united states capitol

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It looks like a warm summer day, right? No, it was 30 degrees out but a cloudless morning with a bright yellow sun that made the whole city glow for a little while. I was just at the right place at the right time to capture the glow. I love how it almost looks like the street lamps could be giving off the light as well.

On this particular morning, I met up with my friend, Larry who was already standing in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. Don’t worry though, there’s a bike lane in the middle of the street and we were standing somewhere that was very safe from traffic. Plus it was a Saturday morning was there wasn’t even any traffic. LOL.

We were trying to capture the sunrise but the cloudless sky didn’t really make for the dramatic colors he was looking for. So we started to walk around to see if we could capture the sun from a new perspective. As soon as we stepped back onto the sidewalk, I captured this. I just love how everything is lined up so nicely, leading your eye straight to the US Capitol.

My camera settings for this image are F6.3 at 1/1600th sec and ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

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I’m so glad that Sunrise Sundays are becoming a thing with my photography friends. It all started on the first Sunday of 2020 when my friend, Andy invited a few people to photograph sunrise at the Lincoln Memorial. And ever since then, it’s becoming a weekly meetup at different locations and it’s been such fun each time.

This past weekend we went to the US Capitol. Currently, the reflecting pool is under construction so we ended up meeting at the Ulysses S Grant Memorial instead. I’m glad we did. The white marble allowed for a different kind of reflection than the reflecting pool would have offered. I love how the Capitol dome is just poking out from the edge of the Grant Memorial.

My camera settings for this image are F4 at 1/250th sec and ISO 160 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

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Happy 2020! 

My first official blog post of the new year. Hope you all had a great holiday and a happy new year. But now that the holidays are over, I figured this would be the most appropriate image to post. I captured it yesterday during a sunrise walk around the US Capitol with my friend, Andy.

It turned out to be a great sunrise with color in the sky, but I thought this image was something different. The tree had been blocked off all morning so it was cool to see that they were getting ready to take down the holiday decorations. Just in the little time we spent watching them take down the ornaments, it seemed like they had a long road ahead of them. A timelapse would have been cool to capture of it all.

My camera settings for this image are F4 at 1/3200th sec and ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

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Going through some images I took earlier in the year, I found this gem. I had no idea I captured the lightning because the exposure was actually pretty dark. I thought maybe a lightning strike hit behind the clouds or something but it was the bright light on the left-hand corner that caught my eye where I thought it could be something. So in Lightroom, I brought up the exposure and found the lightning strike! It was so exciting. Probably almost as exciting as capturing it, even though I didn’t know I had captured it at all.

It brought back all these memories of that evening. Obviously, I knew I captured this one and waiting out the rain on the west side of the Capitol was awesome because we didn’t actually get wet. But it’s always a good time storm chasing with friends. It makes the time go by so much faster.

My camera settings for this image are F4 at 1/5th sec and ISO 2000 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm.

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It happened! OMG! I’m pretty sure it’s because I blogged about it last week, but I was finally able to capture a lightning strike this summer. I still can’t get over it.

I had been talking to my friend, Andy sporadically throughout the day through text message when I finally asked him if he wanted to meet up for sunset. He told me he was already meeting up a friend for sunset but if I wanted to join them, I was welcome to. So I crashed their party and invited another friend and ended up having such a great time.

The best part was that we did not even get wet! The storms were passing right in front of us and we definitely felt some of those lightning strikes, but no actual raindrops on us. It was perfect.

The sunset ended up being dramatic but I stayed about an hour after to try to get a more distinct lightning strike. You can definitely see lightning strikes a lot better when it’s dark out.

Holy cow I did not expect this one. It was like Thor’s hammer slammed straight down into the Capitol Reflecting Pool. I’m still so excited I was able to capture it.

Since I got one, I’m hooked. I can’t wait for another storm to happen so I can try to get even more lightning strikes. Maybe now that I’ve blogged about it again, it will happen again 🙂 Fingers crossed!

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 1/8th sec and ISO 2000 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.

All photos available for print and licensing >

Hope you enjoyed the last two blog posts where I relieved some of my favorite moments of 2018. If you missed it, you can see them here and here. There were just so many images to choose from because I tend to like all my images LOL. but for some reason this one didn’t make the cut.

This evening at the US Capitol was pretty epic. There was barely any rain but the lightning strikes were going crazy. It was perfect. The only reason why it didn’t make the 2018 favorites just because I wasn’t able to capture the lightning strikes like how I’d hoped for. I was really hoping for a huge strike like this one I captured in 2016. Man, I think capturing that image has sort of made me a bit jaded from all the other lightning strikes I’ve been able to capture. Like this one is cool and all but… LOL.

But I do really like this image because of the composition. Those clouds were epic and I loved the way the sky turned from dark blue to purple when the lightning would hit. Just showing that little bit of of the US Capitol dome is all the information you need to know exactly where you’re standing. It was beautiful night and I was so lucky to even capture anything at all.

So let me know, were there images that you liked in 2018 that weren’t on my list? I’d be really interested in hearing your opinion.

Either way, I’m so looking forward to 2019! It’s going to be a fantastic year with hopefully a lot more photo opportunities like this one to capture that huge lightning strike I’ve been looking out for.

My camera settings for this image is F4 at 1/13th sec at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.