street lights

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Virginia was issued the initial stay at home order on March 30th, 2020 due to the Coronavirus. It didn’t come as a surprise but it was still something that I had to mentally prepare for. Honestly, one of my first thoughts about it all was, “How am I going to go and take pictures?” Not only is photography fun for me, but it is my way of exploring places, finding stories, and expressing myself. In the past, the longest I had ever gone without taking pictures was a week. I already knew the stay at home order was going to be tough.

The world was a rapidly changing place and I was craving to capture it. Here’s are the images I created in the first two months:

Cherry Blossoms

Covid-19 really started being a concern in the Washington DC area just before the cherry blossom season. We had an unusually mild, dry winter that allowed the cherry blossoms to bloom a bit earlier in the year than they usually do. So I was excited to be able to visit the Tidal Basin with a bit less of a crowd since travel was in the process of slowing down and social distancing was starting to become a new term. I tried to go as much as I could until it started to get too crowded. When it got to be too much, I decided to just stay home and be happy with the images I was able to create. My logic was to take as many pictures as I could until it got to be unsafe and then spend quarantine editing them.

Weekdays at sunrise are really the best times to visit the Tidal Basin during cherry blossom season, Coronavirus or not.

The last day I was at the Tidal Basin when it started to get a little too crowded

The cherry blossom trees are smaller at the Washington Monument, but still just as beautiful. I tried capturing a few images from there since it’s a larger area to roam.

Cherry blossom trees are seen from the George Mason Memorial

Mt Vernon Trail/Georgetown

That weekend, Andrew and I decided that we should try to get out “one last time” before we had to stay home. We decided that the Mount Vernon trail would be a good place to go and stretch our legs. Andrew walked Frankie on the trail which allowed me to take my camera and capture a few images as well.

Considering the stay at home order was placed the very next day, I’m so glad we did this. It was a foggy morning and the trail was not as crowded as it usually is. We parked our car at Gravelly Point and headed towards the Navy Merchant Marine Memorial.

At the cherry blossom peak bloom, but the pink flowers came out a little hazy in the fog.

(L) A quick stop in Georgetown along the Key Bridge. (R) Views of the Washington Memorials are seen all along the Mount Vernon Trail.

Vienna Metro

So this is where my real pandemic images begin. It had been about 1.5-2 weeks since our walk on the Mount Vernon trail and I was going crazy. I had never purposely taken such a long break from taking pictures, and it was not making me feel good. I was really craving creativity, seeing what this new world looked like, and just to walk around with my camera. So I started locally. I mean really local since I live within a few blocks from the metro. I figured with public transportation being at an all-time low, it was probably the safest and most isolated I would ever see it.

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When I went to bed the night before, I wasn’t expecting much out of the sunrise. The weather apps said it was going to be cloudy, and so I just thought it was going to be a grey day. Luckily, I was meeting up with friends who came up with the great idea of capturing the sunrise from Freedom Plaza at sunrise. Having that accountability of meeting with people was definitely the motivation to get out of bed.

As I was driving into the city I saw very faint hints of pink and it got me excited. I immediately parked the car, grabbed my tripod and got to this beautiful spot along Pennsylvania Avenue as fast as I could. There wasn’t a lot of traffic going on so I thought for this image I would try to crop the street a bit and focus mainly on the sky. I really like how the street lights are acting as lines towards the US Capitol.

My camera settings for this image are F8 at 1/30th sec and ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

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Break over. LOL. 

Since I was uncertain of my schedule in Taiwan, I left for the trip knowing I was going to spend most of my photo-taking time working on my street photography. In the past year or so, I’ve really fallen in love with street photography, especially while traveling. It so exciting trying to capture the shot. It’s hard to plan for since you don’t know what is going to be going on and when you get something cool, it makes it so much more thrilling.

So far, the biggest tip I can offer for street photography is always being prepared and don’t put your camera away. You don’t know where the shot is going to be and you want to be ready when it happens. I’ve noticed that I’ve also gotten into the habit of always turning off my camera after I take a shot. I really made an effort to leave my camera on because even in a second, the image you see on the street can be gone.

One thing you gotta know about Taiwan is that the cars rule the streets. Pedestrians need to look out for cars as opposed to the other way around in the States. So you always cross at crosswalks when it’s your turn. The cars get a pretty long time to drive along the road, in turn, pedestrians get a while to cross the street too. AND you get a countdown. The longest countdown I saw started at 90 seconds. So it gives you plenty of time to cross the street or take pictures of people crossing the street. LOL.

This image was taken while I was wandering the streets of Taipei. It was one of those 90-second countdowns but as you can see, I captured it at 20 seconds left for the cars to drive before the pedestrians can cross. What I love about this image is all the information you see. You see the people lined up, with the store signs in the background and on the very top you can see the count down to begin to cross. So much going on can be a little chaotic, but everytime I look at this image I see something different.

My camera settings for this image are F4 at 1/800th sec and ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

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I’m not sure when I started to become a sunset/night photographer but it just sort of started happening naturally. The summer days have been rough to wake up for sunrise but to be honest, the sunsets have been looking way better than sunrise anyways. Sunset around Washington DC has it’s own interesting challenges like parking and dealing with the crowds of people but the more I get out there, the more I’m appreciating the sunset glow more and more.

But this image came by accident. I was out with Zack (again, on a different night) to photograph the Lincoln Memorial at sunset. The sunset wasn’t really what we expected so we waited a bit longer for blue hour to try to capture the monuments at night. Then when I was about to say bye to Zack and walk back to my car, I saw a lightning bolt out of the corner of my eye.

OMG change of plans. I did not end up going back to my car, quickly texted Andrew that I was going to be home later than I expected and both Zack and I started looking at weather apps to see where the storm was headed. We made a game plan to try to capture it by the Tidal Basin and then as the storm moved forward we were going to try to capture it with the Washington Monument. It ended up being a super exciting night of storm chasing but the only problem was that I left my tripod in my car! Argh! Capturing lightning is significantly easier with a tripod and remote.

So I had to improvise. In order to capture this, I was basically just sitting on the ground hoping to get something. I was so lucky. But I also LOVE how the street lights are red. It’s sort of like a warning to not pass in case of lightning.

My camera settings for this image is f4 at 1/15th sec and ISO 1250 with my Sony A7II and 16-35 wide-angle lens.

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Last week was a pretty awesome week for storms. I’ll post more on that soon. But that doesn’t go so well with trying to capture the full moon rising.

Fortunately, I was out with my friend, Zack to capture it. It was his idea to head to Freedom Plaza to try to get the moon over the Capitol dome but things didn’t go as planned. It took a while for us to actually see the moon because of all the low hanging storm clouds. So I’m glad Zack was there to hang out with while we waited. If it weren’t for him, I probably would have just given up and left before we were able to see it.

I love how the moon looks like an orange ball of light in the sky. It’s a nice centerpiece to all the other lights going on in the image. By the way, I could have done without all the construction cones and lights. It seems like everywhere you turn there’s some kind of construction in Washington. This is along Pennsylvania Ave.

Anyways, I’ve made it an appoint to mark my calendar for the rest of the year for full and new moons. The best moons always happen in the fall time so I can’t wait to capture some more 🙂

My camera settings for this image is F5 at 1/5th sec and ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm on a tripod.

All photos available for print and licensing >

Last week was pretty epic. Not only did we have one of the coldest days of winter that we’ve had this entire season but it was also the super blood wolf moon eclipse moon turn red night too. I made up that long title but you know what I mean. Everything about last Sunday was intense.

I got a lot of messages asking if I photographed it and I’m sad to say I did not. I thought I would give moon rise a go and see how that went. If it wasn’t too bad I may have set my alarm to photograph the actual eclipse, but I just couldn’t. The moonrise was so cold and windy, I can still feel the wind blowing on my back. Coming from the California sun to highs of 15 degrees, my body was not ready for it.

So I spent the early evening with my friend, Birch chasing the moon rise. We used the app, photopills to help guide us where to go and ended up at the US Capitol. Once we saw it, we were both so excited. It was so big and beautiful. If you were out that night, you would have found us up and down Maryland Ave, basically screaming at each other through the wind saying how beautiful it was. LOL. I know cars driving past us most of thought we were crazy. LOL whatevs.

I finally came upon this closer to 3rd street. I love the way the moonlight is playing the street lamps. Even the lights lining the balcony on the US Capitol is very interesting for me to look at. If only that one street lamp on the left was on 🙁

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 1/160th sec with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom.