ANGELA B. PAN

We arrived in Estes Park, right outside of Rocky Mountain National Park around dinner time. So naturally, our first stop was to get some pizza. OMG you need to try this place called Antonio’s Real New York Pizza. The pizza was outstanding! And believe me, I’ve had a few slices in my day and I really liked this pizza. And to walk off all those calories we headed to Sprague lake right after dinner in Rocky Mountain National Park.

It’s a super easy walk around the lake thats about a mile long. It was perfect because each side of the lake provided some amazing views. Good thing I had my neutral density filter with me because the sunset wasn’t actually as vibrant as this image makes it look. The clouds were looking very nice but the longer exposure by the ND filter really brought out that extra umph of color that it really needed. It also helped that it was a very calm and peaceful evening with not a lot of wind to create ripples in the water. So if you’re a fan of reflection shots, Rocky Mountain National Park has tons of them. From all the lakes to puddles. Everything is just so reflective and beautiful. You would love it.

The settings for this image was F5/6 at 1.6 seconds at ISO 400. I used my 16-35mm wide angle lens to try to capture as much of the scene as I could. I didn’t have my tripod on this one but I managed to find a good ledge to balance this on. The key is to try to get your camera body and lens to stabilize on something to make sure theres no extra shake. If your lens isn’t leaning against something or supported somehow, it probably won’t work out as well.

I was thinking about Italy the other day. Mostly because I was thinking about pizza but the weird part is that we barely had any pizza while we were there. Maybe once?  It was all pasta baby. And it was so delicious. 98% sure it’s the best food I’ve ever had. How about you? Where was the best place you’ve eaten?

I loved photographing the sunset from Piazzale Michelangelo. It was so peaceful and beautiful standing up there. In case you’re thinking about going- there are a lot of stairs to climb or you can do the lazy route and get a taxi to get you there. That’s what we did. All the pasta was weighing us down. HAHA. Its worth it though. It is the best view of the entire city. It’d try my best to get there as early as you can though. A lot of people were waiting for the sun to set even an hour before it did.

It’s also a great spot for people watching. There were so many different kinds of people there. A couple of people were there painting the sunset, others were photographing it, but everyone was enjoying it. There was even a Chinese couple standing next to me. They had no idea that I could understand them but the funniest part was when he was watching me change my lens. It’s like he was giving a play-by-play to his wife. Mostly because I tried balancing my lens on the edge of a balcony. I could feel that he was nervous for me. He kept on saying “too dangerous, too dangerous” and when I was done he gave huge sigh of relief. LOL. I don’t even think Andrew was that nervous for me. It’s funny how all these memories are spurred out of thinking about pizza…

Isn’t it weird how when you look at a picture and you can automatically remember when, where, how you were shooting it? I so remember this day like it was yesterday but it wasn’t. It was in June 2016. It had been a super hot and humid day. I remember specifically going out to the city because it was supposed to storm later that night and was I hoping that the sunset clouds would look cool. In real life they were beautiful, but it wasn’t until I looked at my LCD screen did I notice the kind of zig zag shape they were creating. It was even more noticeable in the reflection in the reflecting pool water. The clouds were moving kind of fast so I slapped on my Ice neutral density filter to slow down the shutter speed and it created this cool motion effect in the image. Also, there weren’t a lot of people out walking around so it made everything so clean and easy. The quote “If you can’t handle the heat, then get out of the kitchen” comes to mind because I also remember just sitting there with my tripod sweating, wishing I could just into the reflecting pool. All those memories from one 30 second exposure. Pretty cool.

In other news, Happy Valentines day!!! Hope you are spending this beautiful Tuesday with someone you love. Andrew and I are keepin’ it low key this year. After work, we’ll probably grab a pizza and watch some netflix. A heart shape pizza, obviously 🙂 I found the perfect card for him from Target over the weekend. It’s of this couple holding hands. On the woman’s shirt it says “Artsy” and on the man’s shirt it says “Fartsy”. LOL. Its like the card company knew our relationship. Just Kidding. Not really. HAHA.