ANGELA B. PAN

The other day I went out on clear morning to go photograph the reflecting pool and Lincoln Memorial. The sunrise wasn’t great so I actually spent most of my time inside the Memorial. I love that time of day when the sun rises a little bit above the horizon and the whole memorial is glowing orange. It may only last 15-20 minutes but that whole time is seriously magical.

I brought this reflective prism with me so I thought I’d test it out and see what it looked like. It took a little while for me to figure out compositions I liked but overall I love the final look. So in order to capture something different I held the prism up to my lens, pretty much right next to it and kept turning it around and trying new things to come up with these. It definietly makes you see the Lincoln Memorial in a whole new perspective now. What do you think about them? What do you think about using props in your images in general? I don’t know if I have ever really been a big fan of them before but this prism is really making me think twice about it. It just adds an extra element of interest to a scene that has been photographed a million times.

Also, which one is your favorite?

My camera settings for all these images are the same. They were photographed at F5.6 1/50th sec at ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

I captured this image earlier in the summer. I remember being out taking pictures just because I wanted to, not because I knew it was going to be a good sunrise. In fact, I think I remember it raining a little bit after I created this image and being surprised that there was even any color at all. The whole mood was very dark and grey. I was grateful to have gotten this 10 minutes of color because it turned out AMAZING!

My favorite part of the image is that little cloudy-ness you see on the bottom of the image. I don’t remember what that’s from? Is it a hard core cloud reflection? Or some moldy-ness from the reflecting pool? I dunno. Either way, I think it looks really cool and I love how it’s breaking up the reflection to make it look a little different.

Also the birds! They’re so teeny tiny in the image. Can you even see them? At first I thought it was a whole bunch of dust spots that I would have to get rid of, but when I zoomed in on them it was actually it’s just a whole bunch of birds 🙂 A photo trip that lasted only 20 minutes but totally worth the early morning wake up call 🙂

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 1/125th sec at ISO 1600 with my Sony A7II 70-200mm zoom lens. I did not have my tripod with me this morning so the ISO had to be bumped up to help compensate. I’ve also noticed that shooting with a long lens may cause some extra shake. So just to be sure I can capture a super sharp image, I’ll usually bump up my ISO a lot. Plus it was super cloudy, so you know… Gotta do what you gotta do to get the shot!

A little break from Norway images for this one beautiful morning in Washington DC. Even while we were in Norway, I heard it was raining in Washington at the same time. It rained when we got back and even a week after we landed. But at that point I had so many Norway images to keep me busy that I didn’t even care.

After a week or so, I started to get that itch again. I needed to just go out with my camera and get creative. Luckily I saw that there was going to be fog one morning instead of rain. So I woke up extra early and headed to the National Mall. I didn’t see any fog, but I did see some beautiful color in the sky. I walked around the Lincoln Memorial and captured a few images but then decided to head down to the Reflecting Pool to see if I could get any cool shots there. Walking down the steps, there was this huge puddle. To be honest, the puddle is always there, but this time it was especially big. Probably from all the rain we had been getting. It was great. I kneeled down to get some shots when I noticed a duck enjoying the puddle as well. I moved over to try to line the duck up with the monument while at the same time not trying to scare him away. I love the perspective and how the duck in the foreground looks just as big as the Washington Monument in the background. Luckily the sky stayed beautiful while I was lining everything up because it didn’t last much longer after that. It went pretty grey but I still went home happy just being able to get out there and shoot.

My camera settings for this image is F8 at 0.6sec ISO 2000 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Last but not least is my favorite image in the whole series. I took this image at the very end of my time shooting sunrise at the National Mall. As you can see I started this week off right outside the Lincoln Memorial, then I went inside, then back to the reflecting pool, and went up the stairs to go to the Lincoln and ended right back inside the Lincoln Memorial. The whole hour I out shooting the sunrise I just walked back and forth between the two landmarks. So instead of coming out with one image, I was able to come out with 5 really cool images that I love. So next time you go out to photograph any location, I hope you keep this series in mind. I think it is a cool example of how many different perspectives you can get if you just keep walking.

By this point the sun was fully out and shining bright inside the Lincoln Memorial. My natural tendencies would lead me to go right but this time I felt the need to go left. I began photographing President Lincoln through the columns but I wasn’t happy with the images that were coming out. I was about to leave when I stopped in the corner of the interior and noticed all the amazing shadows the columns were creating. To be honest, I waited for about 15 minutes for someone to show up. Some kind of foreground element to make this image a little more interesting. The closest thing that I got was the shadow figure on the left hand side. Someone who looked like they were about to come in but for some reason did not. Either way, I still love all the lines and repetition in this image.

My camera settings for this image is F8 at 1/125th of a second at ISO 640 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

There are certain things you can almost always guarantee when you’re visiting the National Mall. 1. its stunningly beautiful 2. the monuments will always have you looking up 3. there will almost always be puddles so once in a while you should look down. For some reason, even if there has been no rain for days, this puddle will always be there. They are on the set of stairs that’s closer to the Reflecting Pool than the Lincoln Memorial but it creates these amazing reflections.

Sometimes I’ll find inspiration in this puddle, this time I thought it was really cool how that guy was looking out towards the Washington Monument and I love how I was able to catch that in the reflection as well.

If you’ve been catching up with the blog this past week, this is the 4th image in the hour that I spent at the National Mall photographing the sunrise this past month. I thought it would be real interesting to show the importance of making sure you aren’t stuck in one place and you keep walking around to find multiple compositions.

This image sort of reminds me of the first one in that there is a space in the reflection between the actual subject and where the reflection starts. I love how there is that peek a boo of trees just coming out. Everything just seems to line up real nicely in this image.

Click here if you missed the second and third image.

As far as Andrew and I? Today we’re in Geiranger, Norway. Out of our whole trip, this is the place that I’m looking most forward to staying in. We were able to get this cute cabin right along the water. I’m really looking forward to waking up and walking right out to this amazing view. Can’t WAIT!

My camera settings for this image is F7.1 at 1/400th of a second at ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens handheld.

If we are going to go in chronological order, this image would be next. The third image in the series this week of keep it movin’. Why photographers should keep walking around to find multiple compositions instead of finding one that works and stay in the same spot.

You can see the first image here and the second one here.

Now that does not mean that you can’t go back the same spot. I think certain composition work better than others depending on the light. You may be at one place but 20 minutes later see that the sun will hit it in a certain way and you’ll see something totally different. That’s fine. Just don’t get stuck!

I originally started off this photo trek at the reflecting pool. I walked from one edge of the pool to the edge but nothing was really inspiring me so that is when I decided to turn around and walk up the Lincoln Memorial steps. Once I was taking a few pictures of the Lincoln while the sun was starting to really come out and change the colors in the sky. I looked down at the reflecting pool and thought that it was the time to go back down. So I made my way back down and was able to capture this one. I love how the US Capitol is the main focus in this image. You don’t really see this point of view a lot since it’s so far away and people mostly want to photograph the Washington Monument from this angle. Funny how if you look real close, you can see other photographers on the other side of the reflecting pooll.

My camera settings for this image is F7.1 at 1/800th of a second ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens handheld.