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Happy Happy November! Hope you all have a pile full of chocolates at home and ready to celebrate the holidays! I know I am. Thanksgiving can’t come soon enough. Mashed potatoes in my mouth now! LOL.

But I’m most excited because this is when the Capital Weather Gang has said the fall colors will be peaking! If you saw my blog post last week, you know I’ve been seriously excited for this day. Yes, I am the type of person that when it’s the first day of summer, I expect it to be at least 80 degrees outside or I’m real upset. So now that Capital Weather Gang says “early November” I expect that means November 1st. So my friend Larry and I woke up early this morning to check things out at Shenandoah National Park. I’ll let you know exactly what it’s like tomorrow.

And if you did read my blog post last week, I’ve updated it with new suggestions. Let me know if you have any more ideas!

One last thing. If you’re free this weekend, come hang out with me, IGDC and my friend Austin Graff as we host a fun photo walk around Anacostia. Click here to sign up. It’s free! We just need a headcount. During this walk, Austin will lead us through his very own neighborhood as he gives us the rundown of everything new, exciting and colorful in this historic neighborhood. I’ll be there to help give tips on how to make the most out of the photowalk and bring home some images you would be proud of. Hope to see you there šŸ™‚ Maybe there will be some fall colors we can photograph at the Frederick Douglass HouseĀ 🤷🏻‍♀️

My camera settings for this image is F9 1/60th sec at ISO 125 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.

 

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This is probably one of my favorite views ever of the National Mall. It’s right when you’ve reached the top of the Lincoln Memorial steps and turn around to see behind you. There’s just something about the columns framing the Washington Monument that makes me so happy. It was odd though, for a Sunday morning, a weekend morning, there was hardly anyone out. Usually you’ll see at least runners and small groups of people here or there. But I’m glad this lady was there. Her red shirt pops perfectly as she’s taking her own photograph.

This is the second image in the five images that I’ll be posting this week, encouraging photographers to walk around when they’re out taking pictures. You’ll never know what images you’re missing by staying in one place the whole time. The first image was right on the Lincoln steps leading up to this image. I really believe that if you keep walking around and try new compositions you’ll find new ones that you may have never seen before and probably end up really loving.

This five day series is coming because Andrew and I are in Norway! We landed in Bergen yesterday and spent the afternoon exploring the city. Today we’re headed to FlĆ„m which marks the beginning of our road trip. Hopefully we’ll get to ride the railway system. Thank you to everyone who has suggested it. I am so looking forward to seeing more of this country. Planning the trip was so fun, I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like to experience it. I’ll be adding pictures and videos to my instagram stories so definietly follow along if you’re not already.

My camera settings for this image is F7.1 at 1/80th of a second at ISO 2000 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens handheld.

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Like my last couple of trips, I wanted to work on my street photography. I just have so much fun with it and you never really know what you’re going to get.
Similar to theĀ trips to Japan and this one to Aruba.

However going through my images, I found that I took a lot more architectural images than anything else. I thought it was interesting, but not surprising. There are so many hills in San Francisco and it made it slightly difficult to walk, but I really enjoyed the different perspectives you would get throughout the city. Whether you’re on top of a hill or on the bottom, nothing really looked the same one block to the next.

So here are a couple of images I took on the streets of San Francisco.

This was taken somewhere in the financial district and purposely left the words “Turkey. For the win” in. That’s for Andrew because he loves turkey. HAHA

Another POV from a crazy hill somewhere in the Mission District I think and I’m pretty sure I was on top of a hill looking down.

This person was taken their dog on a walk. I just love the different textures and framing this one image has. I was happy with it as soon as I snapped the pic.

There were so many people walking around the Financial District with these bags. I stalked them to find out that it was the American Psychological Association and not the American Photographers Association šŸ™ Anyways that’s me in the shadow with my huge backpack on.

Thanks for checking out my images and I hoped you liked them. The very top image is very close to that California Street image I talked about last week. I just love that early morning light that’s on the buildings. Also, today’s my birthday! šŸ™‚

 

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If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll know that Navin Sarma was one of my first ever photo friends…. ever.

I’m not sure how we found each other but it had to have been before instagram was even a thing. I even remember being kinda hesitant meeting up with him for the first time because I was just meeting some guy I met from the internet really early in the morning. And as usual, he was late.

But in the end, he has become one of my favorite people to go out to shoot with. It’s always been super casual and talking about the most random stuff. He was with me when I unintentionally captured my very first lightning shot! And the following year we sat on the hill by the Air Force Memorial and intentionally captured even more lightning shots like this one.

Last year he left the Washington DC area to move to California. We’ve stayed in touch so when I booked the trip to San Francisco, he was one of the first people to know about it. I definietly wanted to try to meet up and shoot again. So luckily it worked out that the first night we were in the Bay Area, Navin was able to pick Andrew and I up and take us to Marin Headlands. We noticed the fog approaching and thought a higher point of view would be really cool imageĀ  of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was so great to see him again.

You can notice the fog a little bit above the Golden Gate Bridge but what I like most about this image is the light that hitting the top of the bridge. I love how it just pops. Betcha didn’t notice the sailboat in the water. I actually didn’t notice it at first either. HAHA

My camera settings for this image is F8 at 1/250th of a second at ISO 640 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens handheld.