ANGELA B. PAN

Holy Smokes. 2018 is almost here. I can’t believe it but I’m sooooo excited. 2018 is going to be the best year ever. EVERRRRRRR.

But before the ball drops, I love going through and picking out my favorite images from the past year. I think they’re interesting to see since most of my favorites are probably not your favorite.  And I don’t have a top 10 or anything like that. It’s so hard to narrow it down to 10. I imagine it’s like your parents choosing who their favorite child is. So here it is, in no particular order, here are my 14 favorite image of 2017 from Washington DC.

And if you’re interested, click on each of the images to go back to that original blog post. I think it’d be interesting to see what I had to say about them at the time of taking the images.

Still remember this day like it was yesterday. It was amazingly foggy and I had spent a good 1.5-2 hours just walking around the National Mall. I was about to call it quits and walk back to my car when I saw the Jefferson Memorial looking like a dream. You know I had to stop and take a few more images.

The Yayoi Kusama exhibit at the Hirshorrn was a HUGE highlight of 2017. I waited sooo long to see it and was honored to have been able to go twice. This image was from my first visit. I’m still amazed I got to go in the room by myself. Click here to watch my youtube video of the experience.

Our first real snow of 2017 happened when the cherry blossoms were about to bloom. Oh man, I think this was the first time I really didn’t want it to snow. But in the end, it all worked out for the better.

YAY for cherry blossoms. You know I had to add at least 1 or 2 in here. I love this particular image because it’s so different from what I usually do. OMG there are people in my images. LOL. But my favorite part is the guy walking right on the sunburst. I was 100% lucky to be able to capture that.

From one of the best days ever of 2017. The crazy foggy cherry blossom morning at the Tidal Basin.

Another one from that fog-a-licious day.

My friend, Del taking in the Lincoln Memorial.

I think it’s so interesting how the rain drops stayed balled up on top of the succulents after a big rain storm.

Just a couple of minutes after I took the succulents image, I captured this amazing puddle.

Triple Rainbow!!! Never would have I imagined to have captured such a cool reflection shot. One of my all time favs.

I really love how the clouds are in the same shape and form as the branches. And that yellow/gold color *praise hands emoji*

One of my favorite unexpected finds.

So thankful for my friend, Christa who took me to this rooftop. Loved being up there!

My last sunrise of 2017. It was a cold and beautiful one. Just look at that glow 🙂

On Monday, I’ll have my favorite images from travel. Those are my favorite out ’em all!
Have a fun and safe New Years Eve everyone! See ya in 2018!

Am I the only who feels like this or can the week between Christmas and New Years eve feel really slow and sort of like a blur? Like you have no idea what day it is anymore or even what to do with yourself? I don’t know it’s felt like that for me in the past couple of years so this year I told myself I wasn’t going to do that anymore and remain productive during the week. That started yesterday, the day after Christmas when I woke up to take sunrise pictures.

I woke up and checked my weather app and it said it was 26 degrees and cloudy. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t exactly get me excited to wake up but I told myself that I was going to do it the day before so I did it.

Oh man, it was so worth it. The sunrise was beautiful! One of the best ones I had seen in a while. But the best part was when the sun was already up and that early morning glow hit the the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial doesn’t glow like that at any other time of day but sunrise. I love how it makes the memorial look orange. I was in the middle of walking down the steps when I turned around and saw this lady enjoying the sunrise as much as I was. I had to stop and take pictures. She had to have known I was taking pictures of her because we basically had a whole photoshoot together. LOL. Either way, it was such a great way to kick off that in between week that you just don’t know what to do with yourself.

The camera settings for this image is F8 at 1/200th of a second and ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm lens.

This was definitely one of my favorite days of 2017! Obviously Washington DC is famous for it’s cherry blossoms in the spring time but this past season was sooo unique. We had a crazy warm winter which lead to a weird snow that we got in March. It was so unexpected and out of nowhere. Everybody was so confused by it, including the cherry blossoms! They had already started to bloom and all the weathermen in the area were saying how this year’s cherry blossoms weren’t going to be doing too well.

They were right and they were wrong. A lot of the trees still peaked but some trees were complete duds. The flowers themselves weren’t as vibrant as they usually are. Which was totally fine by me because I think that also mislead a lot of people and they all decided to just skip the blooms this year. It was purrrfect.

So this was taken on a particularly foggy morning where you could barely see 10ft in front of you. It was soooo awesome and so much fun to photograph. I was probably out for 4 hours or something like that just photographing the flowers. The best part was that there was barely anyone there! Usually this place would be packed. I was in a photographer’s dreamland.

My favorite part of this image is seeing the slight reflection in the tidal basin water. It’s crazy to think that just right behind that branch is the Washington Monument which is totally covered by the fog. I usually use it as a point of reference because it’s so tall but you couldn’t even see it with your naked eye. It was bananas. And I love bananas. LOL

The settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/40th of a second and ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm lens.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays! Which ever holiday you celebrate, I hope you got to spend this past weekend with the ones you love the most.

My holiday celebrations started last Friday and has continued everyday since. It was so great to see so many family members and friends. But I’m not going to lie, it was a pretty hectic weekend with a lot of eating. Diet starts tomorrow! …. or January 2nd 🙂 And I can’t get this song out of my head. What is your favorite holiday song?

I took this image one morning earlier this month. I knew I had to have something prepared for this day on the blog and I wanted to photograph the US Capitol Christmas tree since I already had an image of the National Christmas Tree in front of the White House. Somehow I forgot my tripod so this is completely hand held. I was sitting along the edge of the reflecting pool and held my camera as close to the water as I could get without it getting wet. It was pretty nerve wracking given my previous experiences with water and cameras but I’m glad I was able to get it done. Soon after I captured this moment, all the lights turned off and you weren’t able to see the Christmas Tree at all. I am lucky I got this when I did.

The camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 0.4 seconds and ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm. Pretty impressive for a 0.4 second hand held shot, right? I think so! LOL

Again, Happy Holidays to you! Now is the time to relax and just enjoy the winter season. Have you come up with your 2018 goals yet? I have a few in mind…

The White House is by far the most difficult landmark to photograph in Washington DC. It’s also the reason why I don’t have many images of it on my site. And in the past couple of years it’s gotten even harder. There have been so many restrictions on where you can walk around or even stand. Its kinda crazy compared to what it used to be.

Thankfully, my friend Christa has the hook up at her job and we were able to go to her work’s rooftop and capture it from there. But even there it was still a little sketchy. She let me know that we may get warnings from the White House just for having our tripods out… on the rooftop… a block away. But in the end, we had no troubles. Thank you Secret Service!

For this image, I used my 70-200mm lens to capture it all. It was the only lens I had on this whole rooftop adventure. I just love the way it compressed all the layers and what’s even more shocking is all the great details you can in the buildings in the very back. That’s Rosslyn, VA in case you were wondering. *shock face emoji* LOL.

What’s even better is that there are 5 american flags in this image. Can you find them all? The last two may be a little more difficult to find but I love seeing little surprises like that.

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/60th of a second and ISO 1600 with my Sony A7II and 70-20mm zoom lens. I specifically remember thinking that I wanted to create a stop motion effect with the American flag in the foreground so that is why my ISO is so high. The sun was setting and the light was already pretty dark. It had to be a real quick shutter.

After our first snow of the season, I knew I had to wake up early the next morning and capture the sunrise. Somehow I knew it was going to be a good one. We had 2 days of really grey days so I knew the clouds were going to have to break up and bring in some of the sun light.

But this was not the image I intended to capture. I had every intention of shooting at the Tidal Basin. I thought it would be cool to see how the water did in the snow. Did it freeze over? or was there any snow still on the cherry blossom trees? I dunno. I wasn’t able to drive over there since all the roads around the National Mall was blocked off. I’m not sure why, but I’m thinking it was for some kind of parade or marathon. I’ve tried googling it and still can’t find the answer. Oh well.

So I drove over to the Capitol and figured it would be just as nice. I spent the morning just walking all around the Capitol grounds, blasting my music with no headphones. LOL it was awesome. There was hardly anyone around and it felt like I had the whole Capitol to myself. I felt so free to just walk anywhere I wanted to and was so happy when I stumbled onto this compass. I’ve noticed it before but never saw how reflective it is. I guess the melting snow made for great puddles in here. Love finding hidden gems like this. One thing I didn’t notice while taking this picture was the guy walking in front of the Capitol building. I love how he adds some scale to the whole thing. Yea, the US Capitol building is hugeeee.

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/80th of a second ISO 160 with my Sony A7II 16-35mm wide angle lens.