ANGELA B. PAN

This past weekend was absolutely amazing for so many reasons. But most of all it was for the photowalk that happened Saturday at the Tidal Basin. Thank you so much to IGDC for hosting. I had the time of my life! Thank you to my friends who came out but also the new ones I met that evening. The weather was cloudy, the water levels were extremely high (the highest I’ve ever seen), but it seemed like everyone came out with amazing pictures. So before I share some of my own, I wanted to highlight some of my favorites from the walk. If you’d like to see more of what everyone created, check out #igdcsnapdc on instagram.

There were so many great images to choose from but here are a few of my favorites:

The beginning of our walk started at the Jefferson Memorial and we were greeted by prom! I love the way you captured this, @ciarasandborg

@pootie_ting, the framing in this is incredible!

@jane_connors, I’m so glad you captured the heron under the cherry blossom trees. This turned out fantastic!

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bi_5HH_Al5y/?taken-by=jane_connors

So many birds! But I love how they are framing the Jefferson Memorial. Stunning capture, @virginia.cheng

LOL talk about perfect timing, @mica4life. This makes me smile 🙂

The sky turned moody very quickly after sunset. This is so great, @dcrooks_us

And after the photowalk officially ended, the Washington Monument decided to light up the sky. This is AH-MAZING @zackowicz

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjAmY4sAh1S/?taken-by=zackowicz

Thanks again for those who walked! I appreciate you spending your Saturday evening with me. I hope you had a great time but most importantly felt inspired to take more pictures around the National Mall.

Snap DC is officially released on Amazon. If you haven’t already, check it out. It’s available in paperback or kindle and I hope you love it!

Super exciting announcement number 2! I have two images featured in this month’s issue of the Washingtonian. When I first start out in photography, it was always a dream of mine to see my images published in print. Somewhere that people that I didn’t even know would see it. And I always had the Washingtonian as the benchmark to the ultimate local magazine I’d like to be featured it. Although I have been in the magazine several times now, it’s still a complete honor to be featured and I’m always super excited to see it. It never gets old, espcially with the Washingtonian where every single layout and spread is just so beautiful. I’m so grateful to be working with them.

Not only that, the Ball for the Mall had a special advertisement in the April issue so it’s like I had 3 images in the magazine. So mind-blowing.

The image above is one of my all time favorite cherry blossom images I’ve ever taken. It so simple yet it took a lot of time to create. I’m not sure why. It was one of those that I had to sit on for a while to make sure it’s how I wanted it. For those wondering, the background color is just from the tidal basin water. It was probably a calm day when I captured this branch.

The image below is the second image to be featured in the Washingtonian. It’s taking up the top portion of the table of contents page 🙂 When I showed it to Andrew, he chuckled a little bit and said ‘so getting people in your shots can be interesting’. Which is funny that he said that because I usually try to avoid it. However, I’m starting to like it more and more now.

The settings for the individual cherry blossom branch is F7.1 at 1/13th of a second ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 100mm lens. The image with the photographers is F6.3 at 1/80th of a second at ISO 160 with my Canon 5D Mark II and 24-105mm lens.

Taken around the same time as this image. I really love those moody, rainstorm clouds. I remember it had been raining on and off all day that day. This happened to be during one of those off periods. What had actually inspired me to take this image was that cartoon you see on the right hand side. In particular that one with the green background and cute little bunny screaming on it. I recognized those characters from our trip to Japan 2 years ago. I believe the cartoon is called ‘Line Town’ and I thought they were so kawaii. They even had their own store near Harajuku and I believe Andrew and I bought a couple of tshirts there for our nieces and nephews. I was so excited to see Line Town come to America that I had to take a cool reflection shot of it. Duhhh! I didn’t make it into the Times Square store but at least I’ll have more opportunities to go than I did when it was only in Japan.

So I started to set up my shot but then that guy who’s covering it saw me trying to look for my composition. I know I was taking taking my time but it may have been too long. Because when I first saw this scene, there was no one there! But that’s New York for you, there are people EVERYWHERE and at any given moment, one of them could walk right into you composition. Right when I was ready to click, there he was, in front of the green bunny. I could have waited to see if he would move but there were more people behind me on their way. Oh well. I still think it turned out pretty cool.

My settings for this image is F8 at 1/50th of a second at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens. At first I was surprised that the shutter speed was so fast at ISO 400 on such a gloomy day, but then I realized it’s times square. It’s always so bright there so you really don’t need a high ISO to shoot fast. LOL.

Even though this is technically a vacation, Andrew and I have brought everything we need to continue working while we’re on the west coast. We have our laptop computers and I have all my camera equipment so our work life can carry on as usual. I still plan on waking up everyday for sunrise, which is super easy considering I’m still on east coast time. But I’m even more excited for sunsets everyday. They should be phenomenal here on the west.

So when I heard that there was going to be a super moon on new year’s day, I couldn’t have been more excited to be able to capture it in California. The morning started off foggy, but as the day went on it seemed like the clouds were clearing for a beautiful moonrise. Of course, that all changed once I arrived to my location in Coronado. All the clouds came back! I was about to call it quits after 20 minutes of not seeing the moon. I figured the clouds were too thick to see anything but I’m so glad we stayed. I got a couple of images with the skyline and the moon but it wasn’t until we started heading back to the car where I found my inspiration. This is what makes me happy. Seeing a whole group of people doing what they love. Even on a holiday. Even when the conditions aren’t ideal, everyone was still happy to be out photographing the night’s sky.

The best part about capturing the super moon this time around was that it wasn’t freezing cold! I don’t know about you, but I always associate super moons with the cold. So here it is, a super moon shot that was captured without any gloves on 🙂 Afterwards we grabbed a pizza in Gas Lamp. Perfect way to end our New Years Day! (New Year’s diet? What’s that?)

My camera settings for this image is 1.6 seconds at F/4 and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and my 28-70mm lens.

Day three of gratitude and I could not be more grateful for the DC photo community. When I first started out in photography, I thought I was the only one. I honestly thought that I was the only one from this area who enjoyed walking around and taking pictures. Obviously I had seen other photographs of DC before, but I had no idea who these people were or how to connect with them. So I spent the first 3 or 4 years all by myself.

After a while, I think I just got bored…

so I signed up for Instagram. My eyes seriously exploded. This is where all the people were hiding! I had no idea there was such a large community of local photographers and all their images were amazing! I decided to go on my first photo walk with IGDC and soon after that, Walk with Locals. It’s hard to describe the energy around these walks but I have nothing but positive things to say about them. And it’s so great because even if you don’t know anybody on the walk, you know you at least have one thing in common, a passion for photography. It’s so fun to spend a few hours with like-minded people creating. Ugh, I love it.

Now I love going out to take pictures with people, I’m no longer bored, and somehow I see things in a different perspective each time I go out. It has opened my world to new people and new places and I’m so grateful to the DC photo community for helping me do this.

This image is of my friend, Laurie one morning at the National Gallery of Art. She’s just one of the awesome people I’ve met through Instagram and thrilled every time we get to hang out.

The settings for this image is F/8 at 1/800th of a second and ISO 160 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

WoW! Time flies. I took this image almost 3 years ago in Zion National Park. It feels like yesterday that I took it because I remember so many details about being at that exact location. It was at the Canyon Junction shuttle spot and I remember driving up to it and being shocked by how many photographers had already lined up for sunset. We were at least an hour early! You can imagine parking being difficult but luckily we found a spot right off Mount Carmel Highway. I ran over as fast as I could and tried to squeeze myself and tripod in with the crowd. Andrew just stood back and watched. It was ok because pretty much anywhere you stood, you’d have a great view of the Watchman.

The sun was setting and I just remember being so excited about this image. I knew it was going to come out well. At that time, we were only in Zion for a couple of days but now that I think of it I kinda wish we came back to this spot. Not to shoot from top of the bridge again, but I remember seeing people right next to the Virgin River. I wish I knew what that view looked like. I guess that will have to be for my next visit to Utah.

Crazy how one picture can bring back so many memories, right?

Anyways, we took this in October. We were a little late for the color change on the trees but the weather was perfect. Not too hot and not too cold. It can be difficult to plan trips around nature but with that said, I’m looking to do another one this fall! I’m thinking either Maine or somewhere up North. What do you think? Have any good suggestions?