thomas jefferson

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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

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YESSSS! I am so pumped for this week, you have no idea. It’s my favorite holiday out of all the holidays, THANKSGIVING!!!!!! Theres no stress, it’s all about giving thanks and enjoying a good meal with family and friends. How can it get any better? My thanksgiving kicked off yesterday with my girlfriends as we celebrated, Friendsgiving. We had a blast catching up with each other and taking fun selfies. Can’t wait for the main event later this week. Imma wear my stretchy pants 🙂

So I thought it would be a great idea to take this week’s blog posts and talk about a few things I’m grateful for.

Today I’m grateful to be living in the DC metro area. No matter how many times I visit the city, I can never get bored. Whether it’s for photos, eating out, or seeing friends, Washington DC is always my favorite to explore. Theres just this certain energy about it. I’ve lived here my whole life and I still don’t think I’ve seen it all. It’s been amazing to see it grow and I could not be any prouder to be a Washingtonian.

I took this image last week with my friend, Christa. Weve known each other for years now, but for some reason it took this long for me to get on top of her office’s rooftop. As soon as I walked out I could not stop saying “WOW”. There are hardly any great vantage points of the Jefferson Memorial besides the Tidal Basin and this elevated view puts things in very cool perspective. You see those lights behind the Jefferson? Yea, that’s Reagan National Airport. Soooo cool right? See what I mean by never getting bored by this city? I love it!

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 1/6th of a second ISO 1250 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm lens.

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YAY Monday again! Hope you all had a great weekend.

I took this image in September of 2016. You would think that I go to the Tidal Basin so often to take sunrise images that I’d forget what it was like capturing this particular image from over a year ago, but I don’t. A day like this is sort of hard to forget. I remember exactly what it was like. The morning was absolutely gorgeous. I had been walking along the side of the Tidal Basin just snapping away and shooting the sunrise from all different angles. But there comes to a point when you’re just done shooting. You feel like you’ve captured THE image and you’re ready to go home. So I was walking back to my car when all of the sudden I look up and there are rays of pink bursting out of the clouds. OMG it was sooo cool. I took a few shots of it from where I was standing, but I didn’t feel like it showcased the rays like I wanted to. So I immediately started running to a position where I was able to capture the rays of light as if it were coming out of the Jefferson Memorial. I’m lucky the pink rays lasted for so long cuz I’m a slow runner. HAHA.

Doesn’t it kind of look like the grand re-opening of the Jefferson Memorial in Las Vegas? HAHA! Like the Luxor Hotel but not as big and way more historical.

Either way, I’m really happy with the way this turned out. I love how you can even see the reflection of the rays in the water. Not a bad way to start the day, am I right?

My camera settings for this image is F/14 at 1/6th of a second and ISO 80 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.

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Another puddle shot. I’ve been loving them this year and shooting them at the Tidal Basin is super easy because there are always puddles! Even when it’s super clear and nice out, there will be a puddle. It’s just because the sidewalks can be really uneven that if you look around there will be at least a little one in the cracks somewhere.

This however was not a little puddle. It was quite big and pretty much took over the whole sidewalk. Days like this, I’m super grateful to have rain boots. That way I can walk comfortably wherever without having to worry about my socks getting wet or my shoes getting muddy.

I’m also really grateful that the cherry blossoms peaked so nicely this year. It was totally unexpected that they would since we had that cold spell in the middle of March. I think it scared away a lot of the people because everyday that I went down to the Tidal Basin, there weren’t a lot of people there (compared to previous years where it’d be hard to even walk, let alone get shots without many people in it). Overall I’m just so happy spring is here and the cherry blossoms were amazing. I don’t know if I’ll be at the Tidal Basin anymore shooting the cherry blossoms this year but hopefully in other places around the DMV area <3

This was shot at F5.6 at 1/125th of a second at ISO 400. Again, I did not shoot this on my tripod because it just can’t get low enough. Which reminds me, if you guys have any tripod recommendations that can get super low, like almost touching the ground, let me know. I’d love to try that out. The only reason the ISO was at 400 was because this was hand held and I wanted to make sure to get everything sharp and in focus.

 

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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*