ANGELA B. PAN

Happy Monday! Hope you had a great weekend. So glad it finally warmed up in the DC area so the cherry blossoms could really bloom. So guess I did over the weekend? I’ve been out shooting the blossoms 🙂 But this one was actually taken on Friday morning just after sunrise and just before it started to rain. The morning started off really cold. So cold that when I checked the weather app on my phone and it said “feels like 22 degrees”. *shaking my head* I can still feel the chill in my bones. My first reaction was to just stay in my warm, cozy bed, but I knew I’d regret it. I met up with my friend, Larry and had a great morning just walking around, talking and taking pictures of the flowers. They were looking a lot better than previous days so I’m glad I got my butt outta bed.

My camera settings for this image was F13 1/80th of a second ISO 250 with my 28-70mm. I was trying to get as much as I could in focus but the cherry blossoms were so close to me and the Jefferson Memorial was so far that it was difficult to get both. So I chose the cherry blossoms to be really sharp. When shooting the cherry blossoms, I try to use them to frame the memorials or as leading lines to them.

I hope you’re not getting bored of these. My blog posts have been pretty cherry blossom heavy lately. But tis the season 🙂 They’ll get back to a normal travel/DC images soon. Maybe in like a week-ish or so. But not right now, I’ve got cherry blossoms fever. Even my dad has been asking me to text him cherry blossom pics. Obviously, he doesn’t read my blog or follow me on my social media. *shaking my head again*

On my quest to take more cherry blossom images this year, I thought I’d leave this one for you for the weekend. This image was taken in 2012.  This is what the cherry blossoms should look like. Beautiful puffy white clouds along these delicate, windy branches. A glorious morning only shared by those who didn’t mind waking up before the sun. Ripples along the water created by a bird, a duck or slight gust of wind.

LOL I can’t keep a straight face anymore. I tried to be poetic. I’ll stop now.

Yea… So I took this in 2012, I have another version of this here but this one is a brand new one. I did not process it until now. The first time I processed the original image it was in HDR. For some reason it created all these unnecessary lines and colors along the branches called chromatic aberration. Trust me it is a pain in the B-U-T-T to get rid of. Man. I think it took me almost 3 days of fixing before I could get it just right for a client to print. So this version is vertical and it’s a little bit of a different point of view. The colors are definietly not as saturated but I much prefer this version. What about you? Which one do you prefer? Here’s the link again to the first one. 

If you’re wondering, I stopped processing my images using HDR a while ago. I just realized I was spending all this unnecessary time processing and editing that I didn’t have to be. I am really enjoying my workflow now which is only photoshop. Nothing else. If you’re interested in learning more about it, check out my video here.

Have a great weekend everyone. May the flowers be dancing above your head like the cherry blossoms in 2012 were. LOL.

I’d like to visit the tidal basin as much as I can this week. Cherry blossoms are no where near what they were like in previous years but regardless they’re still beautiful. With the cold weather, only about 50% have survived and will be peaking. As of right now, the flowers are almost there. Some trees are really beautiful and have some great blooms on them. Some are just completely dead. The others are half and half and it’s hard to tell which direction they’re going. I’d say if you were planning on a trip to go, I’d go towards the end of the week or even the weekend.  That is if you want to battle the craziness of the crowds and the actual cherry blossom festival.

This was taken yesterday morning around sunrise. The sunrise itself wasn’t too impressive since it was too cloudy but it made for the perfect backdrop for a moody cherry blossom shoot. I ran into my friend, Jarrett again. We always seem to run into each other during sunrise but especially during cherry blossom season. It’s sort of become a running joke with us. Regardless, he’s great company to walk around the basin with. We’ll talk about anything from photography to social media to creepin’ on other people’s engagement photoshoots. You’ll have to watch his instagram stories to understand. LOL.

My settings on this image was F8 at 1/80th of a second ISO 500 with my 28-70mm. I intentionally set my aperture around f/8 so I can get most things in focus. I definietly wanted the flowers to be seen and the Washington Monument. Another grey day means another high ISO image to make sure the wind wouldn’t make this image blurry.

But there will be more of these updates throughout this week and maybe even next week. Please let me know if you like them because I like posting them 🙂

Do you remember earlier this year when I posted this picture?

Happy Monday! Hope you had a great weekend. This image was shot last fall. See the other version of this same sunrise here.

I met up with my friend Sara to take this image. She told she had never been to DC for sunrise and we immediately had to change that. So the next morning we met up super early in the morning. I remember walking around the National Mall with her and we were talking about how it was so nice to be taking pictures. But one of the best parts was that you’re up so early in the morning that no one else is really awake. You have so much time to accomplish other things before even having to worry about calling anyone or making any kind of appointments. Just a nice way to start your morning by walking around and doing something creative. Growing up, I was never an early bird. But now that I’ve been waking up for sunrise images for the past 6 years that I can’t help but wake up early now. Even without an alarm.

In other news, I’ve been thinking lately that I need to make an updated youtube video. What do you think? It’s been a while since I’ve talked about my gear. I’ve uploaded quite a few videos about new gear that I’ve bought but those were mostly first impression/unboxings. Never really gave my opinion on what I think about the equipment now. Also, I’ve gotten a few things without tell you guys as well too. So would you be interested in an updated gear video? I think it’d be fun. Let me know if you have any specific questions and I’ll try to add that into the video as well.

To be honest, it may be another week or two until I actually make it. I have another video in the works before that one. You’re going to LOVE it.

Sometimes waking up early can be a struggle. The night before I took this, I was out to dinner with a few of my girlfriends. We were having so much fun catching up that we ended up staying out later than we usually would of so that meant I went to bed later than I usually do. Before we even went to bed, Andrew asked if I was going to wake up for sunrise. I said “I’m going to wake up and check the weather”. Well the next morning the app on my phone said it was mostly cloudy (usually great weather for photos) but I sooo did not want to wake up. I was tired and because the weather channel app also said it was 29 degrees out, I double did not want to wake up. After about 20 minutes of laying there and pretending like I was looking at important stuff on instagram and my email, I finally rolled out of bed, put on two pairs of pants, 3 top layers and off to the city I went. I decided to go to the US Capitol because I felt like I haven’t been there for a long time. With the inauguration last month, that place was pretty crowded with construction and people for about 3 months prior.

Once I arrived at the Capitol, it seemed like all the cold air went away. All the sleepiness went away. And I just felt pure excitement. The pink started to really show through the clouds and the air was so still that the reflection in the reflecting pool was perfect. I’m so glad I got there early because by the time I drove home the skies had turned grey. Overall, timing was perfect for the pink sunrise and the clouds were perfect for a nap afterwards 🙂