ANGELA B. PAN

Sad to say but I have kind of given up on the idea of snow this year. We may be getting a little bit today, but it doesn’t look likely. So as of now, I’m looking forward to spring.

On the other hand, I heard from the grape vine that we may be seeing cherry blossoms earlier than expected. I’m talking way earlier like before St Patrick’s day. Oh well, I guess we’ll have to wait to see what happens. The weather in DC is always so crazy. When the cherry blossom predictions come out, I’ll be sure to update my cherry blossom guide.

Who knows thou. Snow in March has happened before!

My camera settings for this image are F8 at 1/25th sec and ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.

The main reading room in the Library of Congress is only open to the public on two days out of the entire year. Once on President’s Day and the other on Columbus Day. So I took advantage of this 3 day weekend to try to visit it as soon as it opened. I ended up showing up about 30 minutes early and I was shocked to see that there was a huge line from the front door, going all the way down to the steps. I guess I wasn’t the only one who had the idea to show up early.

It was great though. I ended up running into a bunch of friends while I was wandering around the library. More images coming soon.

But this image was captured when I was standing on the second floor. You can’t really tell in this image, but right below is a staircase that leads you to an elevated view of the reading room. This is where you would go to see it on all the other days if you aren’t a student or government official.

My camera settings for this image are F5.6 at 1/25th sec and ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.

When I went to bed the night before, I wasn’t expecting much out of the sunrise. The weather apps said it was going to be cloudy, and so I just thought it was going to be a grey day. Luckily, I was meeting up with friends who came up with the great idea of capturing the sunrise from Freedom Plaza at sunrise. Having that accountability of meeting with people was definitely the motivation to get out of bed.

As I was driving into the city I saw very faint hints of pink and it got me excited. I immediately parked the car, grabbed my tripod and got to this beautiful spot along Pennsylvania Avenue as fast as I could. There wasn’t a lot of traffic going on so I thought for this image I would try to crop the street a bit and focus mainly on the sky. I really like how the street lights are acting as lines towards the US Capitol.

My camera settings for this image are F8 at 1/30th sec and ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

While the Thomas Jefferson Memorial is under scaffolding from the exterior, you are still able to go climb up the steps and go in the interior. However, some of the side openings that allowed you to walk all around the base of the memorial are blocked off, everything else looks pretty much the same.

As we were walking through, I noticed the beautiful sunlight that was coming through some of those openings. So I did what any person with a camera would do, take a shadow selfie that made my legs look extra long 🙂

My camera settings for this image are F9 at 1/1000th sec and ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.

This past weekend I am glad I was able to go out and capture the super snow moon at sunrise (moonset) with my friend Zack and a few others. Zack picked a great location at the Tidal Basin so that we can see the moon with the Rosslyn, Virginia skyline. To my surprise, we had a great view of the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial as well.

A clear sky made for a great showing of the moon but I love how you can see some of that early morning sunrise glow on the buildings to make them shine a bit. I’m not going to lie though, even with all that sun shining down on us, it was cold. Like, wear 3 pairs of pants cold. But it was worth it because I had a great time with my friends.

Here’s another view of the moon when it was a little bit higher in the sky. I was looking for an interesting foreground so I used my friend, Andy to sort of give a little context as to what it was like seeing it in person.

The snow moon setting over Rosslyn, VA as seen from Washington DC

My camera settings for the Rosslyn image are F9 at 1.320th sec and ISO 500. The camera settings for Andy’s image are F9 at 1/16th sec and ISO 640. Both captured with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm.

So the Thomas Jefferson memorial is still under scaffolding. It’s been like this for more than 6 months and I don’t like it.

There have been times when there’s been scaffolding around other memorials and monuments that I don’t mind. But the scaffolding around the Jefferson is just so much that it’s very difficult to find the good out of it. It’s there because the roof is getting restored and clean so it may not come down until later this year.

Until then, I’ve been purposely avoiding the tidal basin because it’s just so distracting. However, I met up with a few friends on Sunday to capture the moonset and the best spot to watch was the Tidal Basin. So on my way to the location, I tried my best to try to think of it differently and make the best of it.

I found this puddle that had very interesting textures in the mud and thought it went well with the sunrise clouds. I also like how you can see the entire memorial and see that it’s not entirely covered by scaffolding. Maybe next time I’ll just go to the back and take pictures of that. LOL.

My camera settings for this image are F9 at 1/5th sec and ISO 1600 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.