aquatic gardens

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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!

All photos available for print and licensing >

Now that the spring flowers have basically come and gone. Everything in our area is looking very green. I’m really looking forward to all the summer flowers that bloom like the sunflowers and these lotus flowers. The best ones in the DC area are definietly the ones in Anacostia at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens. Its like rows and rows full of them. The only thing that’s not so great about them is that they are only open from 8:30a to 5p. Peak hours for the sun light to be shining down on them so they can be a little difficult to photograph.

My tip to photograph the lotuses during this time would to be find a large tree. Hopefully it’s casting it’s shadow on at least one of these lotuses so it would be very even lighting on the flower. They really can be really difficult to photograph under the extremely harsh light. If you can’t find one that’s in a shadow, then I’d recommend trying to shoot from the bottom looking up. They can look amazingly majestic from this point of view and the light shining down on them can really help. And especially with the pink color, they look great against a blue sky. I remember when I first found about these flowers, Kenilworth didn’t close their gate so I could walk in at sunrise. They must of learned from Great Falls Park to shut it down once it was closing time 🙁

My camera settings for this image was F9 at 1/800th of a second with ISO 250. I used my 100mm macro Canon lens and metabones adaptor to be able to shoot this on my Sony A7ii. My intention was to get the whole flower in focus and make the background blurry. I think the F9 aperture did a great job at doing this.

water lilies, kenilworth, aquatic gardens, washington dc, anocostia, NW DC, flower, summer, abpan, angela b. pan, hdr

Finally, the water lilies have bloomed. I’ve been waiting for this day for two months now and I can’t believe how tall they are. They were probably up to my elbow. I always thought water lilies were just above the water surface. Is that just a different breed?

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So, I came back from Vegas and I had a BLAST! Maybe too much fun because I didn’t come out with all the images I wanted to.

Here are some of them from the past week:
Probably one of the best hotels in Vegas: the beautiful Venetian lobby
I also went to the iconic “Welcome to Fabolous Las Vegas” at sunrise.
A MUST whenever you go to vegas: Caesars Palace Forum Shops
A view of the Las Vegas Strip at night with views of Paris, Ballys, the new Cosmopolitan hotel and more

Now that I’m back home, I discovered a beautiful park hidden in DC: Kenilworth Park Aquatic Gardens

I made a new video! Check out the camera gear I travel with in What’s in my Travel Bag?

Did you guys notice the new homepage? It now takes you directly to the blog. What do you think?

Anyways, hope you all have a great weekend 🙂
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