ANGELA B. PAN

Home from Chicago and it was a fantastic trip. At one point on Saturday night while we were walking back to our hotel for the night, Andrew turned to me and said “How come all of your vacations involve a lot of walking?” LOL I’m pretty sure he was joking but not really. Because it’s true. I think when you walk around a city, you just get to know it better and there’s so much more you get to see when you’re going a little bit slower. I like it better than just driving everywhere or taking public transportation.

But my legs, feet and back are definietly feeling it right now.

This image was taken from a L train station. The light blue building in the center is the Trump International Hotel and Tower and found this to be a cool point of view with buildings framing it. Below me were some train tracks that I was taking pictures of but in between trains coming and going, I was messing around with long exposure on the buildings. I love the way it turned out and I think this is a very accurate depiction of what it feels like after exploring the city for 48 hours. I didn’t think much of it while I was taking the picture but thought it turned out really cool in the end.

Overall, I had a great weekend. I loved walking up and down the riverwalk and finding different angles to photograph the high rise buildings. I also really enjoyed eating deep dish pizza and Italian beef sandwiches. So you can say I’m a big fan of Chicago’s scenery and food 🙂

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at .4 seconds and ISO 3200 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens and my 10 stop neutral density filter.

With all the cherry blossom excitement this season, it took me a while to go through my Austin road trip images. As soon as I got home I hit the ground pretty hard with the pink flowers and kind of forgot about the Austin pictures.

To be honest though, I wasn’t able to capture as much as I would have liked. The reason we went on the trip was to move my friend, Sue there so that took up a lot of time and energy. But that also means that I need to go back soon. I fell in love with the city and am so looking forward to bringing Andrew there. I haven’t stopped talking about it since I’ve been back.

Fortunately, we had one day where we were able to just chill out and relax a little bit. We were pretty tired from all that driving and moving that we decided to go to Hamilton Pool Preserve and take some time to be outdoors. This place was amazingly beautiful. The water is just so blue and I loved being able to hike all around. Although, the water was really cold so I have no idea how this lady is just standing in the water like that. LOL. Regardless, I thought her swimsuit went so well with the environment. I love the way she’s standing and just taking it all in.

This is definietly the place to be on a hot summer day in Austin Texas.

And I just completed a youtube video from our trip. Click here if you want to see more from our week long adventure. To be honest though, I showed Sue this video before I published it and she said I should have put food in the video. She’s right though because the food – bbq and tacos were so good. OMG.

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 1/2000th sec and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm

I have an ongoing list of places I need to photograph or return back to. So when my friend, Birch invited me to walk around Alexandria with her, I was 100% in! I feel like Alexandria has been on my list of places I need to revisit for a long time. 2 for 1 deal if you ask me. A nice morning walk in Alexandria with great company!

I had no real expectations of what I wanted to shoot. I was just looking forward to exploring the city with my camera. So when we started weaving in and out of the neighborhoods, I loved the way that some of the doors were decorated for Easter. These two houses in particular caught my eye. I love the yellow from the tree to the Easter wreath and then finally back to the left hand side with that piece of gold on the bottom of the door. I also really liked the red door right next to the red brick house. Everything about this image just lined up so nicely.

I totally felt like @DCCityGirl while I was capturing this image! LOL House portraits aren’t something I usually do, but I just couldn’t resist when I saw this one.

Hope you all have a great weekend! I’m off to Chicago today with Andrew for the weekend to scout some places to photograph for the photo workshop in July. I’ve spent the last few days reading articles online and I’m really looking forward to sharing what I find with you all. Although I heard that it snowed earlier this week! I already packed away all my winter clothes for the year. LOL.

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 1/1600 and ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

Sometimes I go through my “Haven’t blogged yet” folder and I can’t believe some of the images that I haven’t blogged yet! Like this one! It was one of the first I captured this season and I love it because of the unique perspective.

I just happened to be walking around the Tidal Basin by myself when I noticed a group of people taking selfies. They looked like they were having fun so I didn’t want to interrupt them by walking past and being in the background of their shot. So I stood there a little while until they were done. But that’s when I noticed that to the right of them was a straight shot of the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial statue. Now that I think of it, I don’t know if they were capturing the memorial or the cherry blossoms in the background but the sun had just come up a little and the light was shining very nicely on the memorial and the trees surrounding it. It was like the beacon in the middle of cherry blossom trees and just screaming for me to capture it.

I probably spent a good 10 minutes just standing there trying to get this shot how I wanted it. It took longer because there were floating heads in some shots from people walking in front of my lens but it was totally worth it. I feel like the lighting and the framing worked so well to bring attention to the distant memorial.

I’m actually surprised because it doesn’t even look like there’s that many people in front of the memorial. Usually there are wayyyy more people during cherry blossom season.

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/640th sec and ISO 1600 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m also a fan of when the cherry blossoms start falling. I think it adds a lot of interest when there is pink the trees but also pink in the grass.

I captured this when the petals first started falling. It was the first day of rain after a week of blue skies and I wasn’t mad about it. It ended up being a peaceful day at the Tidal Basin that allowed me to get a little creative with the petals. Luckily, there weren’t as many people out taking pictures so I had time to try different things without worrying about being in other people’s way. Trust me when I say that the Tidal Basin can get PACKED. Like tripod legs within tripod legs. It’s bananas. So a day without that many people is so freeing.

This image was almost by accident. I wanted to photograph the petals in the water, but I accidentally left my camera settings as the same as I was shooting when I was photographing the trees. Obviously, pointing up towards the sky allowed a lot more light coming in than pointing down into the water. So when I expected this image to turn out crisp and clear, it turned out a little blurry. But in such an interesting way that I tried a couple of different compositions until I came out with this one. The water was particularly choppy because of the rain so each time I clicked, I came out with something completely different. It was fun turning my camera in different angles to try something new. In the end, it’s the circular motion of these petals that really makes the image more interesting to me.

My camera settings for this image is F11 at 1/8th sec and ISO 2000 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom.

I’ve already started to scout out cherry blossom trees for next year. I’m committing to the idea of photographing the cherry blossom trees around the city and staying away from the Tidal Basin. I’m sad I came up with the idea too late to do it this year because it was such a great bloom, but at least it has given me time to think about other locations.

For example, Hains Point. It’s just east of the Tidal Basin and you sort of get the same feels as being at the basin since they are close to the water, but I really liked this location because there were a variety of cherry blossom trees. In this image you can see the Yoshino trees that you see at the Tidal Basin, but then you also get the weeping cherry blossoms as well as a peek of the Kwanzan trees. I love the variety of whites and pinks and it’s a great location for some cherry blossom portraits. The flowers are just as abundant if not more but it just doesn’t have as many people around.

When I was there I saw at least 3 photoshoots going on with professional photographers on a Saturday morning but these two girls had the right idea. From the moment I got there, they were having a blast with their own photoshoot. It reminded me of things my girlfriends and I would do when we’re on a trip together. Just having so much fun doing crazy things to get a fun shot. But I think the pulled out perspective really gives you an idea of just how much is blossoming in the area. I loved the rows and rows of trees.

My camera settings for this image is F9 at 1/125th sec and ISO 2000 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.