ANGELA B. PAN

Happy Thanksgiving! My favorite holiday! The food is always delicious and it’s all about giving thanks. Honestly, what could be better? 2018 has been particularly amazing and I have so much to be thankful for. But it’s closing out with a bang!

If you’re in the Washington DC metro area, keep an eye out for Northern Virginia Magazine. Remember this image from 2017? I captured this on National Coffee day at the National Gallery of Art. It was so great because I got to meet up with friends early in the morning and sample all kinds of delicious beverages. If you know me, you know that I don’t usually drink coffee so I was EXTRA hyped this day.

After the tasting, a group of us headed upstairs to the rooftop to check out Katharina Frithsch’s Hahn/Cock. We had a mini photoshoot with my friends, Diego and Laurie. Laurie was in this amazing orange dress that perfectly contrasted with the artwork but special thanks to Diego’s amazing jumping skills because this image made the cover! I love how there’s so much energy and life to the entire spread. Earlier this week Andrew and I were walking through Whole Foods (his favorite store) and I noticed the magazine out of the corner of my eye. It looks so good! I immediately stopped and bought three. One for me, one for my mom and one for Diego 🙂

Special thanks to Northern Virginia Magazine for selecting this image for the cover. I’m so honored and could not be more grateful. What a happy Thanksgiving!

Last but definietly not least, I’d like to thank all of you for taking the time out to view my images and for all your love and unconditional support. It means the world to me and it definietly does not go unnoticed. Wishing you the best this holiday season <3

Whenever people ask me about places to photograph in Washington DC, I always have to ask follow up questions because there is just so much to see in our little city. If you wanted sunsets, visit the National Mall. If you want cool interiors, visit the Library of Congress. If you want to know my favorite museum? It’s is hands down the National Gallery of Art. I think it is one of the most beautiful spaces we have in the district. Every time I walk in, I feel so refreshed and so excited about what I’m going to see.

The gallery is so large that it is actually divided into two separate buildings and my favorite is definietly the east building. There you’ll see the more modern art, it’s the side of the gallery that changes out more often, but I also love the BEAUTIFUL light you get through the windows while you’re walking around the concourse. And of course, you can’t forget that NGA wall! It’s a staircase that is just so beautiful and minimal, it’s been photographed a million times. But each time I see an image from here, it’s like I forgot how beautiful it is and fall back in love.

And if you do get a chance to visit the gallery, don’t forget to check out Multiverse by Leo Villareal. It’s a moving walkway that sort of connects the East and the West but it’s will probably be the coolest moving walkway you’ve been on. NOTHING like what you see in airports. HAHA.

I really wish I could have included museums in Snap DC. This would have been the very first place I would have mentioned to go visit. I just can’t express how much I love the National Gallery of Art.

My settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/8th of a second at ISO 100 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

What’s crazy is that I’m still not even close to done with all my cherry blossom images from this year! We had great bloom and I tried to go out as often as I could. You would say that I went pretty hard! Out of the two weeks, I think I only missed two sunrises. Even if it was really grey and windy, I still went out to see what I could find.

This was captured at the National Gallery of Art. The same time I took this image. But at this point the sun had already come up so there was a little more light available. If you’re not familiar with the gallery, then it may be a little difficult to see what’s really going on. The blue part is just the side of the building. The orange/warm part is the inside of a corner of the building. It goes in a little bit and it has it’s own special uplighting which is causing the warmer tones. I love how the cherry blossom branch just unifies everything in this image.  I have a couple more variations of this image that I still need to play around with but if you’ve been following my blog then you’ll know I love the contrast between warm and cool tones that this image is bringing. It would be really neat to see this as a series. So many ideas, so little time! One day.

And the cherry blossom vlog is coming! It’s been taking me a while because I finally downloaded Final Cut Pro X. I figured it was time to upgrade my video workflow as well. Thanks to my friend, Andy for the extra push! I love how creative you can get with the videos but it’s just taking me a while because I literally have to google every single thing that I want to do. It will be worth it though. Just taking time… apologies.

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/25th of a second at ISO 1250 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.

A little break from cherry blossoms for a photo of me 🙂 LOL

I was with my family at the National Museum of Natural history the other day when I decided to take a little breather and go for a quick walk around the National Gallery of Art. I love how these two museums are right next to each other because they are my favorites at the National Mall. It’s so easy to hop from one beautiful museum to the next.

I love the purple wisteria that grow along side of NGA and I had every intention of capturing them on my walk. I only saw a couple of them so I think I was a bit too early for that this year. But in a surprising turn of events it was the glass pyramids outside the east building that caught my attention. I’ve never paid too much attention to them before but when I got closer up to them, I noticed how they are the windows that bring in so much light to the cafeteria part of the gallery. Right next to them are water fountains that trail down to the interior of the building. It was so cool. So as I was kneeling down low to try to capture different angles, I noticed my reflection in the pyramids and decided to take a quick selfie.

I was really surprised by the way that it turned out. First of all, I had no idea that there were so many water stains on the glass. LOL. But for being such a quick click, I really like how it turned out. I imagine this is what I look like to most people when I’m out shooting so it was a very different perspective to see me like this. Pretty, pretty interesting. LOL.

My camera settings for this image is F9 at 1/80th of a second at ISO 200 with my Sony a7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

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.

Like I said yesterday, I’ve been consuming so much information. However listening to audiobooks was something I’ve always done. I didn’t need to go on an instabreak to appreciate a good story. I love listening to books when I’m in the car or even on photoshoots. It’s a great way to get your mind off of things going around you and just focus on what you’re doing.

To be honest, I had never heard of Phil Knight. I think the first time I ever heard his name was in the song by Wale with Lady Gaga called, “Chillin” (as an added bonus, Wale is from Washington DC and the music video is filmed all around the city). But Andrew and I share an audible account and he had previously listened to Shoe Dog and was telling me so many great things about the book. We’re both huge fans of Nikes. So about a month ago I decided to download it and listen to it.

This book is all about taking risks, following your passion and not letting anything get in your way. I love how Nike did not start off with the goal to make billions of dollars. It started off by Phil Knight being a super passionate runner and basically just wanted to bring good footwear to athletes everywhere. To me, he didn’t seem like anyone special growing up. Just a regular guy who loved sports. But it was his determination, his will to make his company a success and overall love of running that made Nike what it is today.

The book was inspiring and at times an emotional roller coaster. I’m not afraid to admit that I cried at the end, twice. If you plan on reading it, I won’t ruin the ending for you but one time when something tragic happened and the second time was when he was summarizing his life and Nike as a company. I could not help but feel so proud and happy for him and I don’t even know the guy. 10 minutes ago was the first time I googled him just so I could see what he looks like. If you ask me, kinda like a Richard Branson looking guy. But he is definietly someone I look up to now. One of my favorite parts of the book was hearing about his personal relationships with the Nike athletes like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Steve Prefontaine. It just goes to show how much he cared for everyone who was around him. I wish I could give him a hug.

Overall, I highly recommend reading or listening to this book if you like learning about how people made it. 4.7 stars out of 5. I still think Steve Jobs is my favorite biography but this is a close second.

As for the image, this was taken at the National Art Gallery in Washington DC. My camera settings are F6.3 at 0.8 seconds at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.