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Wow! Remember this past winter I kept on saying that this year is the year of the fog. We had so many crazy foggy days and it was so awesome. On this day I was out with my friend, Birch and seriously walked the Mall with what seemed like hundreds of pictures. Every angle was a cool angle because the fog made everything look so different. It was difficult not to take a spooky looking picture.

But the weirdest part about this day was we captured this around 11a. So weird! I don’t know about you, but I usually associate fog with early mornings and then it fades away as the sun comes up. But this was pretty much in the middle of the day so I didn’t even need a tripod. It was fantastic!

Well, I’m hoping that fog follows me to the west coast because today I’m flying out to San Francisco. I’ve always wanted to capture the fog over the Golden Gate bridge and I heard that August is probably the best time to actually witness it. So please cross your fingers for me that the fog comes rolling in. *C’mon year of the fog!* I’ve already book marked some of the places where I want to photograph to capture it all. If you have any suggestions for me while I’m in San Francisco, please let me know! Photography or food spots are appreciated 🙂 I’ll just be in the bay area for the weekend and will be meeting up with my family early next week. I’m going a few days earlier just to take pictures around the city and hopefully meet up with some photo friends along the way 🙂

My camera settings for this image is F4.5 at 1/640th of a second at ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

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Thanks again for everyone’s feedback on the questions I asked earlier this week. It was so great reading everyone’s emails and messages. I felt like I got to know you a little bit better.

If I had to come up with some quick conclusions, about 50% of you are photographers the others are just art lovers. Most of you want to see some more youtube videos and just about 100% of you have some kind of connection to Washington DC. A lot of you just like the stories behind my images and just a few would like to know a little bit more about my editing processes, composition, etc. More than anything, I’m just grateful some of you actually replied to my questions. It helped out a lot and will definietly help me come out more interesting content in the future. Muchas Gracias!

So considering the fact that you all like Washington DC so much, heres a picture of Utah! Lol JK. I was just looking through some my images from last year and stumbled upon this one. I loved our trip to Colorado and Utah last year. It was definietly one of our more memorable trips Andrew and I have had considering we almost died. Twice! This is one of the stories. One day I’ll tell the second one. Maybe… hahaha. And if you needed more of a visual, here’s the vlog.

It was so hot while we were in Utah. Even looking at this image makes me sweat and it almost did not happen. Andrew and I had woken up to take sunrise pictures and that went great but as soon as the sun came up we wanted to get out of there. We were driving in our air conditioned car when we noticed saw Park Avenue. We didn’t see it on our way in because it was dark but as soon as we saw it in the day time, with all the amazing shadows I just had to stop. I love the orange/red rock next to the clear blue sky.

My settings for this image is F11 at 1/160th of a second at ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.

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This image reminds me of this song. No particular reason why but whenever I am feeling like I’m “on top of the world” Brandy immediately comes to mind. LOL and the music video used to be so ground breaking back in the day with the different camera angels. HAHA.

Anyways, this image is from top of Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. I love the perspective because it almost seems like the people are just as large as the boulders. Believe me, those boulders are HUGE! And there I go again with the 3’s 🙂

The hike up to the summit is no joke though. I was pouring sweat the entire time. The east coast humidity didn’t help much either. I’m pretty sure those people were feeling it as well. But I’ve been getting private questions about how I find my hikes so I thought I’d address that here. Usually I’ll go by word of mouth and other people’s recommendations but if I’m looking into something totally new and different, then All Trails is definietly my go-to. It gives you all the information and more to prepare for your trip. My favorite part is when other hikers include images from their hikes so you can get a feel for what to expect.

All Trail labeled this hike hard and I would definietly agree. Our group had to stop a couple of times for water breaks but if you do this, I’d highly recommend brining more than just a little snack. Andrew and I both brought Vietnamese Báhn Mì Sandwiches and we were still hungry. So if you plan on hiking Old Rag, prepare for a long hike with amazing views on top!

My camera settings for this image is F5.0 at 1/1600th of a second at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.

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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.

 

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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.

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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.