ANGELA B. PAN

An image that didn’t make the 2018 Dynamic DC Wall Calendar cut.

I love this image. I think it sets such a nice tone for the cherry blossoms, but I wasn’t sure if you all would want to be staring at a lady’s back for 31 days. So it didn’t make the cut. LOL

I think my favorite part of the image is the little reflection you see on the bottom right hand corner. It’s definietly obvious that it’s there, but the reflection is so subtle that I don’t know if you really think about it. I like how it gives the vibe that she’s being surrounded by cherry blossoms.

To be honest, I don’t even know how this lady is. She was just there with another photographer and they were having a cherry blossom photoshoot. Totally normal if you’re ever at the Tidal Basin during cherry blossom season. I usually try to stay out of the way and I was in the middle of walking around them when I saw the scene from behind. Now, I don’t know how this lady’s photographer’s image turned out, but I’m really happy with mine. But even if she walked right past me, I would not even be able to recognize her. I completely forgot what she looked like from the front. She will now forever be called ‘Cherry Blossom lady’ to me. HAHA. But if I did find out who she was, I’d totally gift her with this print.

The settings for this image is 1/100th of a second at F/8 and ISO 160 with my 100mm macro lens. See, you can go beyond just macro images with that lens however I’m not sure why I did that. I was probably busy shooting the flowers and just happened to have that lens on my camera.

Now that I think about it, this whole image sounds like one happy accident 🙂

First of all, I just wanted to say thank you sooooooo much to everyone who commented, left messages or called me yesterday. You all really know how to make me feel special. I had the best day with Andrew yesterday in New York. If you follow me on instagram, you may have seen a little bit of it on my stories. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I am just so happy right now.

And to completely flip the script, remember when this was like the worst day ever?! This past winter was so nice and mild. I really thought we were going to get away with no snow at all. But March hit, all the flowers started budding/blooming and BAMN winter snow storm Stella. I’m still shaking my head as I’m writing this.

Man, I was so worried that this snow storm was going to effect the cherry blossoms. I mean look at them in this picture! Don’t they look so sad and cold. I’d never seen anything like it at the Tidal Basin. But as my friend, Bob Marley would say “Don’t worry about a thing, cuz every little thing is going to be all right”. And it did! It ended up being the best cherry blossom season I had experienced! The weather was absolutely perfect after the storm went away and a lot more of the cherry blossoms survived than expected. And don’t get me started on that one day we had fog! Holy Crap! The best part was that since a lot of people thought the cherry blossoms weren’t going to make it, the tidal basin was definietly not as crowded. It was just so freeing! Ahh I’m so happy just thinking about it.

And I’m happy that it was my birthday.

I’m just happy all around. Thank you again! <3

Happy Monday! Hope you had a great weekend. So glad it finally warmed up in the DC area so the cherry blossoms could really bloom. So guess I did over the weekend? I’ve been out shooting the blossoms 🙂 But this one was actually taken on Friday morning just after sunrise and just before it started to rain. The morning started off really cold. So cold that when I checked the weather app on my phone and it said “feels like 22 degrees”. *shaking my head* I can still feel the chill in my bones. My first reaction was to just stay in my warm, cozy bed, but I knew I’d regret it. I met up with my friend, Larry and had a great morning just walking around, talking and taking pictures of the flowers. They were looking a lot better than previous days so I’m glad I got my butt outta bed.

My camera settings for this image was F13 1/80th of a second ISO 250 with my 28-70mm. I was trying to get as much as I could in focus but the cherry blossoms were so close to me and the Jefferson Memorial was so far that it was difficult to get both. So I chose the cherry blossoms to be really sharp. When shooting the cherry blossoms, I try to use them to frame the memorials or as leading lines to them.

I hope you’re not getting bored of these. My blog posts have been pretty cherry blossom heavy lately. But tis the season 🙂 They’ll get back to a normal travel/DC images soon. Maybe in like a week-ish or so. But not right now, I’ve got cherry blossoms fever. Even my dad has been asking me to text him cherry blossom pics. Obviously, he doesn’t read my blog or follow me on my social media. *shaking my head again*