reflecting pool

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Hi,

Long time no speak. Sorry about that and I hope it’s never this long again. My world got rocked at the end of August and just now finding the time to sit down and be thoughtful of my life in the past few months.

To sum things up, I had my baby almost 2 months premature. What started out as a regular visit to my doctors, ended up being a 10-day stay in the hospital and delivering at 33 weeks and 1 day. Little baby Tony spent 3 weeks in the NICU but we’re all doing great now. Bringing him home was the happiest but also one of the scariest days of my life. How am I responsible for this little baby?

In general, motherhood has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. Everything in my life changed immediately and my priorities shifted massively. For the first two months, every week seemed like it brought a new challenge or something I was not aware of. Whether it’s questioning if he’s getting enough to eat, if he’s sleeping enough, or even if he’s sleeping too much? I was not prepared for how much I’d love this little boy but how much I’d worry about him all at the same time. My life turned into doomsday scrolling on google at 3 am all while looking at pictures of him on my phone missing him and crying about how much I loved him. The emotions after labor are nuts!

After a while, I started to feel like I was losing myself. I hadn’t picked up the camera in weeks and I missed being able to wander without having to worry about anything else.

Then one day I got a message that my friend, Andy was leaving DC. A group of people was getting together for one last sunrise with him. As soon as I read it, I knew I had to go. It was a clear sky but it still brought all kinds of drama with the sky column and fog. I’m grateful for this outing because it made me realize that it is still possible to go out to shoot, even with a baby. So from that point on, I told myself that I would try my best to go out at least once a week to shoot.

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It’s been a while since I’ve gone out for sunrise. No particular reason except summer makes it hard to wake up so early. So for a little extra motivation, I was looking back at some sunrises in DC this past year.

I always thought that winter has the best sunrises. There’s something about that cold air that really brings out the colors in the sky. And on this particular January morning, it did not disappoint! I met up with a small group of photographers and it was great to see some people who I hadn’t seen in more than a year.

At first, it just a cold morning. I didn’t think much would happen…

So I spent my time walking around the Lincoln Memorial, trying to find something interesting to photograph if the sky wasn’t going to do anything. To be honest, I didn’t even pull my camera out of my camera bag until I was already 3/4ths around the memorial. Then I started to notice more and more people starting to gather in the front.

The sky went from a cold grey to a warm orangey-pink. I was not expecting it at all but was so happy. Since I was there with photography friends, I knew I wanted to try to find a different angle. I figured most of them would be on the perimeter of the memorial, so I went inside. It was also a good idea because it was so cold and windy, the inside of the memorial provided some great shelter.

What first started off as an attempt to get a little warmer, ended up being a really good move. I love how the light is pouring into the memorial and seeing the silhouettes of all the early morning risers. Overall, looking back at these pictures makes me so happy and reminiscent. I hope to photograph a similar sunrise in the near future.

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It finally happened! We finally got some decent snow in the Washington DC area. I originally thought we were going to get pounded by 8-12″ of snow and I was jumping up and down from excitement. But in the end we may have gotten about 3″ if that. I’m just happy it was enough to cover the grass. I hope there will be more opportunities later on in the month for snow, but until then, I’m happy with what we got.

I don’t think he wanted his picture taken so as soon as he saw me lift my camera to my eye, he made a sharp turn for inside the Lincoln Memorial

The snow started in the middle of the night so I set my alarm clock to wake up for sunrise. I knew there wasn’t actually going to be a sunrise, but I just wanted to get out as early as I could because I love the look of fresh, untouched snow. I knew if I waited later in the day, there would be more people out and I just wanted to have a quiet morning to myself and my camera.

I started at the Lincoln Memorial, walked along the side of the reflecting pool, past the WWII memorial, and then back down the other side of the reflection pool with one last stop at the Korean War Memorial.

 

 

The path leading to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

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It’s been a while since I’ve had an update blog post. Mostly because I didn’t have much to update on. However, I was going through my catalog the other day and realized I have some images that I wanted to share!

Since coming back from New Hampshire, I tried my best to capture the fall colors around the Washington DC area. Even though Washington DC is a city, there are still some great places to go to see fall colors! All the different shades of red, yellow, and orange make me so happy. So this is a compilation of the images I’ve created from mid-October to the very end of November.

Shenandoah Sunrise

It was my friend, Larry and I’s 4th year anniversary of capturing the sunrise in Shenandoah National Park in the autumn time. I love this tradition. Mostly because it’s fun to reminisce on our friendship. Each year we go has been extremely different. But there has always been one thing in common, awesome fall colors!

This time around, we were lucky to get some fog. It was crazy because the entire time we were driving to and from Shenandoah, there was a lot of fog. So when we got to the top of the mountain, it was really cool to see it from above. They kind of look like spider webs!

Mt Vernon Trail Sunrise

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On June 9th in Houston, Texas, Rev Al Sharpton delivered a eulogy at George Floyd’s funeral.  At that time he also announced that he would plan a demonstration in Washington to rally for criminal justice revisions. Ever since that day, I kept my eyes and ears open for the information as it developed. I knew this was going to be a huge event that I wanted to attend.

The Black Lives Matter movement in Washington has been an eye-opening experience for me. In all my years living in the area, I’ve never attended any protests or rallies like this. So when I went to my first one, I knew immediately that I wanted to keep going back with my camera. I couldn’t help but be in awe of all the passion and emotions I felt while attending these protests.

But the day before Rev Sharpton’s Commitment March on Washington, President Trump accepted his Republican nomination for  US President and had a fireworks display at the Washington Monument. Since I missed photographing on the 4th of July this past year, I figured I would go to the Reflecting Pool and practice some of my night photography. Although there were only 3 other photographers at the Reflecting Pool, there was also a news crew right next to me who was listening to President Trump’s speech. I listened to every word and as soon as he finished, the fireworks went off.

I’m glad I went because they were very different from the previous 4th of July firework displays. You could tell that they were shot off with the White House as the main spectators so all of my images were a little skewed to the right. I should have thought of that before picking my firework location. Oh well. I also noticed how the Washington Monument was the centerpiece of the show. I had never seen rings of fireworks go around it before. It was pretty cool and I had fun photographing the show from a vantage point that was only seen by a few others.

But watching the fireworks from the Reflecting Pool also allowed me to see the set up of the rally the night before. It was interesting to see how the sides of the Reflecting Pool were gated off, the chairs for people with special needs were socially distanced, and there were so many lights set up all over the memorial grounds.

A little sneak peek of the rally set up from the night before

On August 28, 2020, the 57th anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Rev Sharpton and the National Action Network held its rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with a march ending at the Martin Luther King Jr memorial.

I’m grateful to know this part of the city like the back of my hand so I was able to park my car as close as I could to the White House and walked over to the National Mall with ease. It was a hot, humid summer day and a little harder to breathe with a facemask on. With a water bottle in my backpack and my camera in hand, I was ready to go.

My game plan was to start close to the WWII memorial and walk down the Reflecting Pool to try to get as close to the Lincoln Memorial as I could. Other than that, I had no real intentions of what kind of images I wanted to photograph. I was just going to go with the flow and stay mindful of everything that was happening around me. That means I zipped my phone into my backpack and watched the people around me.

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Hi,

Sorry, long time no blog. I realize that my last two blog posts were about the Black Lives Matters protests in Washington DC. It is such a large subject to document and I really wanted to frame the posts in a way that wasn’t political but my experience at each of the protests I had gone to. But after a while, I was not sure how to transition away from that. I had gone to more protests and wanted to share the images, but I did not know how to present the images in a different way. One thing led to another and I sort of felt like I was in a creative rut. So I just didn’t write any blog posts and barely went out to create more pictures to share.

BUT I’M BACK BABY! After spending some time for myself and reflecting on the type of work I want to create, I found myself getting more excited about capturing images and sharing them.

But to automatically switch gears from the protests posts to my favorite road trips from Washington DC, seemed a bit of a weird transition. Don’t get me wrong, I have my favorite road trips blog post about 70% done already and that will probably be the next post after this one, but I figured this blog post can give a little update of what has happened since last time I blogged…

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