ANGELA B. PAN

Speaking of adding a human element in your images... What about adding a puppy element? Dogs make the best models 🙂

We didn’t have much planned last weekend but all of us wanted to get out of the house. Including Frankie. So we ran a few errands and along the way stopped at James Madison Memorial Building. I have seen pictures of it on instagram, but never actually visited. Also, we didn’t get the chance to go inside because we had Frankie, but the outside was beautiful. I love all the repeating columns. They’re really different than the ones you’d see at the Jefferson Memorial or Lincoln Memorial because theres hardly any space in between them. It gives off a totally different effect. Plus these columns are a lot more straight and modern looking than the other memorials.

Frankie was the perfect model. You can’t see it but Andrew was standing just to the left of him in between the columns just to make sure nothing happened. But he just sat there and posed. It really wasn’t much effort at all to get him to sit like that. He didn’t even move until a group of people walked passed and all he wanted to do wag his tail and greet them as if they had walked into his home. To be honest, I did photoshop out his leash. It was just a long, red leash that totally didn’t go with the final image I was looking for. I love how he looks so tiny in this massive environment. I hope next time we’ll be able to go inside.

The day after I took this, I showed it to my nephews. They said that next time I should photograph Frankie on a throne. LOL. I think their dad has been watching a bit too much of Game of Thrones. LOL.

Cherry Blossoms! On one hand I wish they would stick around longer than a week at a time. On the other, I think it’s what makes me appreciate them even more. They’re so delicate and beautiful. My favorite is when they look like kernels of popcorn jumping off the branch.

My trick with cherry blossoms is to photograph them off the tripod. That’s right, no tripod at all. Unless you’re shooting the sky at sunrise or sunset, I feel like the tripod can be restricting. Especially when you’re trying for new angles and points of view. I tend to put my camera as close as I can get to them and start composing from there. They make for great foreground elements as well a good way to frame and using the branches for line. I particularly like this image because the cherry blossoms are coming at you from every which way. Some may say the ones in the very front should be in focus, but I like the out of focus ones the most. It adds an extra element of depth that you wouldn’t get if they were in sharp.

This was shot early morning, right after sunrise. So my camera settings for this image was F/8 at 1/1000th of a second ISO 1000. Not sure why my ISO was so high. That must have been a mistake. If I were to do it again, it’d probably be in the 100 to 200 range. Results would be the same but I’m sure during post processing I had to denoise it to get rid of the small specks.

Here’s hoping we get a normal winter this year and the snow stops falling in February instead of March like it did this year! A lot of these suckers didn’t’ get to full term this year 🙁

I’m currently in the middle of reading 5 books. This has never happened before. I’m more of the finish a book before you start another one type of person, but I’m super into all of these books. And the funniest part of it all is that I’ve never really read photography books either. The last time I read one must have been when I was in college or something taking photography as an elective. It’s funny because half of these books are about photo.

So if you want to get your summer reading on, check these books out:

1. Ansel Adams: An Autobiography. More than anything, this book just makes me want to backpack around Yosemite for a year. However, this book starts from his early childhood and it’s super interesting how he has developed his creativity throughout his adult life.
2. Extraordinary Everyday Photography: Awaken Your Vision to Create Stunning Images Wherever You Are.  All about finding unique compositions where you live. Seeing new things out of the mundane.
3. The Business Idea Factory: A World-Class System for Creating Successful Business Ideas. If you ever feel like you’re in a rut, check out this book. Andrew originally recommended it to me and this may be my favorite out of the ones on this list.
4. Real Artists Don’t Starve: Timeless Strategies for Thriving in the New Creative Age.  It’s a really easy read with some inspiring stories of creatives from around the world. So far, my favorite part is about how the author, John Grisham and how he made his mark with ‘legal thrillers’.
5. And I’m still waiting to finish listening to Kevin Hart’s I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons. I started listening to it on our cross country road trip and I can’t wait to find out what happens 🙂

If you haven’t noticed, the books I like are self help, autobiography, non-fiction type books. LOL. Let me know if you’ve read any of these book or if you pick any of them up. What do you think, should we start a book club or something? I think that’d be so fun!

PS. the image is from sunset at White Sands National Monument <3

It’s pretty rare to be able to get an image like this. I think it’s only possible at sunrise. With the glow of the morning peaking through the entrance and hardly anyone there, I feel lucky to live in the DC area and be able to do things like this.

In the image is my friend, Del. I met her and her husband, Matt a couple of years ago in San Francisco. We stayed in touch through social media so it was awesome when they sent me a message letting me know that they were going to be in town. We met up at sunrise in front of the reflecting pool and spent the next hour walking around the different memorials. I knew I had to take them inside the Lincoln Memorial. What other time do you get to have time alone with a President? Any other time of the day, this memorial is PACKED.

I also love how she adds scale to President Lincoln. If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you may have noticed something new I’ve been doing. I’ve been intentionally trying to add people into my images. Trying to break out of my comfort zone and trying new compositions. Most of the time the people look small, sometimes I put myself in the images, but nevertheless, it’s something that I’ve been really liking lately. It adds scale but also a human element that makes you feel like you’re in the picture with that person. Don’t worry though, I will still shoot “the silent landscapes” too. It’s just so hard to compare the two.

The exposure settings for this image is f/5.0 at 0.3 seconds at ISO 320 shot on a tripod. Luckily, Del was standing still long enough so that everything in the image is sharp.

Be sure to hit the “purchase print” button when you hover over the image. Check out the sky and you see’ll all these little dots. At first I thought they were dust spots (knowing me and my camera) but upon further inspection, they’re all birds!!! How crazy is that! I attempted to try to get rid of them, but eventually I realized there were just way too many of them. Also, I thought it was pretty cool how you can barely see them but if you look deeper, you’ll realize the insane amount of birds that were circling these rocks. For someone who has a slight fear of birds, this whole situation was a little terrifying. Not only were there millions of birds who could have swooped down, lifted you up from off the ground and flown away with you, BUT these waves were extremely huge. I was trying my best to capture just how big they were with the person as scale, but it was pretty difficult. I think you have to be there to really see what I mean. It was like being on another planet with the the beautiful sea stacks, humongous waves and black sand beach.  This image makes me want to go back!

The settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/80th of a second at ISO 80. My main intention was to capture the large waves, but it was also to capture movement. The movement of the water in the foreground and the waves crashing but also the woman who unknowingly became my model. It was funny to watch her because she kept on walking towards the water but would run as fast as she could as soon as the wave crashed down. Its as if she was playing a game of chicken with the cold water.

If you’re in the DC area, its definietly worth checking out Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in the summer time. It’s absolutely beautiful. There has to be hundreds of these pink lotus flowers in the ponds and the whole area is just filled with them. A photographer and nature lover’s dream. Although, I think the flowers may be all done for this year’s season. There’s always next year!

But the gardens are only open during certain hours and those hours are not at sunrise or sunset (the ideal time to shoot). It’s in the middle of the day, which is usually difficult to shoot. Most of the time, I’d try to find flowers that were blooming under some tree shade or something like that. This one was not. So I had to use my photoshop skills to really emphasize the mood I was feeling. I wanted all the concentration to be on the flower, to be in the spotlight. So I purposely made the surrounding areas darker than they are straight out of the camera. I also used luminosity masks to brighten the flower up a little more. Just doing those two alone really made the image pop a lot more and created some great contrast.

If you’re interested in learning more about my photoshop techniques, check out these video tutorials I created. This one is about luminosity masks. This one is about my complete photoshop workflow. Even if I’m not editing this particular image in the video tutorials, the same rules and principles apply. I will have to say that these videos are for those who are already comfortable with photoshop. You already have some basic skills and you just wanted to up your skill set a little more or just watch someone else’s workflow. If you had any questions or video suggestions, don’t be afraid to let me know!