ANGELA B. PAN

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2019! WOW. Not to total ignore 2019 but everytime I think 2019, I can’t help but think 2020 is just around the corner and that is just bananas to me. Like can you imagine people saying that they were born in 2020? The number is just crazy to me. P.S. Where are the flying cars at?

Anyways…

Much like my top travel images of 2018, I like to reminisce and look back on my favorite images from Washington DC from the past year. It makes me feel so fortunate to live in the Nation’s Capital. I love being able to hop in my car and within minutes be among some of the most recognizable and loved landmarks in the world. I feel extremely blessed and look forward to another year of capturing more images.

Click on each image to read the original blog post but I’ll try to add some additional light on these images now that I’ve sat on them for a while. In no particular order except chronological, here are my favorite images of 2018.

This day was definietly a highlight of the winter season. I remember we had some crazy foggy mornings but on this particular day, the fog happened in the middle of the day. Oh yea, it was raining too. Luckily, it was on a Sunday and I didn’t have much else going on. So what better way than to walk around the National Mall than with my friend, Birch. I still love how everything lines up in this image, even the little reflection you see in the puddle behind the lady is so interesting to see.

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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.

I know that it is not healthy, but a lot of times when I get sad, I just bottle it in. It’s hard for me to truly express how I’m feeling so instead of trying to explain myself or avoid a super long conversation, I’ll keep it to myself. It’s awful, I know and I need to stop.

So a couple of weeks ago, I was feeling a little down and decided that I’d work on some images to hopefully make me forget about things. If I try to think back on it now, I have no idea what I was sad about. I just remember trying to evoke that emotion into this image I was working on. I did it by adding super dark tones into the shadows of this image but I knew the feeling would pass so I wanted to keep the cherry blossoms light. My FAVORITE part of the image is the little bit of light that’s hitting the front tree trunk. I think that glow is so special.

Well, I posted it on instagram and Vanessa suggested that my friend, Christopher and I should collab on this piece. If you’re not familiar with Christopher’s work he’s thehappiestswamponearth on instagram and he takes images and composites Disney characters in to them. You have to check it out if you like images that will make you smile.

We talked about it a little over dm and we both agreed that the image had a little bit of sadness in it. A couple of weeks later he sent me this!

OMG this image turned from sad to something so sweet and magical. I love, love, love the way that it turned out. Bambi and his mom look so precious in that little corner, I can’t even  express how happy this makes me. SEE I’m not good at expressing my feelings but I LOVE IT.

The camera settings for F5.0 at 1/30th of a second at ISO 400 with my Sony a7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

I’ve had a significant change in my workflow recently. For a while there, I was team photoshop only! Everything that I ever needed to do, I could do it in photoshop. Why would I need any other software?

Well, thanks to my friend, Paul for showing me the light and the benefits of using lightroom. Don’t get me wrong, I am not an expert at lightroom or anything. I’m still learning how to do a lot of things but it has significantly cut my editing time down, especially when I’m working on multiple images from a shoot. I can’t tell you how much easier things have been and I’m lovinnnn’ it.

Left: F5.6 at 1/500th of a second ISO 200 Right: F5.6 at 1/2000th of a second at ISO 200

So if you use lightroom, let me know some of your favorite features about it. I’ve been slowly learning the keyboard shortcuts and things like that too.

I’m still team photoshop though. There are things in that program that I don’t think lightroom can replace.

So most recently, I worked on this set of images from my little paddle boat session with my friend, Birch. The whole experience was so fun. Mostly because I was with good company. But I loved the different point of views we were getting. Luckily, the swan paddle boats were motorized and we didn’t actually have to paddle. Which was a good thing because all we had left was steering and taking good pictures. Good pictures, I think I can handle. Steering on the hand, was not as easy. LOL there were definietly moments where I thought we were going to run into a wall and I had to reach my hands out just in case. Luckily we didn’t.

Top: F5.6 at 1/800th of a second ISO 200 Bottom: F5.6 at 1/1250th of a second ISO 200

Definietly doing this again next year!

My settings for the main image is F5.6 at 1/800th of sec at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

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I have a huge list of things I still want to do and photograph in Washington DC. Crazy right? You would think by now that I’ve accomplished them all but this city is so lively and growing so much that I feel like the list gets longer and longer everyday. Well, a couple of Fridays ago, my friend Birch and I met up to cross one of those things off the list. It had been something I’ve been wanting to do for forever and I’m so glad Birch was awesome enough to accompany me in doing so.

We spent a beautiful hour on the tidal basin in a paddle boat!!! OMG it was so much fun. We picked the perfect day to do it too. That whole week had crazy cold wind but the day we were actually able to go, the weather was beautiful! The best part was that we went on a swan paddle boat which was battery operated so we didn’t even have to paddle at all! We just let the swan do all the work. But we did have to steer the boat. Which may or not have been the easiest thing to do… LOL We seriously spent the whole time talking, laughing and making sure we didn’t run into any of the walls. There were some photos involved too. Either way, I’m doing it again next year! Swan paddle boat or bust.

This image is not from the paddle boat though. This was on the way down to the tidal basin from our cars. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a perspective like this before and I love the way that it turned out. I was just super lucky to have been able to capture that airplane too!

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/5000th of a second and ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.