ANGELA B. PAN

I captured this at the same time I captured this image.

After playing around with some long exposures, I decided to walk around to see if I could get any foreground interest. I was there with my Sunday morning sunrise friends so finding a person as my foreground was pretty easy. Luckily Mark made for a great unknowing model and I was able to capture a few images of him taking pictures.

But the moral of the story is that Mark always gets to our locations early and snags the best spots before anyone else.

My camera settings for this image are F8 at 1/25th sec and ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm.

When I went to bed the night before, I wasn’t expecting much out of the sunrise. The weather apps said it was going to be cloudy, and so I just thought it was going to be a grey day. Luckily, I was meeting up with friends who came up with the great idea of capturing the sunrise from Freedom Plaza at sunrise. Having that accountability of meeting with people was definitely the motivation to get out of bed.

As I was driving into the city I saw very faint hints of pink and it got me excited. I immediately parked the car, grabbed my tripod and got to this beautiful spot along Pennsylvania Avenue as fast as I could. There wasn’t a lot of traffic going on so I thought for this image I would try to crop the street a bit and focus mainly on the sky. I really like how the street lights are acting as lines towards the US Capitol.

My camera settings for this image are F8 at 1/30th sec and ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

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.

This is probably the most minimalist image I’ve ever taken at the United States Capitol. But I love it.

I captured it this past Sunday while we were walking from the west to the east side. I saw the wispy clouds that were forming next to the Capitol so I quickly changed from my zoom to my wide-angle lens to try to capture it all. I could have very easily looked a little more to the right to try to capture this image of just clouds, but I love how the American flag is there just poking out of the corner. It’s very subtle but it is so patriotic. LOL.

For a little reference, here’s a better image of the same flag. It just comes out a little bit from the building.

My camera settings for this image are F4 at 1/1250th sec and ISO 160 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide-angle lens.

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.

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.