ANGELA B. PAN

Whether it is sunrise or sunset, I have a group of places I usually default to depending on the time of day. The Martin Luther King Jr memorial is not my usual sunset spot. Actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever taken a photograph here at any other time of day besides sunrise. The only reason being is that I know it gets packed with tour buses as the day goes on and I try my best to avoid that.

So a few weeks ago I got commissioned to take some pictures of the memorial. I was waiting for a cloudy day because I knew the sky would take up most of the image. The previous days had been too cloudy though. So cloudy to the point where it almost looked like a cloudless sky because there were no details in the clouds at all. Just straight up grey. Until finally I was driving around, running some errands when the sky started to open up. I knew that sunset would probably be my only chance of getting the image I wanted, so I took my chances and headed straight to the Tidal Basin.

I was correct in the fact that there were bus loads of people all around the memorial. But I was also correct in the fact that the sky was going to be amazing that day! This was not the image I was commissioned for, but to be honest, I think this one is better! I love the way the way the colors in the sky are casted in the clouds. Maybe I should add the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial to my sunset list instead of sunrise. LOL, what do you think?

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/200th of a second at ISO 800 (handheld) with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

This is probably my third or forth time seeing a rainbow over the US Capitol. You can see one example here and another one here. But it wasn’t until this rainbow where I realized this is probably the best spot to catch rainbows in DC. 3 out of 4 times it will be directly over the dome and it’s just a beautiful sight to see. It will be slightly off center or totally off to the side at any of the other memorials. But now that I think of it, it might work from behind the Lincoln Memorial. So…. note to self. Check that out next time it rains 🙂

Anyways, I left my house a little early to make sure I had time to catch sunset. I figured with all the rain, traffic was going to be horrible and I was right! I came from a different direction than I usually do which meant that I parked my car on a totally different side of the street. I was way off to the right when I usually park in the middle. From the middle it was two perfect arches over the dome. But it worked out in my favor because I was able to get a totally different perspective of the rainbow and the dome. At first I was envisioning the rainbow pouring out of the dome but then I realized I could see the reflection of the rainbow in the street puddle, omg it was over. I was down, kneeling in the middle of the street for like 10 minutes. Luckily, its not a busy street. Luckily, all the nice people who wanted to drive on the street at least honked their horn at me instead of running me over. At one point, I was side by side next to that red tour bus you can see coming down the road. He didn’t flinch and neither did I. I’m just glad I didn’t get splashed. That would have been inconvenient.

You know what’s funny? As I was shooting this, I noticed I was the only one who was getting up close to the US Capitol building. There were quite a few tourists out there with me. I think a bus pulled up while I was there and so many of them were taking selfies in front of the Capitol. But no one would even get near the fountain. Weird, right? Maybe it was the Capitol police with their guns that looked so intimidating. Or maybe they were just not trying to get into my shot. Either way, I was all alone taking this picture. I’m not complaining though. It was really nice to be the only one. Who knows how many people got pictures of my back side though. HAHA.

On this evening, it looked like it was going to storm but I don’t think it actually did. The clouds were super dark. I couldn’t tell with my eyes if they were moving but once I slapped on the Ice Neutral density filter 10 stop, I could see that they were making this really cool effect. Like they were all racing out of the Capitol dome. I really liked it so I tried different angles and came out with this one. This one came out particularly awesome because you can see some reflection in the water and may I add the symmetry of the building’s architecture is probably the coolest part of the image.

For some reason seeing dark and moody images of the Capitol always reminds me of President Underwood. So now that House of Cards season 5 is officially back on Netflix, I think you know what Andrew and I will be doing on our flight back home from our trip. Oh man, can’t waitttt. This season is really going to be good!