ANGELA B. PAN

You know how I always say that the Enid A Haupt garden is my favorite place to see Magnolia trees in Washington DC? Well, I know my second favorite place now. It’s Rawlins Park located in Foggy Bottom and pretty close to the White House. It was my first time visiting this park but I drive past it all the time. I never really paid any attention to it until my friend, Zack told me about it. Holy cow, how long have I been missing out on this magical place? I love how the whole park is lined with Magnolia trees.

So on a very grey morning, my friend, Laurie and I went to photograph the park. It’s not very big so we managed to walk around and captured it all within 20 minutes or so. The park has been really blossoming so tons of other photographers in the area have been shooting it too. In order to find a unique perspective, I just stuck to what I knew. Get low and always look behind you. I love the leading lines the park bench create to look down the row of benches and even the arches the the Magnolia trees create. The fun added bonus was that there were these random ducks just walking around. HAHA. This little guy had an injured foot unfortunately. I really wished there was something I could have done to help him.

So Enid A Haupt is my favorite just because they have so many more trees but Rawlins Park is just as beautiful but a little bit smaller. To be honest though, there will probably be less people wondering around at Rawlins Park than Enid A Haupt.

My camera settings for this image is F9 at 1/20th of a second at ISO 160 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Super exciting announcement number 2! I have two images featured in this month’s issue of the Washingtonian. When I first start out in photography, it was always a dream of mine to see my images published in print. Somewhere that people that I didn’t even know would see it. And I always had the Washingtonian as the benchmark to the ultimate local magazine I’d like to be featured it. Although I have been in the magazine several times now, it’s still a complete honor to be featured and I’m always super excited to see it. It never gets old, espcially with the Washingtonian where every single layout and spread is just so beautiful. I’m so grateful to be working with them.

Not only that, the Ball for the Mall had a special advertisement in the April issue so it’s like I had 3 images in the magazine. So mind-blowing.

The image above is one of my all time favorite cherry blossom images I’ve ever taken. It so simple yet it took a lot of time to create. I’m not sure why. It was one of those that I had to sit on for a while to make sure it’s how I wanted it. For those wondering, the background color is just from the tidal basin water. It was probably a calm day when I captured this branch.

The image below is the second image to be featured in the Washingtonian. It’s taking up the top portion of the table of contents page 🙂 When I showed it to Andrew, he chuckled a little bit and said ‘so getting people in your shots can be interesting’. Which is funny that he said that because I usually try to avoid it. However, I’m starting to like it more and more now.

The settings for the individual cherry blossom branch is F7.1 at 1/13th of a second ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 100mm lens. The image with the photographers is F6.3 at 1/80th of a second at ISO 160 with my Canon 5D Mark II and 24-105mm lens.

If you’ve signed up for my newsletter then you already know, but I have a super exciting announcement to make. I am this year’s Ball for the Mall’s official photographer! AHHHHH!!!!!!!!

I am so thrilled and so grateful. If you don’t know what the Ball for the Mall is, it’s a fundraising event that the Trust for the National Mall puts on every year to raise money for the National Mall. This year the tent is going up right in front of the Smithsonian museums. Being the official photographer does not mean I’m photographing the event. It just means that the Trust for the National Mall is featuring my images on all their materials for the event like the invitation, save the dates, etc. I’m honored to be helping with such a beautiful cause that’s so close to my heart. I’ve spent so much time at the Mall and it’s given me so much. I’m grateful to be able to give back. Plus I heard there’s going to be some super cool people like Wolf Blitzer emceeing the event. I am going to try to take a selfie!

I’ve never been before and I’m really looking forward to attending the event with Andrew later on this month. Now, to go ball gown shopping. AHHH!!!! 🙂 I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m so excited.

This image was taken on morning on a super cold winter morning at the National Mall (obviously). I love it because the sky reminds of tie-dye. I mean when you see a scene like this, how could you not fall in love with our national parks?

The settings for this image is F9 at 1/10th of a second at ISO 200 with my Canon 5D Mark II and 17-40mm wide angle lens. You know this is an older image when the Canon 5DmII is mentioned.

Tap and hold to save phone wallpapers, or click on the link below the desktop wallpaper to download the high-res version!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD MONUMENT FLOWER

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD WASHINGTON MONUMENT RED

The cherry blossoms haven’t bloomed this year. I’m hoping they’ll be out at this time next week.

So this is an image I took last year around this same time. I have tried working on this image several times in the past year but I could never get it right. It’s really different from other images I create because of the lighting. I don’t have much practice with artificial lighting, especially outdoors like that. So whenever I edited it, the colors would look funny and didn’t like it. I’m so happy with the way this one turned out. It’s exactly what I had envisioned from the very beginning. Finally.

It was that same super foggy day that I took this image and this one. This just happens to be the very first image I took that whole morning. The fog had not fully settle in yet so you can see how it’s covering half of the Washington Monument. Little did I know that later on in the morning the entire monument would be covered. So cool!

And little did I know, I would drop my tripod in the Tidal Basin that day too. *face palm* #neverforget.

Anyways, hope you all have a great weekend. I am about to send out my monthly newsletter on Sunday the 1st so if you aren’t subscribed, please do so here. You won’t want to miss out on free calendar downloads, an updated cherry blossom guide and so much more! And if you do use the free wallpapers, screen shot them and send them to me! I would love to see it!

The settings for this image is F8 at 2.5 seconds and ISO 160 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens on a tripod.

Days have been going by so fast lately. Don’t you think? Or is it just me? Even though the days are longer, I swear I wake up in the morning and the next thing I know it’s 2p. If I really thought about it I think I took this image this past weekend but when I looked at my calendar, it was really from three weeks ago! That’s so crazy.

I captured this image at the IGDC sunrise meet up. It was a super cold morning and with no clouds in the sky. Usually those are the kind of days that I would rather sleep in (and by sleeping in I mean sleeping until 7a on a weekend) but I knew I would have had a great time shooting with my friends. I left my camera in my backpack for the most part. I was enjoying the conversations more than anything else. But as everyone was wrapping up and leaving, I noticed the sun burst peaking out of the US Capitol building.  So I shot it and didn’t really think much of it. It wasn’t until I got home and looked at the images on my computer did I realize I captured the reflection of the sun burst. How freakin’ cool is that?

Now that I think about it, I think it would be even cooler if I got some seagulls or something flying in the image and got a reflection of that as well. It would be really nice to have some kind of foreground element to this image. Oh well, there’s always next time. I’ll just have to keep that in my to-shoot list.

The camera settings for this image is F/22 at 1/50th of a second at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens handheld.