ANGELA B. PAN

A little while ago, my friend, Bryon from Utah came and visited Washington. I know him through the Arcanum and have spent quiet a few months talking through email. So when he came to visit we set up a little photowalk session with my other friend from the Arcanum, Larry.

We started at the Reflecting Pool, then the to Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Constitution Gardens, WWII Memorial, and eventually left at the Tidal Basin. It was a long photowalk but so much fun getting to know Bryon. We talked about everything from Salt Lake City to his initial impressions of Washington DC. It’s so funny because he said that before his first ever trip to the district, he thought that it would just be a concrete jungle. Now that he has visited a few times he knows now that ‘there are so many trees you can barely see the other side of the street’. I thought that was such a compliment.

I love how our city is more than just buildings. It’s beautiful with it’s own little spots of nature.

This was taken at Constitution Gardens. I don’t think a lot of people know about it but it’s a great place to just sit and relax. While walking around the pond, all three of us noticed the amazing light that was hitting the Washington Monument. It was probably a good hour after the sun had actually risen. I immediately busted out with my wide angle lens and got down as low as I could to the water without touching it. OMG I love it when the light can just change everything. Change your view on what you’re looking at and also change how you feel. Not that I wasn’t already happy but seeing that light made me super excited.

The settings for this image is F4.0 at 1/500th of a second ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle.

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.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Focus on the Story International Photo Festival for an AMAZING festival. I felt so inspired and grateful the entire weekend. I got to see so many amazing images, watched so many great presentations and best of all hugged so many wonderful photographers. I could not be more thrilled.

Obviously my favorite part of the entire weekend was the photowalk. I am still shocked and so honored that about 70 people showed up on a Saturday morning at 5am to walk around the National Mall. Thank you so much to everyone who came out. I hope you had as much fun as I did.

And I can’t help but smile while I scroll through the #FOTSwalk18 hashtag on instagram. The weather called for partly cloudy skies and we even got a little bit of fog rolling through, it was perfect! There were so many great images and I wish I could post them all! But here are a few:

Special shout out to @chantale1 for the group shot at the beginning of our walk.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjzsHXAA13Z/?tagged=fotswalk18

Lovely long exposure, @rodb_pics

Bennett stole the show, @eugeneksoh! Great portrait, @wvugee

I loveeee this! Thank you so much for capturing this action shot, @geoffliving

Beautiful image of @julwriter, @metroamir. I love the reflection!

Love the mood you captured here, @cborde

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjzsAZjhEDF/?tagged=fotswalk18

Another photowalk, Another blue heron. I’m noticing a pattern. Thanks so much for these amazing captures, @bellasoria.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjzVoE7h6SJ/?tagged=fotswalk18

GORGEOUS frame, @bellasoria. Wow

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bj0YblWHrkR/?tagged=fotswalk18

Love all repetition in this one, @heatheronthego

Thanks again to everyone who came out. I’m so grateful to have so many talented photographer friends. Be sure to check out the #FOTSwalk18 hashtag to see more images from the walk. And thanks again to Focus on the Story for putting on such an amazing photo festival! I can’t wait for the next one 🙂

Happy Monday! I may be the only one who’s counting down the days but 6 more days til the release of Snap DC!!!!! I can’t hold back the excitement. You are going to love the guide book. It’s seriously everything I know about shooting in Washington all in one book. I don’t think there was anything more I could have added to it except for maybe this image! LOL

As a side note, there are images in Snap DC that you’ve never seen before! Images that I’ve never posted anywhere or anything. They’ve just been living on my computer so I’m excited for you to see those too!

This image was taken in December, way after the content of the book was complete. But I love it. Obviously it was taken super early in the morning. Not sure exactly the time, but this was the day that I woke up at 3:30am to shoot. See other images from this day here and here. It was so worth waking up that early too. I love how the image is pretty dark except for that gorgeous glow that’s coming up on the horizon. A few minutes later all the color was gone. So to say we were lucky to get the color is an understatement.

To be honest, it has been a while since I’ve seen a great sunrise in Washington but I’m not complaining. The weather has been fantastic lately. So even waking up super early (like 4:30a) on a regular non-spectacular sunrise day is worth it just to walk around and enjoy the outdoors. It just makes the day feel like it’s super long and I’m a huge fan of eating lunch and then taking a nap. You just sleep so much better on a full stomach. LOL.

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 3.2 seconds at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens on a tripod.

Ok, back to more cherry blossoms images 🙂

Another one of my goals this season was to capture the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial with the cherry blossoms. If I was going to be at the Tidal Basin, I wanted to try different things from what I typically do. Going back and looking at my images, I barely have any of the Jefferson Memorial and the cherry blossoms. So weird, right? Last year they were like peanut butter and jelly. This year it was like the Jefferson Memorial didn’t even show up to the party.

I also realized that I don’t have very many images of the Martin Luther King Jr memorial in general, let alone with the cherry blossoms. So anytime I was close or even from far away, I was trying out different compositions. I was determined to get something I liked.

This one was taken about 30 minute before sunrise. As you can see, another windy morning but I love the color combination of the pink flowers with the blueish looking sky. We got real lucky this year. We had almost two solid weeks of cherry blossoms, compared to last year when we didn’t even have a week. So I had time to play with compositions. I still haven’t gone through all the images yet, but this one stood out to me. I like how he still looks very powerful and determined with the cherry blossom framing him. Like nothing can distract him, not even pretty flowers. On the other hand, I’m the one who’s driving around and will break for pretty flowers growing in people’s yards and point them out to all my passengers. Ask Andrew. He’s not a fan of when I do that. LOL

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 0.6 seconds and ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens on my gitzo tripod.

The National Gallery of Art is one of my favorite buildings in Washington DC. I love the architecture, the clean lines and obviously the interior space. But they also have some great cherry blossom trees in the spring time too. I’ve shot them before but this year, I wanted to spend a little more time here. Unfortunately the day I decided to go it was super cloudy, grey and windy. I definietly needed my tripod for this shoot.

I had this idea in my head that I wanted to do a whole series of images from this one spot. It’s still going to happen and I’m going through all the images but I thought this one was pretty cool. It reminds me of the two twin girl emoji, right? 👯 LOL Could you imagine if there was another one of me? LOL I think my mom would have ran away from us while we were in high school. I bet Andrew would love it though. HAHAHA

In order to capture this, I set my camera on my tripod and set the 10 second timer. I sprinted over to stand underneath the tree and as the shutter was going off, I just slightly moved my legs around as if I was just casually standing under the tree. Than I ran back to the camera to check out the image. It may have looked casual, but I was huffing and puffing in between takes. After about 3 tries, I was done and was happy with the way this one turned out.

Is it me or do I look super short in this image too? Oh well. It’s a pretty cool experiment in scale as well.

My settings for this image is F4 at 6 seconds and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens on a tripod.