is incredible!

@jane_connors, I’m so glad you captured the heron under the cherry blossom trees. This turned out fantastic!

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bi_5HH_Al5y/?taken-by=jane_connors

So many birds! But I love how they are framing the Jefferson Memorial. Stunning capture, @virginia.cheng

LOL talk about perfect timing, @mica4life. This makes me smile 🙂

The sky turned moody very quickly after sunset. This is so great, @dcrooks_us

And after the photowalk officially ended, the Washington Monument decided to light up the sky. This is AH-MAZING @zackowicz

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjAmY4sAh1S/?taken-by=zackowicz

Thanks again for those who walked! I appreciate you spending your Saturday evening with me. I hope you had a great time but most importantly felt inspired to take more pictures around the National Mall.

Snap DC is officially released on Amazon. If you haven’t already, check it out. It’s available in paperback or kindle and I hope you love it!

The original intent of Snap DC: Your Guide to Taking Extraordinary Photos of the National Mall and Beyond was to help fellow photographers capture amazing images around the National Mall. I wanted to take all the knowledge that I have and put it all in one place to help anyone who wanted to photograph my favorite city. The first thing I did was mind map all of my favorite locations and quickly realized that I had a dilemma. All of my favorite places to shoot in Washington DC were not just in the National Mall. They were located in and around the city, including this place, Great Falls National Park which is technically located in Maryland and Virginia.

I had to decide if I wanted to narrow the focus to just the National Mall or keep it real and include all the other places. So I kept it real. I love Great Falls. Its such a great getaway from the busyness of the city. Who would have imagined that this magical waterfall is just 20 miles outside of the city. This was taken from the Virginia side and if you go to the Maryland side, it’s a totally different ballpark.

So if you were interested in learning more about Great Falls National Park, The National Mall or all of my other favorite places in the DC area to shoot, then check out Snap DC! It is finally going to be released THIS SUNDAY May 20th on Amazon as a paperback and kindle version. Also don’t forget that we’re photowalk-ing it out on Saturday, May 19th with IGDC to celebrate the launch of the guide book. This weekend is going to be so awesome. I can’t waittttt!

My settings for this image is F4.0 at 1/2500th of a second at ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle handheld.

While I was busy storm chasing the other day, I didn’t even notice the sunset that was happening. I figured with so much rain, cloudiness and overall darkness going on that we weren’t even going to get a sunset. I was totally wrong. It was this incredibly glowing pink, orange, purple color. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen anything like it and was completely shocked when I did. Man at least I saw it for the last 5 minutes because I would have been real upset if I missed it.

I was standing in between the columns when I noticed the glow out of the corner of my left eye. I scrambled inside the memorial because I knew the only way to shoot with a cool foreground and not stand in the rain was to shoot the Jefferson statue. I am so glad there are little openings all the way around the memorial because I love the way this image turned out. The reflection on the marble floor is super nice too. I consciously made an effort to include that in the image while I was shooting.

The sunset lasted about 5 minutes (for me at least) and then I went right back to my spot in between the columns to shoot the lightning. Overall it was a great night for photography and I am so glad I was able to go out.

Funny though, the first song that I heard on the radio when I got back into my car was Lightning Crashes by Live. That song brings back so many childhood memories for me. LOL. Mostly of me sneaking into my brothers room and listening to his cd collection.

The settings for this image is F5.6 at 0.4 seconds at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm and a tripod.

This week has been kinda crazy, weather wise. During the day it is hot and humid and at night time we’ll get these awesome lightning storms. In fact, it was so bad on Tuesday morning that it woke me up from my sleep around 3a. Craziness.

To be honest, I wasn’t really paying attention to the weather like I should have. I have been busy with Snap DC and things that I didn’t think these storms were as intense as they actually are. Holy cow was I wrong. Around 6p on Monday I was getting ready to go workout when this loud alarm started going off on my phone. It was a tornado warning. It took me about 20 minutes to change out of my gym clothes into some long pants and long sleeves, eat dinner and I was out the door! I really didn’t even hesitate to leave the house because I knew I’d get some awesome images.

I made my way over to the Jefferson Memorial. Actually, no. I ran to the Jefferson Memorial from my car and was soaked head to toe. The winds were so strong that it actually got all my clothes inside my jacket soaking wet. Once I actually stepped into the memorial it was like it was still raining because all the wind was blowing the rain inside. CRAZYYYYY….. fun.

Once the wind settled down I was able to set up my tripod in between two columns and started shooting. I was probably out there for 2 hours and this was the best image I could come up with. I definietly would have considered this storm a practice run and it is getting me even more excited for the summer. I can’t wait!

My camera settings for this image is F4.5 at 0.3 seconds ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens on a tripod.

A couple of weeks ago, I announced the first photowalk that I’ll be hosting. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still on and would love to see you all out there but now there’s another photowalk opportunity that’s coming up even sooner. This Saturday evening!

Thank you so much to my friends at IGDC for helping me put this photowalk together. It will be Saturday, May 19th at 6p and we meet on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial. Everyone is welcome! I’ll also be giving away a few copies of Snap DC for the first to arrive. If you’ve never been to a photowalk before I encourage you to say hello to someone you’ve never met. It’s such a great way to meet like-minded people and do something you both enjoy doing. I’ve met so many great friends through the IGDC community. I’m so grateful for their support and can’t be more honored to be photowalk-ing with them. The photowalk is free, super casual, and we’ll be walking around the Tidal Basin until about sunset. Hope you can make it!

This image was taken last week at sunset. The same day as the epic rainbow but about 30 minutes afterward that image was made. Hopefully we’ll get another beautiful sky like this one on the walk. You know one of my favorite things about shooting the Tidal Basin is definietly the reflection that you get in the water. I love how in this image the Jefferson Memorial columns look so wavy. Well definitely be talking about reflections and other photo ideas on the walk so please join us if you can!

My camera settings for this image is F7.1 at 1/50th of a second at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II handheld. As a side note, this is definietly cherry blossom inspired 🙂

Happy Monday! I may be the only one who’s counting down the days but 6 more days til the release of Snap DC!!!!! I can’t hold back the excitement. You are going to love the guide book. It’s seriously everything I know about shooting in Washington all in one book. I don’t think there was anything more I could have added to it except for maybe this image! LOL

As a side note, there are images in Snap DC that you’ve never seen before! Images that I’ve never posted anywhere or anything. They’ve just been living on my computer so I’m excited for you to see those too!

This image was taken in December, way after the content of the book was complete. But I love it. Obviously it was taken super early in the morning. Not sure exactly the time, but this was the day that I woke up at 3:30am to shoot. See other images from this day here and here. It was so worth waking up that early too. I love how the image is pretty dark except for that gorgeous glow that’s coming up on the horizon. A few minutes later all the color was gone. So to say we were lucky to get the color is an understatement.

To be honest, it has been a while since I’ve seen a great sunrise in Washington but I’m not complaining. The weather has been fantastic lately. So even waking up super early (like 4:30a) on a regular non-spectacular sunrise day is worth it just to walk around and enjoy the outdoors. It just makes the day feel like it’s super long and I’m a huge fan of eating lunch and then taking a nap. You just sleep so much better on a full stomach. LOL.

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 3.2 seconds at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens on a tripod.