Ready for Santa

 Hope Santa likes my cookies. 

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck

Testing the Lights

 This is a test post. Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

  Best wishes for a joy-filled holiday season to all my friends!

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck

Happy Holidays!

 Best wishes for a joy-filled holiday season to all my friends!

My café art creation is based on one of my photos of the Northside Hospital Forsyth building taken on December 15, 2022. The rendering tries to convey a feeling of hope. 

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck

Glimpses

 "Glimpses" is what I call little cutouts, or vignettes, from photos. Sometimes showing the main subject more prominently, sometimes a scene in the background. I have shared some here before. Today's release over at Ludwig.Gallery serves as the source for the couple of glimpses here.

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck

Another Test - 221018

 The prior post started showing up at CafeLudwig.com after four days. How about this one.

Well, this post showed up right away. Blogger is working again.

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck

Testing - 12 October, 2022

 Something seems to have gone wrong with my prior post. 

This is just a test to make sure that posting works and that posts can be seen and found.

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck

Another selfie

 Last May my post here, "Child's Eye" showed my reflection. Well, I noticed another selfie in todays post in my project "Street Photography", albeit a decapitated one. 

This gave me the opportunity to test some new tools. 

What tools I used, I will discuss elsewhere - that's what my Toolshed site is for. Enough teasing. Enjoy.

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck

Come let's dance

 Sometimes the music just demands that we "shake a leg".

Over on Ludwig.Gallery I have been running a series of street photography selected from my archives. I came across these photos, sitting there in the RAW, unused, unseen for some eight years. 

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck

Ruby the Clown

 

It was eagle-eyed Beatrice that noticed the nametag of Ruby the Clown in a "My Street Photography" post. She said, "I have to admit that his name tag of “Ruby the Cow” was confusing and amusing." 

Ruby the Clown has brought smiles to the Peachtree Corners Festival for many years, and I photographed him on numerous occasions. It never occurred to me to inspect his nametag. So I asked him about it and he kindle informed me, "It is simply silly."

Well, silliness is part of being a clown. And that is quite apparent if you follow him around a bit.

It can be quite warm out on the street and a cooling station can be just what it takes to make a clown smile.

Besides being silly, Ruby the Clown also instructs. Here on how to make balloon objects.

A balloon sword sure can be fun.

Ruby has all kinds of pets too.

And what does he do with his pet shark? He takes him to swimming lessons, of course.

You never know what he does next! Be sure to look for him at an event near you.

So long!

And a big tip o' the hat to Beatrice for getting this story under way, and to Ruby the Clown for promptly and kindly helping out with the explanation.

[Photos from 2016, 2017, and 2018 appearances at the Peachtree Corners Festival when I was official festival photographer.]

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck

A photo from my "NOT USED" folder

 Over at Ludwig.Gallery I have a project running now for over two months with a daily addition to "My Street Photography". This is a collection of photographs from the past dozen years that can be loosely escribed as street photography. I collected the original raw files together, and these are reprocessed with my latest "style" of post-editing. Often there are near duplicates and just one of those gets picked for inclusion in the project. Those near dupes, and others that just didn't make the cut, get dumped into the NOT USED folder. 

Here is one of those photos.

I remember the occasion of this photo well. Some friends and I were roaming around Savannah some nine years ago. A haunting sound of flute music led us to a quite place where this musician was playing happily to an audience of just a few birds. I took a number of photos. This and one other had made it into my review folder for my project. It was the other one that I picked for publication. This one got the boot. Not that it is a bad photo. In fact I like it a lot. Enough to show it and tell you about it here. I tried cropping it, but the results just didn't pan out. The photo needs the context of the surroundings. It works best full-frame, just the way it was taken.

In a way this photo also demonstrates the way Ludwig.Gallery is obscurely situated in a quiet nook of the internet. Only a few close friends know about it and ever go there. Although just a few clicks away, it is out of reach by internet standards. 

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck

A Tree Runs Through It

 There are times when I think of myself as a pretty good photographer. It usually doesn't take too long before there is a reality check.

It happened earlier today as I was continuing going through a pile of photos from my archives that I had copied to a folder for my street photography project. The photos I copied had various tags that would make them candidates for this quest.

The photo here came up. I had a good laugh. Urban trees are nice and desirable, even photogenic at times. This was, however, one of those photos only suitable for a "how not to do photography" tutorial.  Before dismissing it out of hand, I decided to pull up the original folder to see if I had corrected my mistake. After all, it seemed that all would have had to do is step forward a few feet, in front of the tree, for a nice urban view. No, I had not. No other photos from near that position.

So here it is in all its non-glory. 

Go ahead, laugh at me, have your chuckle. Then go on over to Ludwig.Gallery to see my developing street photography project.

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck

Child's Eye

 ... Oh, not again! I'm supposed to take in the wonders of the world, and what do I get? That pesky photographer! With a parent egging him on, I won't get rid of him for quite a while. 

What is he up to? Will I get featured as a "window" in his Monday Window blog? Will I get into his portrait gallery? Or does he add me to his collection of  "street photography" just because we are outside? 

It might even be worse! Could it be that he is just after a selfie? ...

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck

Dreaming Tulip

 How about a little café art? Just for fun and a greeting to all my friends.

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck

Spoiled by the background

 We are always admonished to watch the background as we take photos. The famous spoiler, a telephone pole coming out of the head of your subject, is often one of the examples of what to avoid.  Sometimes, however, we just have no control of what is behind the subjects we photograph.

One of my favorite photos has been a scene of dancer at a festival with groups in native costumes from around the world. Unfortunately it was "photo-bombed" by a lamppost in the background. 

I came across the photo again today and that light fixture just overpowers the photo in my opinion. Here it is:

With a little bit of extra time on my hands, I decided that today was the day to retire that obnoxious lamp and the power lines with it.

Just a few minutes in PaintShop Pro and I had this:

Much, much better, don't you agree?

This being one of my "café art" blogs, I could not leave well enough alone and had to take another step. So her my café art interpretation:

. 

.:. © 2022 Ludwig Keck