ANGELA B. PAN

About a week or two after Snap DC came out, I cut my hair short. It hasn’t been this short since high school. Andrew has never even seen my hair short before. I’ve always had it long, way past my shoulders, almost to the middle of my back. But I felt like I needed a drastic change. I don’t know, I felt like I was a point in my life where I needed to shake things up a bit and cutting my hair was the answer.

What I didn’t expect is how much I would look like my mom in the process. OMG it’s kinda scary. This picture looks EXACTLY like her except her hair is even shorter than mine. Either way, I’m still undecided about it. I definietly will keep it for the summer but after that, I may just grow it out long again. What do you think?

This image was taken on our last day in Aruba. My friends Sue, Neena and I were walking around Oranjestad trying to get last minute gifts for people back home when we came across this amazing yellow wall. I think it’s the side of someone’s house. Whatever the case is, I love how vibrant the color is. The palm tree made for a nice frame as well. Now that I think of it, my mom’s favorite color is yellow. LOLOL.

So shoutout to Sue for creating a picture that’s meant for my mom.

Don’t forget, a week from today I’ll be cohosting a photo workshop with my friends, Geoff Livingston Photography and Focus on the Story International Photo Festival on night photography. We’ll be walking the National Mall and talking about long exposure, street photography at night and so much more! Its going to be a really fun event with a lot more photo instruction than the regular photowalks we’ve been doing this summer. Plus there will be 3 instructors instead of one. So if you’re interested, check out all the info here.

My camera settings for this image is F7.1 at 1/1000th of a second at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

If I could go back anywhere in the US from our epic cross country road trip last year, it would have to be White Sands National Monument. Hands down, no questions asked. I need to spend more time in this place. We only had one night here. So we were able to shoot sunset and early morning. Park authorites were pretty strict about making sure that everyone left right as the sun was setting so I didn’t get to spend as much time as I would have liked here. Plus they didn’t open at sunrise and I had to wait later in the day to get back in the next day. I didn’t go on any of the hikes or trails. We basically just parked our car, walked up to the highest sand dune and took a few pictures and sledded down the sand dunes. That was so much fun all on its on.

What first attracted me to visiting this place were all the beautiful lines that the wind created in the sand dunes. I thought they were so interesting and would be great for leading lines. But when I arrived, I quickly found out that you probably have to walk more than just the sand dune that was in front of your parking spot because those lines are probably covered by other people’s foot prints. LOL. To be honest, I photoshopped some of the footprints that are in this image because there are just sooo many of them. But the best part about this park is that shoes are pretty pointless. Unless you are wearing sneakers or something and plan on doing some serious hiking, it’s totally normal to be walking around barefoot. I love it!

My camera settings for this image is 1/40th of a second at F7.1 and ISO 160 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.

I took this image almost a year ago during Cherry Blossom season on that one crazy foggy morning we had. If you look closely enough, you can make out the cherry blossom trees in the background. But my focus for this image were on the birds that were flying in the foreground.

I know there has to be quite a few fish swimming around in the Tidal Basin. It’s not uncommon to see a couple of people out there fishing in the mornings, once in a while you’ll hear a random splash in the water and there’s always birds circling. 3 indications that in fact, there are fish in the tidal basin. So there are usually always a fair amount of birds that are on the water fishing. (What’s even cooler is when you can capture them all flying away together.) I thought it would be interesting to see if I could get a cool image of the birds and the fog, so for a good 10 minutes my focus went from photographing the flowers to the birds.

Then this one guy started flapping his wings like he was about to take off. Bird photography isn’t always my thing so I just took a few snap shots and kept it moving. It wasn’t until I got home and could view this image large on the computer screen that I noticed all the cool ripples it was creating. I also really like the reflection within those ripples. Overall I am just really happy with the way this turned out. I think it’s a pretty cool portrait of the scary flying creature about to take off.

And if you don’t know, I’m not a huge fan of birds. 

My settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/125the of a second at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.

One of my best friends from college, Neena is amazing. She is always so fun to hangout with and definietly knows how to have a good time. One of the things that I appreciate the most about her is that when she hears a new song that she thinks I’ll like, she’ll texts me a link. But this girl somehow hears all the hot new jams before anyone I know. I love it. And she knows me and the kind of music I like so well. Usually when she texts me a song I get so excited and play it on repeat for a week straight.

So a couple of months ago, she texted me this song by Camila Cabello called ‘OMG’. From the first second I heard it, I loved it. I downloaded it immediately and it has been on my playlist ever since. Such a fun song to dance to! Plus I think that Camila looks so beautiful on the album cover. It’s such a simple image but I love everything about it. I remember looking at it and thinking it’d be cool to have an image like that.

Fast forward to this past weekend when Andrew and I were walking around Balboa Park in San Diego. It was my very first time visiting the park and was blown away by how big and beautiful it was. It was something I was not expecting at all. While walking to the botanical garden, I noticed the shadows these palm trees were casting onto the side of a building. I knew that this was my chance for my Camila Cabello album cover. LOL! Trying to recreate it from memory, this is what Andrew and I came up with. He shot the image but I told him exactly how to do it and frame it. I’m just glad it’s all in focus 🙂 LOL.

My camera settings for this image is F11 at 1/125th of a second and ISO 125 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Scott Jarvie. The man behind the lens of so many great images. He’s currently on a tour across America photographing #FaithinAmerica. Luckily, I got to meet him while he was in DC. Such a great guy and so easy to talk to.

We met up at Iwo Jima and walked over to Arlington National Cemetery for sunset. Right after I snapped this image, he screamed from the top of the hill “oh, were you taking a picture of me?” HAHA great guy!

Check out his vlog for some fun behind the scenes stuff.

I GOTZ SOME CRAZY PUPPY TEETH