ANGELA B. PAN

Today is the day! Today is the day that the National Mall NPS will announce their predicted peak bloom date for the cherry blossoms. I can’t wait. I’ve been on twitter everyday this week checking out what they say and what Capital Weather Gang has to say about the weather we’ve been having and how they’d effect the Cherry trees. As a side note, I’m pretty sure I just gained 10 cool points from that last statement. LOL. As of now, I’m just excited for the big announcement!

PS. Today is also the day that my March monthly newsletter goes out. If you haven’t already, make sure to sign up. I have a couple of really exciting announcements of my own that I’ll be announcing on the newsletter first!

Ok, now back to the image on this blog post. This was taken last year, early morning on a particularly beautiful day. It was the day after it rained and it created these amazing puddles all along the Tidal Basin sidewalks. It also rained so hard that there were flower petals all over the place and it felt like you were walking in a wet wonderland of pink. I had my headphones in, rain boots on, and I was having a blast walking around capturing the beautiful trees. It was just by accident that I captured the airplane flying by but I think it makes it a little more interesting to see. I also remember having to wait a little while for this area to clear because there was a big group of people standing underneath the trees taking pictures. It was well worth it because I love the way it turned out. However if you look closely enough, you will still see one person there still taking pictures. At least she’s a little camouflaged though. HAHA.

The settings for this image is F18 at 1/50th of a second at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Here’s a crazy example of how foggy the Tidal Basin can actually get on any given winter morning. I mean come on! You can barely see anything in this image which I think makes it pretty cool. Its like you have to look really deep and kind of know what you’re looking at in order to make any sense of it. If I didn’t tell you, would you have even known? The most interesting part to me is that you can still see a slight hint of the Washington Monument’s reflection but I love the fact that you can see the rain drops in the water. Look at the bottom right hand corner. I love that trail of drops leading to the Monument. It must be something special if you can capture fog and rain all in the same image.

Here’s what it would usually look like if it weren’t foggy.

My camera settings for this image is F4.5 at ISO 320 at 1/640th of a second with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle handheld. As far as editing, I didn’t do much. I upped the contrast a bit just so you can see the monuments a little bit better and that’s pretty much it! Full on color image of what it looked like that one special Sunday morning.

PS Sorry not sorry there have been so many fog pictures lately. I love shooting the fog and the mood it brings. But I feel like 2018 has been especially foggy for me for some reason. I’ve never had so many wonderful opportunities to shoot in the weather and I’m taking full advantage! I just hope we get more days like this during cherry blossom season like we did that one time last year. That was seriously one of the best days ever. This is probably a close second <3

I preschedule all my blog posts. That’s the only way I can make sure one gets up on the blog everyday. So as I was wrapping up yesterday’s blog post on Sunday, I was messaging my friend, Birch about the snow this coming week. We tentatively made plans to meet up and shoot but with Washington DC weather who really knows if it’s actually going to happen. And as a casual side note she told me about the awesome fog layer that was forming at that time on the Potomac River. And you know me, as soon as I hear the word ‘fog’ my ears perk up. I literally just wrapped up that blog post as fast as I could and made my way to the city.

OMG it was like I was in a magical dream land. The fog was amazing! Something I experience probably once a year in the city and I loved it. Birch and I met by the Arlington Memorial bridge and walked a huge loop around the memorials. This image was taken right at the base of the bridge but what’s crazy is that there were times where you couldn’t even see this much. If this isn’t the way to spend a spontaneous Sunday afternoon then I don’t know what is. Plus this image is in full color. Nuts-o, right?

My camera settings for this image is F5.0 at 1/800th of a second and ISO 320 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

So as of now, the snow doesn’t look like it’s going to happen this week. I told you Washington DC weather can be kind of crazy so definietly be expecting a lot of fog images. Birch and I were walked a lot and probably stopped at least 20 times to say “woah” 🙂 I love foggy days in DC.

I have this song playing in the background as I’m writing this blog post. Although I don’t share the same thoughts about rain with Missy Elliot, I do appreciate a catchy beat when I hear it. LOL. Oh, how I make myself laugh.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know how important music is to me. I love it. It just puts me in such a good mood. Whether I’m driving, taking pictures, editing pictures, whatever it is, there’s a song for any mood you are in. And watching music videos is something that I remember doing ever since the Total Request Days with Carson Daily. I’d come home from school, heat up a hot pocket, and spend the next hour mesmerized by song and dance. I think watching the visual representation of a song makes the song so much more enjoyable to me. I guess that means I am just a very visual person.

But about this image… This was taken right before a big storm was about to approach the Washington Monument. Luckily, it was around the same time as sunset and it made the sky turn this amazingly warm color in the sky. The coolest part is seeing the cloud formation right on top of that sun. I also enjoy looking at each individual flag and seeing how different they are blowing in the wind. Yea, that evening was something very special.

So unlike Missy Elliot, I love the rain. I love the pre-rain, post-rain, and rainbows. Actual rain, I’m sort of iffy about. As long as my camera gear doesn’t get damaged, then I’m all good 🙂

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/13th of a second ISO 100 on my Canon 5d Mark II with my 17-40mm wide angle lens.

So all my dreams came true on this trip. Everything that I wanted to do, we did. I guess that’s why they call it a birthday trip, right? HAHA.

For this trip, we stayed in Brooklyn which turned out to be a lot bigger than I thought it would be. It was great because every morning we would take Frankie out to a park or something and wear him out. Then we’d spend the rest of the afternoon/evening exploring on our own. I’d definietly stay in Brooklyn again. It was so much quieter than Manhattan but still really easy to get into the city.

On the actual day of my birthday it rained. But the good kind of rain. It didn’t start until the middle of the afternoon so we were still able to explore in the morning with Frankie. Then when it was raining the hardest, we were already inside the MoMA. The perfect escape. Out of coincidence, Andrew made dinner reservations near Times Square. It was perfect because I really wanted to check out this rootop bar on top of the Hyatt Centric afterwards. It’s the tallest rooftop in Times Square and you get these amazing views of lower Manhattan while sippin’ on some adult beverages. It was still a little wet when we got up there but I didn’t even care. The rain clouds were still hovering over the city and I was having a blast. I think my favorite part of this image (besides the clouds) have to be the reflection in the tall H&M building. So crazy to see how big this city is and this is only a little piece of it.

The settings for this image was F/8 at 1/30th of a second ISO 1000. It was so dark that I had to bump up my ISO up even though I was also leaning against the railing.

Back home from our trip to New York City. We had a blast but I think Frankie had the best time out of all of us. It was his first time in the city and he loved every smell of it! As for me, I’m pretty sure I’ve gained about 10lbs while we were there. That’s what happens when you go anywhere with Andrew. He’s a master at Yelp and does his research before we go anywhere. LOL. I’ll share photos soon! Time to recuperate and fit in a little, I mean a lot of cardio. HAHA.

In the mean time I took this image a couple of weeks ago at the same time I took this image. If you scooted over to the right a little more than the rainbow looked like it was coming out of the United States Capitol. I thought it looked really cool to have it as the backdrop to such an amazing piece of architecture. So I busted out with my 70-200mm to make sure I could get the details that I wanted. I usually don’t carry that lens with me, but ever since I decided to carry my 100mm macro lens around with me on rainy days, I figured it would be good practice to carry the 70-200mm all the other times. It definietly paid off this time.

The settings for this image is F/6.3 1/250th of a second at ISO 320. I did not shoot with a tripod which made it a little more difficult but still very happy with the way it turned out 🙂 The lens is just so long that it would have been easier to keep it steady on the tripod so I could mess with the settings and focusing.

Have a great and safe weekend everyone! What do you have planned for the long weekend?