ANGELA B. PAN

Have you ever been to Clarion Alley in the Mission District in San Francisco? Talk about beautiful, inspirational and a place that I want to go back to again and again.

While we were walking through the alley and admiring the pieces, one of the local artists came up to us and started chatting us up about the mural project. Turns out that all the different murals are artists views of political and social issues and no other alley in the Mission district has that kind of distinction. Pretty freakin’ cool if you ask me.

So I guess this is a representation of our current social society.

Here’s an early morning view of the Golden Gate Bridge from Battery Spencer. This was the very first time I had ever visited this spot. There’s something so exciting about walking up the hill and finally seeing the Golden Gate right in front of you. It’s like when you’re so hungry and you finally get a big ol plate of fried chicken in front of you 🙂

So one night a bunch of us decided to drive down to Davenport and shoot the stars and watch the moonset. It’s so fun to shoot with other photographers. You really get to step out of your comfort zone.

I’m glad  A.D. Wheeler was there because he so nice to help everyone out with their night shots. He sacrificed so much of his time walking back and forth making sure everyone had laser focus and their settings were correct. I’ve always admired Beau Rogers‘ night images. By the the end of the night, I some how made my way next to him and really enjoyed just standing there and talking to him about night shooting. He even let me borrow his lens which was super awesome because the lens that I had was definitely not fast enough to capture all these stars. In all, I’m super grateful for the Arcanum or else I would of never met these awesome guys or any of the other talented photographers I was with in San Francisco.

Woah! This post turned into a mush fest real quick. Sorry about that.

One of the last days in San Francisco, I headed up to Muir Woods with my friends and fellow Arcanum master Kyle and his wife, Danielle. Actually, I crashed their party. I invited myself and was even late meeting up with them because I got lost. Despite the few bumps in the beginning I had a blast. It was so fun getting to know them and exploring the woods. Fun fact Kyle taught me, burning the grass in the woods make the weeds grow better and clears out the brush.

So I had to leave my family’s harvest moon dinner celebration a little early to capture this image. It’s ok, I’m not the biggest fan of Chinese food but my dad kept on insisting that there wasn’t going to be a moon because of the clouds.

I left anyways and was determined to get a great shot of the moon. He was partially right. The clouds were really heavy in the early evening but luckily they started breaking up around 8p. By the time I made my way to the Washington Monument, I was in the middle of a photo party of about 10 other photographers all waiting and shooting.

Home from an amazing trip out west. I still feel like I’m recovering from the lack of sleep I got and all the fun I was having. So this weekend is reserved for rest and photo editing 🙂

Here’s an image I took on my second day in San Francisco. I headed up to Twin Peaks for sunrise and was surprised to see about 10 other people already there. Half of them were there for photography while the other half had obviously been there all night partying. So this lead to some interesting conversations about UFOs, moroccan food, and Lucy Liu. Don’t ask. I have no idea either.

I didn’t get to talk to this woman but I’m positive she has some interesting stories of her own 🙂

Here are 3 things that made me so happy this past week:

1. Connecting with friends from the Arcanum and all our photo adventures

2. Meeting Anelise in real life and surprising Ana at her awesome new store in Sacramento

3. Climbing down a steep hill in Muir Woods with Kyle and his wife Danielle to take some funny pictures with trees. More about that one later.