ANGELA B. PAN

I’m really hoping this marks the beginning of storms here in DC. Summer is my favorite just because we can get some really dramatic skies and this past Monday was no exception. It was super hot over the weekend and finally a cold front came in bringing this storm that created the most amazing skies right at sunset. The storm itself was a little disappointing. We were expecting lightning and only saw a few really far away. But the clouds, the rainbow, the light soooo made up for it.

I met up with my friends Dave and Zack at the Lincoln Memorial. We figured that while it was raining, it’d be a great spot to take cover and still take pics at the same time. It was so fun running back and forth on the outer perimeter of the memorial. At first we were in the front capturing the dramatic skies. All of the sudden I turned around and saw this amazing glow coming from the back of the Lincoln. We ran back there to check it out and take pics. Then we get a message from Zack saying there was a rainbow at the monument. We ran over and started shooting that. It was so fun and exciting. I know we weren’t the only ones doing going back and forth. So many tourists were running along with us. LOL.

My camera settings for this image was F14 at 5 seconds and ISO 50. I chose to shoot this as a long exposure so I could blur out some of the people in the foreground. *What were they all doing there standing in the rain anyways? This was definietly shot on a tripod but somehow I left my remote at home 🙁 Oh well. There better be more storms in next few months.

Taken just 10 minutes before I captured this image. I had really high hopes of a colorful sky but it didn’t turn out as planned. It’s all good though. You win some and loose some. Although I wouldn’t actually call this loosing. The purple in the clouds was an unexpected surprise. The light bursts in the street lamps make this image twinkle and the subtle car light trails on the road makes your eye travel right along the image.

When I’m really happy with a shot, I usually take it a few times. Maybe like 2 or 3 times just to make sure I got everything in focus and exposed correctly before moving on. But for some reason, right after I was done shooting this I just kept it moving. I didn’t think it turned out the way I wanted at that moment in time. Looking at it again though, I enjoy it. I feel like I see a new twinkle of light or a new reflection along the statue with every glance. Or something like that. Bahh can you tell I’m having a love/hate relationship with this image. Let me know what you think of it. Do you like it or am I just going crazy?

For all you photographers out there who are interested, here are my camera settings: F/18 at 15 seconds ISO 50. Not sure why it was shot at F/18. I usually would set my camera to F/22 for images like this but I was still able to capture the image the way I wanted it. Definietly shot on a tripod for this 15 second exposure.

Hope you all have a great weekend! Not much planned for me except a girls night in with some of my closest girlfriends tonight. Other than that, I’ll be here and there like the wind. HAHA.

You know, sometimes waking up for sunrise can be really tiring. Am I right?

Somehow I forgot about how little sleep I get, especially after the spring equinox, and I just keep going and going. It’s hard for me to remember to slow down sometimes. Well, I definietly felt the effects of that last week. I had woken up for sunrise 3 days in a row. I think out of all the days, 1 of them was really worth it. The day that I took this image at the Reflecting Pool right in front of the Lincoln Memorial. I was super excited to see that little bit of purple pop out of the deep blue sky. But by the end of the third day, I was EXHAUSTED. So, I’m really proud to say that on Saturday, April 22nd I slept in until 10a!!! That’s crazy! I don’t think I’ve slept that much in 10 years. I don’t know what got into me but it felt soooo good.

Ever since I got real serious about photography and ever since I’ve been waking up for sunrise, my natural body clock will wake me up about an hour after sunrise. That’s usually about 7 or 8a depending on what season we’re talking about. The most annoying part is that once I am up, I can’t fall back to sleep. If you had known me when I was in college, I would of thought that was the craziest, most ridiculous thing ever and it would never happen to me.  I purposely made it so I had all afternoon/night classes and I’d sleep in for as long as I’d want. Usually that mean waking up at 11a or 12p. To think about how much I used to sleep in really makes me jealous, but its all good. It’s all a part of growing up right? Becoming a real adult? or something like that.

Oh snap! I can’t believe I still haven’t blogged this image yet. I’ll let you all in on a little secret. I have a folder on my computer desktop called “Haven’t blogged yet” (very creative, I know). It’s the place where I dump all the images that I’ve worked on but haven’t blogged about it yet (hence the name of the folder). Usually all these images have already been on my instagram. It’s just so much easier for me to throw things up on there but when it comes time to blogging, I am a lot more thoughtful and careful with what I’m saying. So I need to keep a folder to make sure all these cool images end up on the blog. When it was time to write today’s blog post, I went back into my trusty folder and found this one!

I took it the day I left for New York. It was the only day of the week that called for cloudy/slightly rainy skies. Those are words are like music to my ears because that usually means colorful sunrises/sunsets and I was right! But the best part of this morning was that the colors lasted for so long. Probably a good 20-30 minutes of amazing color. I was surprised and super grateful to have the extra time to try to come up with different compositions. So in case you were wondering, this was shot close to Netherland Carillon in Arlington, VA. Its one of the only places I know of that you can get all three of these iconic DC monuments all lined up like this. I tried my best to use my “cherry blossom skills” to frame the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and Capitol building all in one image using the trees around me. I’m pretty happy with the results. What do you think?

Obviously, one of my favorite parts of spring time in Washington DC are the cherry blossoms and all the other trees that bloom flowers but I love the tulips too. They’re almost everywhere you go. All the memorials and monuments have tulips somewhere that you can use them as foreground. It just makes me feel so happy when I see them. These flowers in particular belong to the Floral Library that’s right at the Tidal Basin. Luckily they’re facing the Washington Monument and are perfect for a photoshoot. For example… LOLOL

Even at a young age, my mom would teach me to appreciate flowers. I don’t remember a time where we didn’t have a garden at our house. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t pose myself like that. It looks very similar to something my mom or grandma would make me do. I even have pictures of them posing me in different poses to prove that I was just there little doll to take pictures of. I’d think some people would be unhappy about that. I still love it. I think it’s so funny and it’s fun to see pictures of my grandma interacting with me. Plus, if I came up with my own pose, I’m pretty sure my tongue would of been out for this adorable moment in time. HAHAHA.

So for the first image, the camera settings were f7.1 at 1/60th of a second ISO 320. I bumped up my ISO a little more for this since it was a cloudy day but it was also fairly windy. I wanted the flowers to be still in this image so I tried my best to get my shutter faster without making it too noisy.

No clue what the settings were for the second image. I’m confident that it was shot on automatic camera though. Noob.

Shout out to my friend, Zack who had been texting me to meet up for sunset on this day. Although we were on two very different sides of the national mall shooting (I was by the reflecting pool and he was at the US Capitol), I would of never have gone out on this day if it weren’t for him. It’s funny because we were texting each other pictures of what we were seeing in the sky the entire time. Once the color actually broke through the clouds, it was dead silent between the both of us until it was all over. LOL.

So I was sitting by the reflecting pool, mostly concentrating on the sky. But it was awesome because these little kids came up next to me with crackers and were feeding the ducks. *note to self, always bring crackers when taking pictures* So my attention went from the sky to getting the ducks in the foreground of the reflecting pool and Lincoln Memorial. I got some pretty cool shots which I’ll post later. Next, I’m not sure what happened but I turned around to see that the sky behind had really blown up. I mean you usually see the sunset colors behind the Lincoln Memorial, but all the action was behind the Washington Monument right at the WWII Memorial. Luckily, I had some time to set up a shot. But it didn’t last long. I’m glad I was able to capture what I did.

Camera settings for this shot was F5 with a 15 second exposure at ISO500. I was using my Ice neutral density filter for this one so I was able to capture the saturated colors and any people who were in my way were blurred out. The only people you see were the ones who were standing there for longer than 15seconds.