ANGELA B. PAN

While fighting the jetlag in Taiwan, I loved being able to walk around the Tamsui district. There’s something about waking up early and then watching the rest of the city waking up. It’s so relaxing but then you can feel the energy getting higher and higher as the morning goes on. I love it.

This image was taken on one of those early morning walks when not a lot of people were awake except for a few who were fishing. What I think is most interesting about this image is that every single of these people is actually fishing. They just have their own style of it. I especially like the one who has taken a seat on his pink scooter as he waits for the fish to bite.

My camera settings for this image are F7.1 at 1/800th sec and ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 35mm.

Walking around Tamsui near the Zhuwei MRT subway station, I saw this light and waited for someone to either walk or drive past it. But then something even better happened, this lady stopped her scooter to adjust the bags she had in the front and then sped off. This allowed me to frame this image how I wanted and I love the way it turned out.

Another thing about street photography that I love so much is being able to shoot in the middle of the day. If I remember correctly, I captured this around 11 am. For landscape photographers, you would have already been inside, had a snack and watched some tv shows. But for photographers photographing street scenes like this, it’s perfect, especially when you’re in cities with really tall buildings. The buildings act as reflectors and cast amazing light all over the city. You just have to find it. And the best thing about photographing street in Taipei is that it’s so crowded that if you miss your shot of someone, you can just wait another minute and someone totally different will enter your scene.

My camera settings for this image are F5 at 1/640th sec and ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 35mm prime lens.

Most of my time in Taiwan was actually spent in a suburb of Taipei called Tamsui. It’s about a 45 minute MRT (metro) ride from the capital city but it still gives you the big city feelings. It’s bustling with people at all hours of the day which was good for me because I usually woke up every morning around 4 am. It was so nice because I really enjoyed photographing Tamsui as the city was waking up. I never really had a real plan during my morning walks, I would just wander the streets and see where each corner would take me. Some of the streets would be so small that I’d get so lost. Luckily, I had internet service on my phone or else, I’d probably still be wandering the streets not knowing where I was going right now.

This image was captured on the main road close to our hotel. I loved it because it was one of the only sunny mornings we had while we were there and I just love seeing those palm trees glow in the sun. Scooters and pedestrians were everywhere, on their way to work and school. Looking at this image, I can still hear all the scooters racing by. At some points, it seriously was like a game of chance because they would pop out of nowhere. LOL.

My camera settings for this image are F4.5 at 1/3200th sec and ISO 2500 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.