Sunrise at Beaver Lake

Last weekend, Gram and I went to Beaver Lake at 7:00am to photograph/draw the sunrise. I took a lot of photos, but this was the only one that turned out acceptably. I have recently been thinking about my photos, not the composition, but just the quality in general. I feel that I jumped into the world of DSLRs a little to quickly and forgot to get the basics completely down. I know how to use aperture, shutter speed, and ISO settings, but I don't fully understand them or what the can really do for my photos if I get it down and use it to it's highest potential. I decided to do some research and I'm spending time learning the basics again. I've discovered subtle things that impact photos greatly. I knew that a lower aperture (higher f/stop) would create greater depth of field and a slower shutter speed requirement, but I never used it according to the scene. For example, when shooting stars, you don't need a great depth of field because to the human eye, it's all so far away that it seems two dimensional anyways. If I was shooting something like my last picture (the Cathedral), I would want a greater depth of field to really capture all of the details in the photo to make it feel like you're there. There are lots of other examples but I don't want to bog you down. Here is a photo that I took before fully understanding the basics. It's a pretty basic photo.

The Basilica Cathedral

On Wednesday, Sam and I went downtown again to walk around. We were looking for something to do when we passed the Roman Catholic Basilica near the US Cellular Center in downtown Asheville. I had never been inside before so I suggested we take a peek! As we opened the door, we were flooded by warm lights and silence. A little less than half of the seats were filled. We quietly sat down and just listened and observed. All of the structures inside of the cathedral were perfectly symmetrical and it looked like it would make for a wonderful photo. Roughly ten minutes into the service (mass), I pulled out my camera and walked toward the back of the room. As I placed the view finder against my eye, a man taps me on the shoulder and politely requests that I postpone my photography until after mass is over. Understanding his wishes, Sam and I exit the building and continue walking around. We loiter around the fountain area downtown and then head over to Dobra Tea and get a snack. This took about an hour and a half due to the abnormally long wait for our food and tea. Afterwards, we are heading home and so we stop by the church again to see if the service had ended yet. Fortunately, it was, and so Sam looked around while I shot some photos and then we left.
In the photo below, Sam is sitting on the left.

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!

Light Painting Photography

Last week, I went up to the Blue Ridge Parkway with my dad to do some astrophotography. Unfortunately, we got TOO elevated which put us in the dead center of a cloud, blocking out all of the sky. However, it was high enough up that there was minimal light pollution, which makes for some good long-exposure shots! Instead of doing astrophotography, I decided to try out light painting photography for the first time. Light painting is basically where you set you camera to a long exposure (I used 30 secs) and you wave light around in front of the camera to make patterns and trails of light. Since it is so dark and you are constantly moving, the camera only catches the light and whatever the light illuminates. In the picture below, I used the highest f-stop my lens would allow (12-22mm ultrawide), an f4 aperture. I set my exposure for 30 seconds and got my dad to stand still for that time (which was quite difficult considering it was literally 12 degrees up there). I waved the light around and this came out.

Ghost Town

This photo is a composition of seven different photos, stacked using Adobe After Effects. I shot at f4 with a 1/10 second exposure using my wide angle lens at 12mm.

Gram and I were in the river arts district a few weeks ago trying to find something to shoot. We couldn't find much, and so on our way home, we saw an interesting bridge with a place to sit in between the two lanes. I shot about 10 photos in a row with continuous shooting mode on, and stacked the photos in After Effects. What I originally intended on happening was for the photos to look normal and just be stacked, but what happened is that the light apparently combined and created extreme highlights. I think that this looks really neat but I needed to crop out half the photo because the rest of it is just white. It looks like there are four clones of Gram and I like how everything is just a little transparent, the car being the most. It's a photo that is unique to my typical styles and I really enjoyed having this produced!

P.S. I edited very minimally beside lowering the exposure just a bit (the brightness) and adding some grain to create more texture in the spaces that are just white.