ANGELA B. PAN

Some of you may not know but I’ve been writing this blog since March 2010. It was then that I commited to posting a new image every monday-friday and I have not broke that commitment once. To be fair, sometimes the blog posts will go up a little bit later than others but they are always there!

However when I made that commitment, I never said anything about writing. I have never considered myself to be a person who can easily express their feelings or view point. I feel like I know what I mean in my head but when it comes to verbalizing it, it can be difficult. You know what I mean?

So if you read my blog in the early days, you would have seen my image and then one or two sentences max. I remember it was such a hassle and torture to even do that. But it was in January of 2017 where I commited to be more than just a photographer. I wanted to be more thoughtful and practice the art of writing. Thanks to my friend, Mel for the encouragement!  So I stepped up my game and have been consistently taking pictures and writing about them more thoughtfully for almost 2 years. I will say it was a struggle at first but the more I do it, the easier it gets. I even find myself looking forward to writing sometimes. I think it’s the sense of accomplishment that I feel after writing something I’m proud of. Don’t get me wrong though, some days are easier than others. For example, I wrote a book talk/speech for a photo club I presented at last week. It took me about 1 hour to write a speech that I loved so much. The icing on the cake was that people came up to me to tell me how inspired they were by it. I was on cloud 9 for the rest of the week!

I have a lot more to say on this topic so to be continued for tomorrow…. LOL

My camera settings for this image is F5 at 1/80th sec at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm ultra zoom on my gitzo tripod.

I’ll be honest, since being back from Norway I haven’t gone out to shoot that much. I’ve woken up for a few sunrises here and there but nothing too serious. So last week I was getting that itch to go out shooting again.

I met up with my friend, Birch and we headed to the Memorial Amphitheater in Arlington National Cemetery. It’s been on my to do list for a while now and I’m so glad we made it out there. It was a beautiful, sunny day after days and days of rain. It felt so great to just be outside and enjoy the crisp autumn air.

When we had made the plans, I immediately had a vision of what I wanted one of my shots to look like. Although this one isn’t it, I love the way that it turned out. These two were just sitting there. They weren’t really talking, they just looked like they needed a little break from walking around. So they were the perfect focal point to break up the repetition of the seating area and the columns behind them.

If ever plan on visiting the amphitheater in real life, I think you would be immediately impressed with the grandness of everything. I love the beautiful lines and the light that reflects off of the white marble. Everything just seems so bright! I definietly want to come back when the leaves start changing in the Washington DC area and photograph this place again. The Arlington National Cemetery is a beautiful place to capture the leaves changing.

My camera settings for this image is F7.1 at 1/2000th sec and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and my 70-200mm zoom lens. I think next time I come back to this spot, I may shoot more with my wide angle 🙂

It’s been a while since I’ve visited the Air Force Memorial in Arlington, VA. I think the last time I was there almost 2 years ago when I went with my friend, Navin to shoot lightning. I ended up with some pretty cool images like this one but I haven’t been back since. So last Monday I was checking the weather and it looked like it was going to be a pretty good sunset. I literally looked through Snap DC to see where I could go and decided on the Air Force Memorial. LOL I love that I have the resource now. I texted my friend, Birch and off we went.

As soon as I pulled up, I was shocked by how many people were there. I thought that by going to the Air Force Memorial, we would have avoided the summer crowd that’s at the National Mall. I was wrong. There was at least 2 bus loads of kids running around the memorial. It wasn’t too bad though because they all left within 10 minutes and then had another good 10 minutes in between before another bus load of kids came by. So I think that’s the secret. You have to wait for the waves of people to leave.

So while we were waiting, I thought a really close up image of the Air Force Memorial would be cool. I like the way that this one turned out. I love the symmetry and the blue sky definietly worked in my favor. It wasn’t a colorful sunset like I had expected, but I really would not have known that unless I got out there and tried so it was all worth it.

My camera settings for this image is F8 at 1/80th of a second at ISO 160 with my A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Now that Snap DC is out and people are starting to receive it in the mail *super excited face*, I felt the need to share this image. This image is in the photo guide but I’ve never shared it online before. One of a few images that are in the book that have never been seen before.

I took it last fall when the flowers in front of the Netherlands Carillon were looking lush and beautiful. In the book I took about how I placed the camera on the ground to make the flowers look larger than life. It’s a technique I practice a lot. Yesterday’s blog post included. LOL. But my favorite part about Netherlands Carillon is that you get the beautiful flowers in the spring, summer and fall but you also get an almost one of a kind view of the big three landmarks-  Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and US Capitol building.  The only other place that you can get a similar view to this is close to the Arlington Memorial Bridge from Roosevelt island which is also discussed in Snap DC.

I know I’ve been talking about the book a lot but I’m just super excited for it. I spent the last 9 months obsessing over it and I can’t believe that other people besides me are now seeing it! So even if you’re a novice, mobile, or advance photographer, I think you will get something out of it. I don’t talk about how to use your camera or anything like that, it’s strictly for composition ideas and where to go shoot around the Nation’s Capitol. Although technically Netherlands Carillon is in Arlington, I mention just a couple of my favorite places to shoot in Northern Virginia.

My camera settings for this image is F8 at 1/15th of a second at ISO 160 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Sometimes its good to just wonder.

The other day I was out by the Navy-Merchant Marine Memorial shooting the red tulips. They are so beautiful when they’re fully bloomed. Can you imagine just red on red flowers all lined up at sunrise? It’s like a dreammmm.

Typically when the sun has come up for a while, I’ll head back to my car. But on this day I was not ready. I didn’t want to go back. It was such a beautiful Sunday morning that I felt the need to go on a walk. So walking along the trail next to the George Washington Parkway, I found myself capturing the willow trees with the Washington Monument. I loved how linear everything was. I probably stopped at like 5 willow trees to use the branches as framing pieces. But then there was this one tree where the sun light was hitting it just right.

Wow, check out those leaves on top of the image. If that ain’t an image all on it’s own then I don’t know what is. But then mister bike guy came rolling past and made it even more perfect. I had no idea he was coming and once I saw him in my camera frame, I just kept on clicking, clicking, clicking.

LOL I waited a bit longer to see if I could recreate this moment with another biker. But I waited a good 10 minutes and no one showed up. I lady ran past but it just wasn’t the same. I don’t know what I was looking for with the other biker. I guess I just wanted options. Either way, it was the perfect Sunday morning walk.

My camera settings for this image is F/18 at 1/100th of a second at ISO 400 with my Sony A7Ii and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

If you missed it, yesterday I announced the completion of Snap DC, Your Guide to Taking Extraordinary Photos of the National Mall and Beyond… Thank you all so much for your positive feedback and basically good vibes all around. It was like I was floating on a cloud all day. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the blog post. But more importantly, here’s the page where you can sign up to get all the info, extras and even a preview of the first chapter of the book.

Within the first couple pages of the book you’ll see that I’ve dedicated the book to my grandma, Nai Nai. She passed away earlier this year but I know she would have been super proud of me for creating this book. I know I haven’t talked about it much but we found out she wasn’t doing well around Thanksgiving 2017. I spent a lot of days with her in the hospital and I would always bring my computer with me. I would work on Snap DC while she was resting. Remember that story I shared earlier this year about my love for flowers and my grandma saying “pretty”? We were in the hospital at that time looking through pages of the book. At that time they were just google drive pages on my phone but she is one of the first people to ever see it.

This image is not a part of the book. However it’s the image that I was working on when I found out the news of her passing. I find it symbolic to have been working on an image with the fog passing through the bridge as if it is her spirt was passing to her next life. This is exactly how I left it when I found out the news.

So Snap DC is dedicated to Nai Nai. I wish she could have seen the final product.

My camera settings for this image is F5.0 at 1/1250th of a second at ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.