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For me, Thanksgiving is really about family and friends being together and celebrating all the blessings we have in life. In no particular order here are a few things that I’m grateful for:

  • Family, friends, Andrew and Frankie
  • My health
  • My warm bed
  • The kindness of people I’ve never met before
  • The internet for connecting people all over the world.

So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I hope you have a wonderful day however you are celebrating and I’m so grateful for you.
<3 Angela

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Happy Halloween!

To be honest, I’m not really a spooky type of person. LOL. I don’t like scary movies or going to haunted houses. I prefer funny movies and pumpkin flavored treats. I’m more into the holiday for the chocolates and dressing up. But I also think Halloween is fun because it’s sort of the unofficial kick-off to the holiday season for me. And I’m all about the other holidays! 🙂

This is probably as spooky as I’m going to get. LOL. A nice orangey sunset at the WWII memorial on the National Mall. Taken at the same time I captured this image, I just love the reflection of the sky.

So if you do go out tonight, I hope you have a fun and safe Halloween! Save some Crunch bars for me!

My camera settings for this image are f4.5 at 1/60th sec and ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm.

 

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From the top of the Altaire luxury apartments in Crystal City, Virginia. I still can’t get over this view.

Although the Lincoln Memorial isn’t as predominately seen from this viewpoint, it was still so cool to capture.  I think it’s because you see the memorial from the side, which isn’t seen as often but it is surrounded by so many trees. I really had to zoom in with my lens to capture this.

But it also raises the question, should landscape images be photographed in landscape mode? Meaning vertical or horizontal? I feel like the majority of images I capture are in the vertical orientation. Not for any reason other than I think the composition usually looks better that way. I sort of see it as a way of “naturally” cropping and zooming in to a subject. Yes, it is more phone-friendly as well because it takes up the screen but I know traditional photographers will always photograph in the horizontal.

A couple of years ago, my friend, Mike who at the time worked at Modern Luxury DC magazine, said that magazine editors prefer the vertical orientation as well since that’s how magazines are read. Ever since then I was trying to get into the habit and it kinda stuck.

Obviously, this image is horizontal, but I think it worked because my main focus was to show all the layers behind the Lincoln Memorial. I tried cropping it in vertical, but it just didn’t work.

So I guess I’m saying that the orientation depends on the image but in general, you will usually see my images vertical. What about you?

My camera settings for this image is F9 at 1/100th sec and ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and my kind friend, Larry let me use his 100-400mm lens for this shot.

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Am I the only who feels like this or can the week between Christmas and New Years eve feel really slow and sort of like a blur? Like you have no idea what day it is anymore or even what to do with yourself? I don’t know it’s felt like that for me in the past couple of years so this year I told myself I wasn’t going to do that anymore and remain productive during the week. That started yesterday, the day after Christmas when I woke up to take sunrise pictures.

I woke up and checked my weather app and it said it was 26 degrees and cloudy. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t exactly get me excited to wake up but I told myself that I was going to do it the day before so I did it.

Oh man, it was so worth it. The sunrise was beautiful! One of the best ones I had seen in a while. But the best part was when the sun was already up and that early morning glow hit the the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial doesn’t glow like that at any other time of day but sunrise. I love how it makes the memorial look orange. I was in the middle of walking down the steps when I turned around and saw this lady enjoying the sunrise as much as I was. I had to stop and take pictures. She had to have known I was taking pictures of her because we basically had a whole photoshoot together. LOL. Either way, it was such a great way to kick off that in between week that you just don’t know what to do with yourself.

The camera settings for this image is F8 at 1/200th of a second and ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm lens.

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And probably the most epic travel experience of 2017 was our cross country road trip from Northern Virginia all the way to Southern California. It was intense, but soooooo much fun. I can’t even express how fortunate I am to have been able to do something like that. Everyday was a brand new adventure with driving times averaging 9-10 hours everyday. That doesn’t include all our pitstops. Some were as long as touring Elvis’ Graceland to as short as visiting Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas for 10 minutes. Either way, it was a trip that I’ll never forget.

My favorite, favorite destination without a doubt was White Sands National Monument in Alamogordo, New Mexico. It has been a place that I’ve been wanting to go for the longest time and when the opportunity presented itself, I knew that was a place where we were spending the night. No pit stops, no messing around, we’re taking as many pictures as we can of this place! So that meant sunset and sunrise. Unfortunately the park wasn’t open at sunrise but we were still able to take some early morning shots which was cool, but not as cool as sunrise. LOL.

Fortunately when we arrived at sunset, a huge rain storm was about to arrive as well. It turned the skies all these crazy colors of orange and purple, I literally thought I was in a dream. Running up and down these sand dunes is no joke either. I was going crazy trying to find different perspectives with the skies. By the end, I was super out of breath. Note to self, forget your shoes and bring a bottle of water next time you shoot sand dunes.

My camera settings for this image is F7.1 at 1/20th of a second ISO 160 with my Sony A7II 28-70mm.

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This was taken early morning on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. That’s a lot of cars, huh? I was pretty surprised by how many people were out so early in the morning, especially on a holiday weekend. They must have known it was going to be a good sunrise too 🙂 Why else would people wake up if they weren’t taking pictures, right?

Not sure what actually drew me to taking this image but I think it turned out pretty awesome. I love how the street lights are so evenly spaced with the Washington Monument. I also think it is really cool to see the car light trails on either side of the image and the glow of the lights on the railings. Is it crazy to say with so much movement going on in this image that it actually gives me some peace when I’m looking at it? I find the peace when I’m looking at the reflection of the monument in the water and the nearly clear sky. I love the orange glow that’s going on the right side of the image and I wonder if the cars passing by even notice it. I think it’s easy for people who live in this area to be sort of dismiss these views but I think they are spectacular. I love photographing this city!

My camera settings for this image is F/9 at 2.5 seconds and ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm lens on my gitzo tripod.

As a side note, it is completely safe to capture this image. But I find it weird that I can feel the cars passing by as I’m standing on Kutz Memorial Bridge and that little bit of rumbling doesn’t effect the focus or sharpness of the image. Does anyone know why that’s the case?