ANGELA B. PAN

A couple of years ago, my friend Kelly and I went on a trip to the Pacific Northwest, more specifically Seattle area and Vancouver. It was my first time visiting Seattle so I was super excited to visit. We were there mostly for the tulip festival but also to check out the sites. Obviously we went to Pike Place, the little park area around the Space Needle, Kerry Park, the usual stuff you do in Seattle. And y’all know that whenever I travel anywhere, I always try to make a vlog. This trip was no exception. I had a blast and wanted to share that with you but also remember it for myself in the future. So here’s the video in case you missed it.

Well something super awesome happened. The Weather Channel contacted me and asked if they could use some of that video footage for their BRB video on the Seattle gum wall. How cool is that? As soon as they mentioned BRB, I knew right way the videos they were talking about. I’ve watched so many of those 30 second videos on Facebook on places that I’ve been to or want to travel to. I was honored that they even contacted me. The crazy part was that they used the part of me blowing the bubble gum bubble! I thought they were just going to use the footage of the gum wall itself. I was so surprised when I saw my big face on the screen. LOL. So cool.

Click on the image blow to see the video.

If you ask me. The best part of the whole thing is the caption that they put under me. LOL. Anyways, I was super excited to be a part of it. The most surprising part was that they got it all done so fast. It took them less than a day to do. Or at least from the point they contacted me.

Going back through my older images, I found this one from a trip to New York. I love going to New York. Mostly for eating, but it also has some great places to shoot. For example the Oculus. This place is incredible! I can’t believe it’s now a shopping mall. Anyways, I LOVE the lines and how clean everything looks. It kind looks like it’s something from outer space, doesn’t it? I know I must have gotten really low for this image. I can tell by the reflections on the floor, but other than that, I don’t remember anything else about it. I don’t even remember shooting it. But that’s the fun part about revisiting old images. It’s like seeing pictures with fresh, new eyes. I don’t know if this would of been as successful if I started editing it right when I shot it. Sometimes I like to let images simmer. For this one however, it simmered so long that I forgot about it! Oh well. Thank you reliable hard drives for keeping this beauty safe.

I’ve always wanted to spend an extended amount of time in New York. It’s such a happening city that theres no way that I’d be able to see and do everything that I want to do in a weekend, which is normally how long I visit. Can you believe I still haven’t visited MoMa? That’s one place I’d like to go to next time I travel to the big apple. What other places should I visit while I’m there? Museums, photography hot spots, food? Other than the fried pizza restaurant. OMG!

On a side now if you haven’t already, sign up for my newsletter. Its ready to be sent out tomorrow like it is every first of the month. Have a great weekend everybody! 🙂

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*

Now that the snow has fallen, it’s crazy cold outside and it’s official that the cherry blossoms will not peak this year, it made me think about our trip to Japan around this time last year. Unfortunately while we were on our trip, I missed the peak bloom of blossoms in DC. Double unfortunate that we also missed the peak in Tokyo. We did see some cherry blossoms, but if we really wanted to see it, we should of stayed for a week longer. Oh well. I still loved our visit and was still able to see some beautiful flowers including this one. Do any of you guys know what this one is called? I have no clue and would not even know where to beginning to find out.

I took it in Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. The perfect place to go if you want to catch any kind of blooms. When you walk through the park, you almost forget you are in a major city. You don’t hear any honking horns or busy streets. You’re in your own little world, walking down paths of diverse garden areas and scenic views. If I had the opportunity, I would of loved to spend sunrise walking around by myself like I do in DC. The best part is that people come here not just to walk around and enjoy the flowers, but they will bring a blanket with a picnic baskets and hangout for a couple of hours. Kinda like what they do at the tidal basin for the cherry blossoms but it’s definietly not as crowded. I feel like when you can sit down and relax like that, you’ll get the full experience of the beautiful sakuras and these unnamed flower I photographed 🙂

By the way, if you missed it, I made a Tokyo guide. Click here if you’d like to see it.

Shot on the same puddle as this image. Even on a super cold, windy day there will always be people running around the tidal basin. I don’t know how they do it, especially in shorts. Anyways, I saw him running from 100 ft away. I immediately got into position where I thought I could get him and the Washington Monument in the same shot, squatted down low and hoped that it would work out. Luckily it did. This was probably about 20 minutes after the first image was shot though. Thats why this one is way more moodier and darker than the other one. I really like how the guy is almost silhouetted.

In other news, Andrew and I have booked our next trip! We’re going to be flying into Denver and road tripping it to Moab, UT and Rocky Mountain National Park. If you’ve been there, please let me know if you have any recommendations. Hotel, food, photography, whatever. Neither of us have ever been and I’m super excited to explore the mile high city and for our road trip. I know its going to be amazingly beautiful. One of my friends just came back from there and he was telling me that the altitude sickness is real while in Denver. After a quick amazon search, I’m not sure which medicine would be the best for us. So if you have any experience with that, please let me know as well. I never thought I’d get motion sickness but recently there have been times when I’m on a boat and will get pretty ill. I’d like to prevent anything like that from happening on our trip so I can maximize my photography time. Oh YEA!

This is going to be an awesome experience. I’ve always felt like I’ve only been to the coasts and edges of the United States but never anywhere in the middle. Really looking forward to the adventure 🙂

I know I’ve been posting a lot of the Tidal Basin recently, but thats where I’ve been going lately. Every time I go, I am hoping to see some cherry blossoms. More like wishing and praying. There are a few here and there that have bloomed but this particular morning that I went out the main attraction was definietly the cloudy sunrise. There was this amazing glow that was coming from the horizon that you just couldn’t ignore. However my favorite part of this image is being able to see the Jefferson statue right in the middle of the columns. I also really like the elongated reflection in the water.

Days like this one make me so happy to be a photographer living in the DC metro area. I feel really fortunate to be able to visit these monuments on a regular basis and to see the beauty in them in almost any kind of light. Not a lot of people have the same opportunities so I’m really grateful for mine. Even with all the early morning wake up calls and late nights, when I see a sunrise like this, it makes it completely worth it. But it’d be hard to pick which monument is my favorite monument to photograph. It’s like choosing which puppy is the cutest. They’re all so great and you love them all in such different ways. You can’t actually pick just one. (Was that a weird analogy? Comparing monuments to puppies?)

If you’re interested in knowing my settings on this image they were: f5.6 at 1/5 sec. I shot it on my Sony a7ii with my 16-35mm wide angle lens. If you’d like to know my settings for future images, just let me know in the comments below. If I remember, I’ll try to put them in my blog posts for you.