ANGELA B. PAN

First of all, Happy Valentine’s Day LOVES!!!! I personally don’t think Valentine’s day is only for your significant other. I think Valentine’s day should be shared with everyone you love – family, friends, internet friends.  So I wish you a day full of smiles and hugs and pizza 🙂 Who doesn’t love pizza, am I right?

But I thought it was appropriate to post about 2 of my favorite places. The airport and the National Mall.  National Mall is a given but the airport is one of my favorite places to hang out. It’s the best place to people watch, theres always a huge variety of food to select from and each airport is so different from one another. Sometimes I just like going early to sit and watch. Is that weird? I dunno, I think my love of airports started from a young age visiting the Las Vegas airport. Now that’s a cool airport!! I always imagine walking through the airport with my mom and she’d always imitate her favorite noise, “cling cling cling cling” goes the sound of the slot machines. LOL.

Anyways… if you read my last blog post about flying out of Reagan National Airport, then I’m sorry, I think I gave you the wrong information. LOL. Turns out you can see the National Mall even when you’re flying south. I captured this image on our way down to Orlando. Again, I was sitting on the right hand side of the airplane and it worked! I really don’t know how the runways work for which direction you’re flying but it’s a pretty safe bet that if you’re going to see the National Mall, you’ll see it on the right hand side when flying out of DCA. Don’t get me wrong though, there are certain times when you won’t see it. I haven’t quite figured that part out yet. I’ll keep you updated!

My settings for this image is F8 at 1/1000th of a second at ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm zoom lens.

I left to Orlando with no real photo intentions. All I really wanted was to have a good time with family at all the amusement parks.  Mission accomplished! I thought I’d get a cool shot of the Disney castle with the fireworks, but that didn’t really happen. Instead, I woke up early one morning and ubered to Lake Eola to check out the sunrise from there. Holy cow was it foggy.

2018 is turning out to be the year of the fog! For real.

You could barely see anything in front of you. I went to Lake Eola park with intentions of capturing the water in the foreground and the skyline in the background but I could barely see 10 ft in front of me. Instead, I changed my focus from the big picture down to the little details of what I thought made the lake so cool, all the birds and swans! This guy came at me because he thought I had food. Sorry bud, if I had some, I would have given it all to you.

Otherwise, Orlando was fantastic. It felt so nice to walk around in a tshirt and sneakers. My favorite park was Universal Studios because my favorite ride was the Incredible Hulk Coaster. I love rides that go upside down! I definietly want to go again because I know there’s so much more that we didn’t have time to do! Like Pandora- The World of Avatar ride in Disney’s Animal kingdom was a 3 hour wait. I’m sure it was worth the wait but we just didn’t have the time. I’ll be back, Orlando!

Anyways, here’s a group shot of all us in front of the Tree of Life in Disney’s Animal Kingdom 🙂

My settings for the swan image is F4.0 at 1/320th of a second at ISO 3200 on my Sony A7II with my 28-70mm lens.

Not too long ago, Budget Travel reached out to me because they wanted to use one of my images for their blog post. They were writing a piece on the best places in the country to see the sunrise and obviously, Washington DC made the list (because it really is one of the best places!). So I was honored that they wanted to use one of my images.

Click here if you want to check out the article.

You may have remembered when I took this image. It was at the same time as this one. Isn’t it crazy how different it looks with a vertical crop vs. a horizontal crop? They were obviously taken a couple of minutes a part but they look so different to me. What about you? Do you see a difference? If so, which one do you prefer? Anyways, I love the way that this one turned out as well. I think it’s so interesting to see the cloud formations behind the trees. The reflection from the reflecting pool could not be any better!

On a side note, we just got back from our trip to Orlando yesterday. I had a blast! A much needed vacation after a pretty stressful time in life. I’m ready to get back out there and shoot! More sunrises and sunsets like this please <3 I’ll be back home for a little while now. No real trips planned as of yet but I’m getting the itch to go somewhere in springtime. If you know of any cool places to go to, let me know. Especially places with some beautiful flowers!

My camera settings for this image is F8 at 1/30th of a second at ISO 250 on my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens on a tripod.

Thanks again Budget Travel!

If you’ve been following my blog for a long time, then you would know that I used to say three things I was grateful for every Friday. I’m not sure what happened to that because it just stopped. To be honest, I think I just forgot. But if you do remember that, thank you. I love you. You are one of my favorite people on the internet.

So I don’t know if I’m going to do this every Friday but I’m at least going to do it today because I have so many things to be grateful for.

1. I’m grateful to be in Orlando right now with family having the time of my life. Tomorrow is my nephew’s 3rd birthday and I can’t wait to watch him blow out the candles on his cake. It’s one of his favorite things to do even when it’s not his own birthday and I’m so excited to see him happy 🙂
2. I’m grateful for the DC photo community. I’ve met so many great people in the past year or two that I can’t believe it’s only been 1 or 2 years since I’ve started going to instameets and things. Regardless, I’ve met some really awesome, creative, nice people and I could not be more grateful for them always inspiring me to do more.
3. I’m grateful for the sunrising everyday. Its probably my favorite time of day (minus the waking up so early part) because it’s just so still and quiet. I love getting out there with my camera and just knowing that I will have that moment to watch something beautiful happen before me. Sometimes it can be hard to balance the photography vs. enjoying the moment thing, but I’m having a great time figuring it all out.

This image was created in Point Loma, San Diego. Just a peaceful morning out on the water that made me so happy to be there. My camera settings for this image is F16 at 1/30th of a second at ISO 125 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Here’s a crazy example of how foggy the Tidal Basin can actually get on any given winter morning. I mean come on! You can barely see anything in this image which I think makes it pretty cool. Its like you have to look really deep and kind of know what you’re looking at in order to make any sense of it. If I didn’t tell you, would you have even known? The most interesting part to me is that you can still see a slight hint of the Washington Monument’s reflection but I love the fact that you can see the rain drops in the water. Look at the bottom right hand corner. I love that trail of drops leading to the Monument. It must be something special if you can capture fog and rain all in the same image.

Here’s what it would usually look like if it weren’t foggy.

My camera settings for this image is F4.5 at ISO 320 at 1/640th of a second with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle handheld. As far as editing, I didn’t do much. I upped the contrast a bit just so you can see the monuments a little bit better and that’s pretty much it! Full on color image of what it looked like that one special Sunday morning.

PS Sorry not sorry there have been so many fog pictures lately. I love shooting the fog and the mood it brings. But I feel like 2018 has been especially foggy for me for some reason. I’ve never had so many wonderful opportunities to shoot in the weather and I’m taking full advantage! I just hope we get more days like this during cherry blossom season like we did that one time last year. That was seriously one of the best days ever. This is probably a close second <3

To be honest my personal life has been busy, espcially in the past week or so. So busy to the point that I almost forgot that we’re leaving on a short getaway tomorrow. Around Thanksgiving time, Andrew and I booked a trip to Orlando with our cousins and I haven’t really thought about it much since then. But at this point, I can’t think of anything better. I can’t wait to soak up the Florida sun and spend a couple days on rides and rollercoasters. I’ll have my camera and drone with me, but I’m not sure how much I’ll be shooting. I hope to get at least one cool shot of the fireworks at the Disney castle, other than that I have no real plans.

So if you have any Orlando, Disney, or Universal Studios recommendations, please let me know! It’s my first time visiting since I was a child. You better believe that I’ll be rocking Minnie Mouse ears though! I can’t wait <3

This image has nothing to do with Florida but it does put me in a relaxing mood which is what I’m looking forward to the most on our trip. I took this one morning in La Jolla, San Diego. There weren’t as many sea lions out but for some reason they were all gathered on this rock. So I sat down and watched them for a good 20 minutes. The sun was just coming up and I loved feeling the wind in my hair. I knew I wanted to place myself in this image some how so I could remember the moment and what it was like to be there. So out came my legs and I took a shoefy. Don’t yell at me, but I never remember to tie my shoes until I really have to. LOL.

My camera settings for this image is F9 at 1/50th of a second at ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.