ANGELA B. PAN

SURVIVEDDDDDDDD! I survived my first ever experience in camping. It was actually better than expected but more about that later.

A few little updates from even before we left for our trip to California:

I originally booked the trip so that I could spend more time with family. I have cousins in Palo Alto and in-laws in Lake Tahoe. But before I met up with them, I wanted to spend a little time in San Francisco just photographing the city. I was going to go by myself when very last minute, Andrew decided to join me on this whole adventure. I was so happy! This trip would not have been the same without him. When I’m talking about last minute, I’m talking we booked his flight 4 days before we left for the trip so I’m glad it all worked out.

Also I received my repaired A7II the day before I left for the trip. But funny enough it was also the same day that I was to receive my Sony A7III from borrowlenses.com. In effort to keep things simple and easy, I decided to just receive the A7III and ship it right back to Borrow Lenses. I didn’t even touch it. I just feel more comfortable with my own camera and I didn’t want to fumble around with a camera for my trip. I wanted it to be as easy and light as possible. Glad to have you back, baby *kissy face*

Last but not least, I got some of the most exciting news ever. Click here if you didn’t read my blog post from Friday. I still can’t believe I have prints and postcards in the bookstores of the National Mall. Please someone come and pinch me to make sure this is real!

This image was taken one more from Baker Beach, San Francisco, California. It’s funny because it was not foggy during the sunrise but as the day went on, it got foggier and foggier. This image was probably taken around 7:30a. We stopped by Baker Beach on our way to the farmers market. Andrew’s obsessed with the fruit in California 🙂 So am I. My camera settings for this image is F7.1 at 1/640th of a second at ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom.

As you’re reading this, I’m on a plane to Aruba with my closest girlfriends! I can not waitttt to do nothing but lay out on the beach and get a tan. But you know that will only last for 30 minutes before I bust out with the GoPro! or even my drone.

I’m also really looking forward to seeing the flamingos! If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you’ll know how I feel about birds. But I feel like flamingos are kinda different. First of all, they’re pink <3 Plus I feel like they’re so slow moving that if they wanted to attack you, you have time to run away and I can’t imagine those stick legs being that fast. Which leads to my question… do flamingos fly? Either way, I love the combo of pink feathers with blue water. But I may be sticking with my new 70-200mm to capture it all. Can’t get too close now. LOL.

This image was taken earlier this year in San Diego. I thought it was appropriate since theres an airplane flying over palm trees. I captured it one day after Andrew and I left the Little Italy farmer’s market and needed to go somewhere to walk off all the food we just ate. We ended up by the marina. I think my favorite part about this image is the big open space on top. It make everything seem so small, especially the palm trees. There was only a quick moment to capture it and I’m glad I was able to pull it off 🙂

So if you’ve been to Aruba, let me know what’s fun. Places to go or places to eat.

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/1000th of a second ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm zoom lens.

Can you believe half the year has already past? That’s crazy! How are your New Years goals going?

This image was actually taken on January 1st, 2018. I remember not setting my alarm clock to wake up for sunrise but since I was still jet lagged, I was up early anyways. These line of palm trees were right around the corner from the Airbnb that we were staying at in North Park on Utah Street. But the best part was that since it was New Years Day there was no one around at all! I loved the fog that was rolling in and the line of pam trees but felt like there needed to be one more element. So I set my camera on my tripod and hit the 10 second timer and ran as fast as I could in front of the camera to just casually walk along the road. I think it turned out so cool. Just the way I had envisioned it.

But if you’re ever in planning on staying in San Diego, Andrew and I really enjoyed North Park. Obviously staying by the beach would have been nice but if you want to go a little more inland, then I highly suggest North Park/University Heights. It was super convient to everywhere we wanted to go in San Diego, about a 15 minute drive anywhere but we were also walking distance to so many great restaurants. Highly recommended. 10/10. I wish I could link you with the Airbnb we stayed at but they sold it a week after we left. We were their very last airbnb tenants. I would have totally stayed there again for our next trip to SoCal.

The settings for this image is F10 at 1/30th of a second and ISO 100 on my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens on a tripod.

So you know now what I did Saturday morning. I was having fun walking around the National Mall in dense fog here and here.

But Saturday night was a different story. I was at home bored with nothing to do. LOL. So I thought I’d go through some of my San Diego images again. I don’t know if any of you other photographers out there feel like this but sometimes I just need to sit on some photos before I can edit them again. At times Ill get really excited and want to edit them all right away, but most of the time I know that doing it immediately won’t bring the best result. Sometimes I have to really envision what I want the end result to look like before anything good can come out of it. So that’s kind of what I’ve been doing with my SoCal images. Believe me, I took plenty of pics while I was there. But I felt like I had to sit and think about them for a while.

And Saturday night was the time I figured would be best to go through the images I took at the Salk Institute. It was one of my favorite places to visit while we were in San Diego. The architecture was mind blowing. I know I don’t usually do this but here are multiple angles from this place. LOL I told you I was bored. I had plenty of time on my hands to edit all of these images.

View of Salk when you first enter. My jaw dropped.

This is what Andrew typically does when we’re out taking pictures. Most likely he was looking up places for us to go eat after I was done.

Man on a phone. I think I creeped him out by taking his picture so he turned around. LOL.

If you’ve been following my blog for a long time, then you would know that I used to say three things I was grateful for every Friday. I’m not sure what happened to that because it just stopped. To be honest, I think I just forgot. But if you do remember that, thank you. I love you. You are one of my favorite people on the internet.

So I don’t know if I’m going to do this every Friday but I’m at least going to do it today because I have so many things to be grateful for.

1. I’m grateful to be in Orlando right now with family having the time of my life. Tomorrow is my nephew’s 3rd birthday and I can’t wait to watch him blow out the candles on his cake. It’s one of his favorite things to do even when it’s not his own birthday and I’m so excited to see him happy 🙂
2. I’m grateful for the DC photo community. I’ve met so many great people in the past year or two that I can’t believe it’s only been 1 or 2 years since I’ve started going to instameets and things. Regardless, I’ve met some really awesome, creative, nice people and I could not be more grateful for them always inspiring me to do more.
3. I’m grateful for the sunrising everyday. Its probably my favorite time of day (minus the waking up so early part) because it’s just so still and quiet. I love getting out there with my camera and just knowing that I will have that moment to watch something beautiful happen before me. Sometimes it can be hard to balance the photography vs. enjoying the moment thing, but I’m having a great time figuring it all out.

This image was created in Point Loma, San Diego. Just a peaceful morning out on the water that made me so happy to be there. My camera settings for this image is F16 at 1/30th of a second at ISO 125 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

To be honest my personal life has been busy, espcially in the past week or so. So busy to the point that I almost forgot that we’re leaving on a short getaway tomorrow. Around Thanksgiving time, Andrew and I booked a trip to Orlando with our cousins and I haven’t really thought about it much since then. But at this point, I can’t think of anything better. I can’t wait to soak up the Florida sun and spend a couple days on rides and rollercoasters. I’ll have my camera and drone with me, but I’m not sure how much I’ll be shooting. I hope to get at least one cool shot of the fireworks at the Disney castle, other than that I have no real plans.

So if you have any Orlando, Disney, or Universal Studios recommendations, please let me know! It’s my first time visiting since I was a child. You better believe that I’ll be rocking Minnie Mouse ears though! I can’t wait <3

This image has nothing to do with Florida but it does put me in a relaxing mood which is what I’m looking forward to the most on our trip. I took this one morning in La Jolla, San Diego. There weren’t as many sea lions out but for some reason they were all gathered on this rock. So I sat down and watched them for a good 20 minutes. The sun was just coming up and I loved feeling the wind in my hair. I knew I wanted to place myself in this image some how so I could remember the moment and what it was like to be there. So out came my legs and I took a shoefy. Don’t yell at me, but I never remember to tie my shoes until I really have to. LOL.

My camera settings for this image is F9 at 1/50th of a second at ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.