Cottonwood in Winter Frost

Once again a treasure from Stephen Blecher. He writes:

Hello Everybody, here is a picture that was scanned from an old negative. It was impossible to make a good print directly with an enlarger, because the the density range of the negative didn't match the print paper, so the set of negatives remained untouched. I recently came across them,  and with the miracle of Photoshop I could make interesting prints. This picture was taken near Chatfield in late November, under unusual conditions. It was very cold and fog was rising from Chatfield reservoir, as a result hoarfrost formed on everything, producing a uniform coating. You can see it's not snow. Since fog was still present, the visibility was limited and the sky had no color. The overall effect is quite somber, but it certainly gives the impression of a cold winter day. (The jpeg doesn't reproduce the sky accurately).

To see a collection of photos by Stephen Blecher click the photo.

.:.

The Weekly Photo – Just Sitting Around

Not much happing after Thanksgiving and Black Friday since just about everybody is doing their part for Cyber Monday. Alright, so just two out of five are doing their shopping online, but all are enjoying the glorious sunshine.

.:.

© 2012 Ludwig Keck

Playing with Photos

For many years I have been a doodler. My dictionary defines doodle as “to scribble or draw aimlessly…”. Of course, I take issue with “aimlessly”, it has always been “just letting ideas flow”. These days I like to use a photo as a basis and see what “flows” when using tools like “Artistic Effects” in Word and other Microsoft Office apps as well as photo editing and painting programs. So it isn’t doodling anymore –  I am creating Café Art!

Here I will let you, dear reader, peek into the making of a recent opus. It starts with this photo of a young dear. It is my “Photo of the Week” – click on it to go to the post page at Gallery Ludwig.

This time I did not have a specific result in mind. I tried my usual favorites, especially the plaster painting effect that PaintShop Pro calls “Artistic Effect .. Topography”.

A number of variations later, I liked this:

The I followed another tack.

I played with many effects, made color and cropping changes and finally settled on this color pencil sketch for this week’s “Picture of the Week”. You can see it larger on the post page at Silver Canvas.

Do you like my choice? Do you prefer another one? Please let me know, I appreciate learning what others like.

.:.

© 2012 Ludwig Keck

Fall day at the Farm

The farm in this case is McDaniel Farm Park in Duluth, Georgia – always a delightful place for an afternoon stroll.

Fall Day VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

.:.

© 2012 Ludwig Keck

Fall Colors - 4

At last some of the fall colors we have all been waiting for. The weather this year has not cooperated and most of the leaves have fallen before they had a chance to show their glory.

.:.

© 2012 Ludwig Keck

Cloudy Competition

Don’t judge a book by its cover

… So goes the phrase, but when it comes to the importance of the first impression, hardly anything beats the cover of a book. When scrolling through a shopping website or glancing at the shelves in a bookstore, a shopper rarely spends more than a split second on any one book – and the cover is all there is to see.

The cover has just a fraction of a second to send the message “I am what you are looking for!” Even before the viewer reads the title or any other text, the look, the design, has to capture the attention and present the right message.

In any book project the cover design is an important task. And so, months ago, sifting through catchphrases and watchwords, the words photo, digital, cloud, pixel bubbled up as cover background features for my book Digital Pictures Basics – 2012. The subtitle already contained organize, improve, and share, and a collection of screenshots for the primary graphics had already been picked.

The background fills most of the initial view, it covers the greatest area, and so it has the most important role – it has to get the prospective buyer to even read the title and look at the graphics. It must do so by visually conveying the massage of what the book is all about, subliminally, in a split second. It was not long before pixelated digital cloud photo got the nod.

Searching my pictures for the tag clouds brought up hundreds of photos. Some were eliminated easily, others were tough choices, finally eleven made the final cut. So let’s bring on the candidates.

Then came the hard part, picking the winner. Some were judged “too thin”, some “too dramatic”, “too busy”, “too Rubenesque”. One great candidate lost because it was too reminiscent of the SkyDrive logo; this book was about more than just sharing in the cloud, and in no way sponsored by Microsoft. Some others just didn’t look strong after being pixelated.

Well, enough suspense, one made it into print:

.:.

© 2012 Ludwig Keck