Downtown with the Step Bro

Today, Sam and I went downtown for around three hours, photographing and just walking around. I expected to get a lot of cityscapes, and other urban shots... however, Sam proved to be a worthy subject and I based many of my photos off of him! In the first two photos, Sam and I are at an abandoned building near Church Street. The next is just a cityscape of downtown Asheville during sunset, and the last two are photos of Sam that I took with a macro lens, external speed flash, and a portable softbox.

Recently, I have become interested in photographing extreme sports, and just any sort of outdoor adventures... specifically rock climbing and bouldering. If anyone knows of any opportunities, please send me an email at jacob.diehn.photographer@gmail.com! Thanks so much!

Christmas is in the Air!

Tonight we finally put ornaments on our Christmas tree! I always love Christmas, not because of the gifts (while yes that is awesome), but it just feels cool and relaxing. There always seems to be a warm atmosphere and the lights are the perfect shade of orange/white and it feels very comfortable. Even if you aren't Christian, I'm not, I think that you should still celebrate it! Call it something else! It is a nice time to spend time with family and think about and reflect upon the happy times and good feelings inside of you. I just hope it snows! It just doesn't seem right without at least a couple of days of snow... huddled inside the warm house drinking whatever hot beverage one might prefer.

Here, I have two photos. The first one is an ornament that kind of shows how even though some people aren't here with us right now (Sam will be soon!), that we still think about you guys all of the time. Lindsay is probably digesting some sort of strange animal's body part in the Czech Republic... but Merry Christmas to you and Merry Christmas to you, Sam.

The second photo is just a generic looking Christmas photo that I thought looked neat.

Night Sky on the Parkway

This isn't the sharpest photo but it certainly is beautiful. I took this at f4 with a 30 second exposure and 200 ISO. I like this one because if you look close enough, you can see small star trails due to the extensive exposure time. Technology has really been able to show us things that us humans can't see with our bare eyes, such as the nebula on the right hand side of the photo, and the faint appearance of a part of the milky way galaxy in the center. You can also see that I picked up a shooting star near the bottom of the photo just above the trees. I was trying to get as far away from light pollution as I could so that I could get a clear night sky, but in this photo, the light pollution in the lower right corner gives the picture better, more complex coloring. My dad drove me up to the parkway, and while we were up there (two weekends ago), it was 12 degrees! Being outside of the car for only a minute froze our ears off!