ANGELA B. PAN

Sometimes I’ll get into these zones and edit a whole bunches of images all at the same time, store them onto my desktop folder called “haven’t blogged yet” and then totally forget about them. This is the case with this image. I took it last week when it was crazy foggy at Shenandoah National Park and didn’t even bother posting it on instagram or anywhere else. Umm whoops?

In order to get into these zones, I’ll put on my ear phones and not even think about anything else other than the music I’m listening to and the image in front of me. It’s so fun. Although if you were looking through my window I’d look like a weirdo because I’ll be bopping my head and flinging my pointer finger around to the beat of the music. HAHA

To be honest, I’m probably done with Shenandoah National Park for the season. I’m going to try to concentrate on photographing more local areas to me like Great Falls Park and DC for the rest of the fall time. It’s not that I don’t love going, it’s just exhausting waking up so early in the morning, spending a couple hours there and then driving back. I usually won’t be home until the afternoon and it feels like most of the day has gone. But who knows? Maybe there will be a sunset shoot or night time shoot in my future? We’ll see!

My camera settings for this image is F5.6 at 1/40th of a second and ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and my 16-35mm wide angle lens.

So after yesterday’s update at Shenandoah National Park, I figured I’d give an update at Great Falls Park. I used to come to this park a lot. When I was first getting started with photography in high school AND after I graduated from college (I sort of dropped off while I was in college), I’d come to this park a lot to practice. Since then I think I just got distracted with Washington DC images that I haven’t been back in a long time. It was probably last October since I’ve been back and it felt so good to hear the roar of the water again.

But I may have seen one or two trees that have already changed colors, other than that the park was mostly green. I find this to be good news though because it gives me more reasons to go back in the near future. If you’re looking for some great fall foliage shots, the falls and the Billy Goat trail are awesome to shoot.

Another reason why I sort of stopped going to Great Falls Park was that it started to close it’s gates at night. That meant I couldn’t get in for sunrise. Luckily, sunrise is around 7:20a now and I was at the gate for about 5 minutes before someone showed up to open the gate up at 7a. Pretty perfect timing if you asked me. The parking lot is pretty close to the first overlook which is where I shot this particular image. I had plenty of time to set up for this shot.

My camera settings for this image is F5.0 at 2 seconds ISO 640 with my Sony A7II and my 16-35mm wide angle lens. I also used my neutral density filter to slow down the image and create those awesome water lines on the bottom middle.

So excited to see that fall has FINALLY arrived in Shenandoah National Park. I’ve been waiting for all of October for the leave to change. Except the visibility was very low while we were there.

Yesterday my friend, Larry and I met really early in the morning to head to the Thorton Gap entrance at Shenandoah National Park. As I was pulling out of my neighborhood I could see that it was already a little foggy  where we live but the more west we went, the foggier it got. It was so exciting. Y’all know how much I love shooting in the fog. It’s my favorite weather to shoot in! But once we got there, it was SUPER foggy. Like whiteout. Sunrise is around 7:20 but we couldn’t really see any kind of daylight until 7:25a. The visibility was probably less than 100ft. At some points it looked like cars were coming out of no where because you couldn’t even see their headlights until they were really close by. It was kinda nuts but totally awesome. I’m pretty sure we said “wow, crazy” about 200 times each as we were driving through the park.

The best part was that it smelled like fog. You know that smell? Yea, the smell of happiness.

Luckily, Larry is a sony man as well and just recently purchased the 100-400mm lens. He was kind enough to let me use it for a little while, even after knowing my tripod story. I was shooting it handheld. It was a little bit heavier than I am used to, but it was still very easy to capture sharp images. I felt like a sports photographer the entire time. LOL.

My camera settings for this image is 1/60th of a second at F5.6 at ISO 1000 with my Sony A7II and Larry’s 100-400mm. The focal length of this is at 282mm.

So you know that one of Sue’s highlights from the trip was the Ocean Path. If I had to pick mine, it would have been the airplane tour we did on our last night in Maine with Acadia Air Tours. We booked the “airvan” for 35 minutes at sunset. It was perfect because the plane was actually built for sightseeing.

But if you have never been on a scenic airplane tour, I have 2 photo tips for you:

1. Constantly check your images. The beginning of the flight was perfect. I had the correct settings to make sure I wasn’t getting any motion blur in my images. But as the sun was setting towards the end of our flight, I did not realize how much the light had changed.  I should have bumped up my ISO or something because all the images towards the end of the flight were so blurry. I wasn’t upset or anything, I still had a rockin’ time on the flight. Just check your images as you go!

2. Zoom lens all the way. I brought my 70-200mm just in case, but didn’t feel like I needed it at all. We were only up 2000ft max in the air and I was still able to get pretty good zoom-age with my 28-70mm. I say zoom instead of a wide angle because there were times when there would be a lot of sun glare on the windows. Especially when we were faced a certain way, it was very difficult to avoid it. At least with the zoom lens, I was able to avoid those spots as opposed to a wide angle or something that would have captured it all. Sue was taking pics with her phone and said that the sun glare was really difficult to avoid the entire trip. All of her photos had at least a spot.

So if you’re in Acadia National Park and want to see it from a different point of view or even have a totally different experience, I’d highly recommend Acadia Air Tours. Bernard was our pilot and he was so nice. It was very easy to talk to him and I didn’t feel like I was bothering him with the million and one questions I was asking 🙂  And if you do book a trip with them, tell them I sent ya!

This was taken at the beginning of our flight and my camera settings for this image is 1/25th of a second at F5.6 ISO 640.

Back again to the Artechouse for their new exhibit, Spirit of Autumn. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d like it as much as I did. If I had to compare it to their previous exhibit, XYZT, it’s crazy to say but I think I liked Spirit of Autumn more.

XYZT was cool because the gallery was divided into smaller sections and there was a lot more to interact with. But the Spirit of Autumn was colorful, beautiful and so fun. This image was taken in the smaller side room. It kinda felt like you were walking through a lava lamp the whole time. But the best part was being able to manipulate where the lights and colors would go. My friend, Reem and I probably spent half the time in this room just going “WOW!”

The main room had 3 walls projecting huge trees that would sway in the “wind”. I think the coolest part was the fact that the leaves were all drawn by people who have visited the exhibit. For example, here’s my leaf. I tried my best to make a tie-dye leaf (now you know why I’m a photographer and not a painter).

10 seconds later, it was on a tree swaying with the other leaves. Soooo COOL! It’s also an auditory exhibit. If you clap your hands loud enough, it would start raining and thunder storming. And if you’re over 21, they have an alcoholic drink that if you put your camera phone on it, it will look like leaves are floating out of it. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to experience this but I heard from the grape vine that it’s really cool and delicious all at the same time.

So if you’re in the DC area, you gotta go check out this exhibit. It’s unlike anything you’ve experienced before. Trust me. Click here for more info. Go soon! The exhibit closes on November 5th.

My camera settings for this image is 1/20th of a second at F4.5 ISO 3200 with my 16-35mm wide angle lens and Sony A7II. The rooms are pretty dark so bump up your ISO before you shoot.

Before leaving for Maine, I had the assumption that Acadia National Park was small. I’m not sure why I thought that but Holy Cow was I wrong! It reminded me of a mix of Shenandoah National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park with beautiful scenic drives and so many places to pull over and take pictures. And both places are huge. Like Yuge. There was no way we would have been able to see it all in less than a week.

So, we really only had time to explore a portion of the park. On our last day in Acadia, Sue and I decided to head over to the Southwest Harbor which was an adventure all on it’s own. We shot sunrise at Bass Harbor Lighthouse and made our way over to Echo Lake Beach to start our morning hike. The beach itself is really small but the reflections were amazing. I was having a field day with these rocks. I love how they divide the image and add an interesting focal point. Luckily, I was wearing my timberland boots so I was able to step in the water a little bit without getting wet.

I wish we were able to spend more time in the Southwest Harbor. It seemed like there were so many more colorful trees in that area than anywhere else we in the park. Our hike up Canada Cliffs was one of my favorites. It’s very steep and uphill but the view was completely worth it. I loved seeing all the trees from up above. I’ll be sure to work on one of those images soon. You’ll love it if you love fall and pretty things 🙂

The settings on my camera for this image is 1/50th of a second at F/8 ISO 250 with my Sony a7II and 28-70mm zoom lens.