ANGELA B. PAN

Day 2 of things I’m grateful for: I bought myself a DJI Mavic Pro! I’m so hyped.

Long story short, I flew my cousin’s drone 2 years ago and crashed it within 2 minutes. Getting it down from the tree and having it repaired was the biggest nightmare of my life. It was so horrible that it frightened me from ever wanting to ever fly again. Plus there aren’t a lot of places to fly around the DC area, so why bother?

But then instagram. Man, instagram and all your cool images of drone photography!!! You got me interested again! So I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a Mavic. Luckily, my friend Andy, had an extra one so I was able to get a pretty cool deal on it.

So I watched a couple of youtube videos, read parts of the instruction manual and felt a little more confident to fly. Over the weekend I met up with my friend, Paul in Manassas and was able to fly without crashing. That’s a huge win in my book. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. Now I’m hooked. I had soooo much fun flying and just seeing the world from a totally different perspective. It was so awesome. To quote Andy, “yeah makes you hate walking to take pics lol”. Sooo true. HAHA!

For my day 2 of gratitude, I am extremely grateful to have gotten over my fear of flying drones and sooo excited to capture new images. This image is my very first selfie flying the drone. I texted it to my mom and she was like “what is that?” I know I look really small. But we’re working on baby steps here!

The camera settings for this image is F2.2 at 1/180th of a second at ISO 100 with my DJI Mavic Pro.

Normally I’m behind the camera. It’s where I feel the most comfortable and let’s be honest, the results are usually a whole lot better when I’m back there. LOL. But this time I could not resist stepping in front and throwing some leaves around. Especially when the fall colors are this amazing, how could you not? They’re gorgeoussss.

I took this in Manassas National Battlefield Park, Virginia. A great place to go when you want to capture some great open spaces. Obviously, this is not an open space.  I wasn’t even intending on taking an image like this when I arrived. I sort of did the same thing as I do when I’m in Washington, DC. I park my car and go. Either way, I think it still worked out, no?

My camera settings for this image is F3.5 at 1/40th of a second at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens. I had my camera on my tripod and set it on a 10 second timer in order to put myself in the image. It was a scramble to get in front of the lens and pick up a whole bunch of leaves to throw in the air in 10 seconds. It was fun scramble though. Wait, I just realized, does this mean I took a selfie? HAHA

On a totally different note, if you’re in the DC area, it will be worth your time to check out DC PhotoWeek that’s going on right now. I had the opportunity to check out some photo talks and the best of IGDC exhibit over the weekend and both were so great. I learned a lot and got to see some amazing images. There’s A LOT going on this week so take the time out to check it out. So worth it, trust me!

Sometimes I’ll get into these zones and edit a whole bunches of images all at the same time, store them onto my desktop folder called “haven’t blogged yet” and then totally forget about them. This is the case with this image. I took it last week when it was crazy foggy at Shenandoah National Park and didn’t even bother posting it on instagram or anywhere else. Umm whoops?

In order to get into these zones, I’ll put on my ear phones and not even think about anything else other than the music I’m listening to and the image in front of me. It’s so fun. Although if you were looking through my window I’d look like a weirdo because I’ll be bopping my head and flinging my pointer finger around to the beat of the music. HAHA

To be honest, I’m probably done with Shenandoah National Park for the season. I’m going to try to concentrate on photographing more local areas to me like Great Falls Park and DC for the rest of the fall time. It’s not that I don’t love going, it’s just exhausting waking up so early in the morning, spending a couple hours there and then driving back. I usually won’t be home until the afternoon and it feels like most of the day has gone. But who knows? Maybe there will be a sunset shoot or night time shoot in my future? We’ll see!

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/40th of a second and ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and my 16-35mm wide angle lens.

After last week’s foggy af sunrise, we decided to go back to Thorton Gap and try it again. Y’all know how much I love fog, but last week was a bit too much. This time the visibility was at 100%. We actually got to see the sunrise this time! There was no fog whatsoever and I wasn’t even mad. It was a beautiful morning and it felt great to just sit outside and enjoy the outdoors.

Fall foliage report: A lot of the trees were still green but the trees that did turn color, seemed to be pretty bare. I think it was the harsh winds that we got earlier in the week knocked down most of the colorful leaves. But is it me or do the trees in general just don’t seem to be as vibrant as they have been in previous years? Oh well. That just means that I gotta keep trying.

Shooting directly into the sun is fun but editing the image is not. I tried editing this one particular image so many times but could not get it the way that I wanted it. I think I have at least 4 drafts of it saved on my computer. It was either the colors of the trees or the shadows in between that kept on throwing me off. I finally came up with this version and I think I’m satisfied with it. My favorite part of the image is that slight sun reflection on the rock in the foreground. That little bit of pink in there is so nice. My eye immediately goes to that part of the image every time I look at it.

My camera settings for this image is F18 at 1/15th of a second and ISO 500 shot with my Sony A7II and my 16-35mm wide angle lens.

This is the first time I ever done this but this is an iPhone pic! Usually all my images on my blog are from my DSLR cameras but I just LOVED the way that this one turned out.

Isn’t that crazy?

I took it at Reagan airport walking through the security line on our way to Maine. You know how it goes, you have a million and one things in your hands, you want to get everything together and in it’s place before you have to put your stuff in those big grey tubs and security is staring you down extra hard. It was an early morning flight so the sunlight was pouring through the windows. Luckily I was at the right place at the right time with my phone in my back pocket. I pulled that sucker out so fast, took this shot and just kept it moving. I had all my DSLR camera equipment in my backpack but it was just easier to take a quick shot with my phone. It wasn’t until I was sitting at the gate and I looked at the image and thought, “WOW, that’s patriotic!”

From now on, I’m going to try to fly out of DCA as much as I can. The airport itself is just so beautiful. There’s so much to take pictures and you can’t beat the view at take off. 

So what do you think? Would you want to see more of my iPhone images or just keep it strictly DSLRs? To be honest, I don’t take much with my phone but in the rare occasion I do, I wouldn’t mind posting it on here.

Camera settings on this image was F2.2 at 1/125th of a second ISO 32 on my Apple iPhone 6. Weird that I was able to see that right? HAHA!

This past Friday, I had the honor of going back to high school again. WOW never thought I’d ever say those words but it really was an honor. I was invited by Ms. Archibald (just kidding Amanda), the current photo teacher at my alma mater, Langley High School.

I had such a great time sharing my photo journey since high school and speaking to the students about my photography. But my favorite part was after my talk and speaking to the individuals about their own images. To hear them speak about their own work and what they’d like to accomplish with their photography was inspiring. The creativity they had was like nothing I had seen. One artist was asking me on how she could expand on her dark image series. Another had used an xacto knife on her prints to reinforce the emotions the image was portraying. It was so cool. Man, to be that young again and utilize digital photography and social media to your advantage is so awesome. Kids these days…

The crazy part was walking through those doors again. There has been so much construction that my old high school was hardly recognizable. I mean nothing was the same! The photo lab still had a dark room but their main classroom looked more like a computer class than anything else. Everything is digital! Back in my day we were film only.

It would be so great to reconnect with my old photo teacher. So Mrs. Morse! If you’re out there, let’s have lunch and catch up!!

This image has nothing to do with my day at Langley. It’s an image I took a little while ago but I just thought it was cool. The camera settings on this one is 0.5 seconds and F22 at ISO 100.

Thanks again, Amanda and LHS for letting me come back. I had an experience will be hard to forget.