Author: ludwigdesmet

50+ ‘the Age of Beauty, the Beauty of Age’

Nude, people

Als primeur, een post op mijn blog in het Nederlands.

Ik krijg vaak het commentaar dat het gemakkelijk is om mooie jonge vrouwen op een mooie manier te fotograferen, maar dat ‘eens op leeftijd’, dat toch niet meer werkt.

Daarom ben ik een paar maanden terug begonnen met een nieuw project, ‘the Age of Beauty, the Beauty of Age’, waarin ik 50+ dames fotografeer op een vergelijkbare manier als ik met jongedames doe. Ik kreeg hiervoor al enkele dames voor de lens, maar ben op zoek naar meer kandidates hiervoor. Ik wil die in principe ook pas naar buiten brengen als ik een reeks klaar heb. Vandaag maak ik hierop een uitzondering, om het project wat een boost te geven, maar ook omdat ik net een getuigenis binnen kreeg die zo mooi is dat ik dat niet kan laten (met toelating uiteraard)om die te laten lezen. De foto hoort bij deze getuigenis, en lees vooral zelf de woorden van Amélie, onder de foto:

‘Of ik het zag zitten om mezelf bloot te geven, letterlijk dan’… daar kwam de vraag van één van mijn beste vriendinnen op neer in mijn mailbox . Een bevriend fotograaf was begonnen met een mooi project voor vrouwen van onze leeftijd, ‘Age of Beauty, the Beauty of Age’,…

Zij had het aangedurfd, het was een unieke belevenis zei ze. Ik las de tekst met uitleg van de fotograaf en hoorde haar ervaring en dacht in eerste instantie ‘dit durf ik niet’, zoals de meeste vrouwen denken als ze op een leeftijd gekomen zijn waarbij het lichaam niet meer is wat het ooit geweest is…

Wat ben ik blij dat ik mij heb laten overtuigen! Na een eerste gesprek met Ludwig wist ik dat ik dit avontuur met volle vertrouwen kon aanvangen, het was nu of nooit, en enkel met deze fotograaf. Ik had het met niemand anders aangedurfd.

De avond voor de grote dag kroop ik vroeg in bed om er de volgende dag op mijn best uit te zien, maar om middernacht zat ik alweer beneden… toch een beetje stress?

Die dag is er eentje geworden om nooit te vergeten, een unieke dag die steeds een glimlach op mijn gezicht tovert als ik eraan terug denk. Alles is zo vlot verlopen, ook al wist ik helemaal niet hoe eraan te beginnen, deze fotograaf maakt je rustig, laat je genieten van jezelf en de lens, soms vergat ik gewoon dat hij er was.

De resultaten zijn nog mooier dan ik verwachtte, heel kunstige foto’s met oog voor kleine details. Ook hier en daar een foto die mij wat confronteerde met mijn minder mooie kantjes, maar ik ben wie ik ben en zo sta ik ook op de foto’s, puur en soms een tikkeltje speels, een tikkeltje ondeugend 😉

Mijn man was enthousiast en wist meteen welke foto hij op canvas aan onze muur wilde. Ik twijfelde wel even om hem op deze plek te hangen; zichtbaar voor iedereen… maar hij hangt hier prachtig en wij zijn er beiden fier op!

Aan Ludwig en zijn vrouw: jullie zijn beiden prachtige mensen die een heel mooie kijk hebben op het vrouw-zijn, bedankt voor deze fijne dag. Ik had dit waarschijnlijk nooit gedurfd toen ik jong was en strak in het vel zat, maar nu kom ik met plezier nog een keertje terug.

Aan mijn vriendin, bedankt om mij een stukje van mezelf te leren kennen dat nog ergens verborgen zat, zonder jou had ik deze mooie ervaring nooit gehad.

Aan alle vrouwen met een jaartje meer, niet twijfelen, eens kennis maken, genieten van een mooie dag, in ruil krijg je een mooie herinnering voor de rest van je leven en een boost voor je zelfvertrouwen!

Zo hoor je het ook een keer van een ander, dus dames, jullie zijn welkom !!

groeten,

Ludwig

 

Bretagne in 20 pictures

landscapes, travel

I had a nice stay with my wife in Bretagne (France) this summer, and we surfed on the hot summer days that covered all of Europe in July. A lot of sun and a cool sea-breeze made the weather perfect for hiking and discovery. It was the first time I was in Bretagne, and I have discovered a different part of France, one that I haven’t met yet. Here ‘la douce France’ is to be taken literally. The people are nice, the landscape is beautiful and divers, the food is excellent, with fresh oysters and mussels and fish as much as you like, the climate is moderate and tourism is present, but not overwhelming. We haven’t hurried to see all the main attractions, but we really plunged into it, enjoying all our senses.

I have photographed mainly with the Fujifilm x100F, all images except two were shot with this camera. I have liked working with it a lot, it takes some time to get used to the fixed focal length, and sometimes you would want a little wider view, or a little narrower, but I didn’t matter too much.

I have chosen for a 2:1 image aspect ratio, I like it for landscape, sometimes I would even choose 2.5:1, but for the sake of uniformity, I kept one aspect ratio in this series. This also meant skipping some images that were shot vertically. For people who have never visited Bretagne, I hope this series will be a good appetizer for your visit. Enjoy, feel the sun and the atmosphere, smell the sea and hear the seagulls scream!

For those who wonder where these images were taken, you probably have recognised the Mont-Saint-Michel, one of the ‘incontournables’ (must see things), all the other images are taken west from there, up to Plougrescant along the cost, except for the last image, which was taken at Lanvellec, showing a part of the garden of the ‘Château de Rozanbo’.

Oh, and I had a hard time selecting only 20 images, there’s so much more to see 😉

thanks for watching, comments or questions always welcome!

Ludwig

taking care of the vegetables

beauty, erotic, location, Nude

the tomatoes need a lot of water in this warm weather don’t they?

second shooting location after • flight club • the garden of the AirBnB where we stayed. Michelle is ready to do some role playing, and gladly gives the gardener a hand.

• taking care of the vegetables •

thanks to Michelle Alba for being my model on this very hot day, in a very hot glasshouse.

thanks to Bas for lending me her garden as a shoot location and for the hospitality all over the weekend.

Ludwig

Flight club

beauty, erotic, location, Nude, people

somewhere in the Netherlands, I could say, they have a very particular flight club, with nude hostesses and so on, … but alas, it was only for this single occasion that Michelle posed nude at the gliders hangaar.

I had no clue as to where to shoot, just up to two days before we had our meeting. I started looking on Google Maps, just to get an idea of the surroundings, and to look for an eventually interesting spot. I could find three possible locations: 1. the place where we stayed (I accompanied my wife to The Netherlands since she wanted to take a weekend course there) had a big garden, with a very funny glasshouse (to be seen in the next image I will be posting) so that could become interesting. 2. There was a very beautiful garden and antique glasshouse at a event location just next doors. 3. I noticed a gliding plane terrain at about 5kms distance from where we stayed.

I didn’t really have to contact the first possible location, I would see it the next day, and could find out that in fact the glasshouse was particular, and interesting. The event location responded me within the hour that they had a marriage event the day I would meet Michelle, so this was a no-go. The flight club chairman responded me that he was ok with the idea, and that I could meet him the morning I had my appointment with the model, but that it would be difficult to shoot after midday because then they have a lot of flights going on. We met at 11:00 am and shot till about 1:00 pm, first clothed, on the runway with a parked plane (film photography, so not yet available) then nude at the hangaar. We had a willing assistant during the time of shooting and nobody else seemed to care. The assistant also figures in this image, together with two other club members. His daughter used to work as a striptease girl in theater shows. They are chatting about the club and I thought they might make an excellent backdrop. Michelle didn’t care either, as long as nobody started staring or taking pictures with cellphones … All went well, we said goodbye afterwards and went on shooting in the garden after that.

• flight club •

a huge thanks to the chairman and the assistant of the flight club, both requested not to mention the name of the club for privacy reasons.

Ludwig

Turbulence and Crisis

exhibition, landscapes

hi all,

just a little message to announce a next exhibit participation, a group exhibit with the Zinkae photoclub in Ghent. This time I will be exhibiting not my usual subject ‘women’, but I will propose two series: ‘Turbulence’ and ‘private’ … Private will show a limited series of 3 images about our tendency to shielding ourselves from the outside world, in order to protect the personal living environment. Fences, doors, security camera’s, hedges … etcetera. …

‘Turbulence’ will show 4 images reflecting a personal view on landscape and nature photography. The inherent structures in nature, that seem largely turbulent on a small scale, lead to a certain order on a bigger scale. Disturbed fractals versus clear equations, and how these structures show themselves to us. Brought to you in delicate black and white images.

TURBULENCE III

the invitation for the exhibit:

 

then what about Crisis?

Well, things are getting tough, and If I want to continue my work as I do now, I will need to cut some costs, or find a new form of income. I am currently working on it, but of course your help would be welcome too. That’s why I have included a Paypal button on the welcome page. You can donate any amount, all is welcome, (I chose 5€ as a standard) and it will help to pay the costs of exhibiting, models, film, travel, …  this is the button: (this one is active too 😉 )


The exhibit in Sint-Laureins is still on and running, so you can go take a look, every day, 10-17hrs, till september 2nd.

 

 

BOOKS Page added to this website

beauty, erotic, Interesting Links, landscapes, Personal Pictures

hi,

for your convenience, and for those who like my work but are at this moment not in the possibility to hang a print of a nude woman on the wall of their living room, my work is also available in book format.

I added a page in the main menu, BOOKS where you can order any of my books, I currently have three listed on my page, if you click further to my Blurb bookstore, you may find four.

The books are well printed and well finished, I picked the best suited paper for my work, and a book size that is handy for all.

A present, to someone else or to yourself, an add-on to your book collection, a source of inspiration, or just some support for me, all reasons are good to go shopping today 😉

 

thanks,

Ludwig

 

when things get messy … preview

beauty, Nude, people

Charisse was here again today,

and people who have been following my or her work, know that this is about 100% guaranteed to deliver some stunning images.

We took benefit of the hot weather we have in Belgium these days and made a little mess with some leftover clay I had from the walls of the boys’ rooms on the attic.

Charisse is always in for a little experiment and I had been talking about the clay shoot earlier, so she sent me a text message a couple of days ago ‘about the hot weather and da da da  … ‘ . A hint not to be misunderstood.

this image is just a preview of the preparation, a preparation that I gladly took as a photoshoot occasion …

it got even messier than this, and much better as well 😉

make sure to come again soon, for the rest of this magnificent series, again.

The exhibit at Godshuis Sint Laureins (B) has started last Saturday, make sure to visit it if you can, more details in my previous post.

have a nice day,

Ludwig

new exhibit coming up

location

It’s official, I’ll exhibit the entire summer vacation in the magnificent building of ‘het GODSHUIS’ in Sint-Laureins. Great architecture, great pictures, I hope you find the time to enjoy this exhibit, it is open from June 30th till September 2nd. Every day, from 10am till 5pm. (except when there are large events in the building, you can find their event calendar here: http://www.godshuis.be/nieuws/ )

I will show 21 images, some never exhibited, some bigger than ever before.

You can combine the exhibit with an overnight stay at the location, they offer excellent rooms, there’s a restaurant, wellness, (also bookable without room) tea-room etcetera. The village of Sint-Laureins is also very well situated for a bikers out, or a walk along the canal.

Be there!

 

Landscape photography with a Fujifilm x100T

landscapes, location, photo gear, tests

A couple of weeks ago I was with another group at Côte d’Opale in France, for teaching landscape photography to adults in the KISP.be photography program. I wanted to pack light on gear to be able to focus on helping out my students and still be able to take some pictures myself. This made me decide that for this weekend I would only take my small Fujifilm x100T, and my lightweight Sirui tripod, bought for motorcycle traveling. The camera has a 16Mp APS-c sensor and a fixed focal length lens of 23mm or 35mm equivalent if compared to full frame viewing angle. It has a relatively wide f/2.0 max. aperture, and closes down to f16. I have it equipped with the optional sunshade and an extra hand-grip. The hand grip features the same dovetail grooves for arca-swiss compatible tripods as the camera itself does. So the grip bottomplate becomes the tripod plate.

This post will not focus on pixel-peepers image quality, rather on user experience.

Images down below.

THE GEAR USED.

Fujifilm x100T with MHG-X100 grip and the additional sun shade from Fujifilm. I use a custom strap from an old light-meter if I remember well.

Sirui T005-KX, featured also in this article, where I commented on using it with my DSLR. As you can see the tripod has a two segment center column which I mostly do not use, for extra stability. I have not needed the extra reach on this trip, and by omitting it, the ballhead has greater stability.

PRO limited gear set:

First and most important difference with a complete bag full of landscape gear is of course weight. Taking with me a professional range full frame camera body and a couple of quality lenses + my Berlebach tripod is a physical challenge not to be underestimated. 5kgs of photo gear, 3kgs of tripod, a bag of at least 1.5kgs and some food and drink supplies easily brings 10-12 kgs on the scale. The x100T and the Sirui mini tripod together weigh about 1.5kgs. A light backpack with some water and food supplies and I’m off like a butterfly to the cliffs of Cap-Griz-Nez. So this was for me a huge benefit, I never felt tired physically caused by dragging around gear.

Second benefit, and directly linked to the first one of saved weight, is manoeuvrability on difficult terrain. When dealing with a heavy tripod, with an expensive camera + lens, with a backpack that has the remainder of your gear on the back, you are limited in movements, in places where you can get safely with all your gear, in where you want to drop your bag to get out your filters, or just another lens, … With my lightweight setup I could take camera and tripod in one hand, leaving my other hand free for climbing and rock balancing exercises without limitations.

 

CONTRA limited gear set:

What I missed the most was the variation I have in focal lengths when travelling fully equipped with my DSLR setup. Although I mostly have fixed focal length lenses (24mm – 17-40mm Zoom – 50mm – 100mm – 135mm), they still allow me great variety in compositions, in bringing out distant landscape details or in compositing out disturbing elements. I can go much wider (17mm vs 35mm is a huge difference in viewing angle) or much narrower if I need to. I never missed a lens longer than 135mm in my landscape work. (This could be solved by adding the wide angle and the telephoto extender lenses you can buy for this camera, but they are rather expensive, and you loose some portability)

Next most missed was the Tilt-Shift lens I traditionally use on landscape trips. I often look for foreground elements in my compositions, to create depth in a wide angle view. The tilt-shift lens gives me the ability to get extreme depth of field in such cases, without the need for closing down the aperture too much. It also allows me to make stitched panoramic images with a horizontal viewing angle comparable to the 17mm lens. If I would need to limit my DSLR setup to one lens for landscape, it would be this lens: Canon TS-E 24mm f3.4 L II. (I’m afraid this cannot be solved with this setup)

Next thing I missed is the ability to do automatic bracketing, at least I couldn’t find it in the menu, I since have looked it up on the internet and it is perfectly possible to do AE bracketing in 3 exposures. Shame on me, I should have read-the-f*******g-manual. So I ended up doing manual bracketing for most of the time. (little tip, always use bracketing, even when not needed. the time needed for bracketing exposures is minimal compared to the time needed to find your composition, setting up your tripod, setting the focus correct, etc. …  different exposures will give you more choice for development afterwards). (Solved issue, the bracketing function is under the ‘drive’ button. I looked trough the menu’s only.)

Another thing I missed (because I don’t have it) is the ability to use filters on the Fujifilm x100T. The camera has a built in ND filter (3 stops) but this is not enough for flatting out water surfaces or for streaking cloud movements over a long distance. It does help to lengthen your shutter speeds a little when shooting at dawn or at dusk, but it is not enough in most situations with broad daylight. This could be solved by investing in a filter system for this camera, there are several systems available on the market, like for instance the LEE seven 5 system. (there are two pictures below with the sea flattened out, they are taken late in the evening at a shutter speed of 30 seconds.

that’s about it, the rest was comfort 😉

Oh by the way, there’s a lot of ranting going around about these system camera’s and battery life. I had two batteries, did not finish the first one the first day, which lasted from 6:31:51 am. (first picture) till 22:31:58 pm. (last picture). Of course I did not take a massive amount of images (92) because my main task is teaching, but in landscape photography I never do.

some images of our trip, with the occasional student in the frame.

I cropped all images to the same 2×1 ratio, I kind of like them that way.

 

Thanks for viewing, if you have any questions about this article, please comment, and on a side-note, after seeing my images of this weekend, I might sell this camera to buy its successor, the x100F, so if you are interested in buying mine, drop me a line.

Ludwig

 

 

Ra

beauty, location, Nude

Ancient Egyptians worshipped Ra or Re as the Sun God, he was one of the most important gods in the Fifth Dynasty (25th-24th century BC).

 

• RA •

The obelisk depicted here is one of modern ages (1968-1969) and was built in two ‘size’ stages, because the landlord found that the first one at 27m was not high enough. So he did aks the builders to build a second concrete formwork over the existing one, and ordered it to be 36m in height, which makes it final size bigger than the Paris’ Luxor obelisk at the place de la Concorde!

The obelisk is situated near Brussels, and was erected because the landlord loved the sunrise, but since he had changed his main room to the west side of the castle, he no longer had the sunrise in his room. That’s why he also wanted a large sun disk on the obelisk.

The park was meant to have a large water surface in front of the surface, but the owner died before completion of the surroundings and the lake was never realised.

thank you for reading,

Ludwig

 

DANCE ! – shooting some dance movements in the studio

personal tips & tricks, photo gear, Tips and Tricks

Hi there,

last weekend I had a meetup with Lisa and her friend, both dancers, she’s more into the classic dance, he’s more of a break-dancer.

I will show you some images, but I would also love to talk about the technique that I used to get to these.

first some images:

nice hey 🙂

thanks to both athletes, they had a good exercise session.

How is it done?

We wanted both the movement, and a good image of the static phase. I rarely work with flash but here it is absolutely needed.

this is the setup: I have one studio flash with large softbox on the left of the scene, providing the main illumination of the stationary phase. (flash) I have a second studioflash at the right side of the scene, providing a rim light at the moment of flash. I have a third flash on the camera, Canon does not allow to fire remote flashes at the end of the shutter time without a dedicated Canon flash. This is a Canon 580EX II and is used in manual settings at 1/64th of full power. It is merely used as a ‘master’ or ‘trigger’ for the studio flashes, synchronising on the second curtain, this means just before the shutter closes. I have available light from the right side, just behind me. (outside light, strong enough to make the motion trails during shutter time, but not to strong to overly brighten the environment. This is actually better done with a strong continuous light like a 500W halogen spot, but I don’t have one.)

The camera is set to bulb, on a tripod, and with a cable release. This is all part of a relatively simple preparation phase. 😉

Now comes the tricky part, how to get just the good shot? Simple: You activate the shutter time by pressing and holding the shutter button, let the movement roll and close the shutter when the movement has finished. Simple? Yeah, think again. Some movements only take a blink of an eye before they are gone, finished, over and out. For some movements you need to have the flash triggered exactly at the end of the movement, and you have to be aware that there’s a little ‘delay’ between pressing the button and the actual start of the shutter time. My best images came with shutter times between 1/5th and 2/5th of a second!

to illustrate the process of the Bulb-shutter time:

Easy, isn’t it. Well, both dancers have at least 20 times repeated every move, before I could define the right starting moment, and the right moment to stop. Then 10 more times to get the one lucky shot we needed. Maybe I’m getting old, or slow in reactions. 🙂

Make sure to have your models wear dark clothing, otherwise you’ll get a lot of messy blotches from the movement phase. You want them to wear light coloured clothing at hand or feet, unfortunately they did not have white gloves. The brighter, the more visible the movement trail will be.

 

some mistakes:

no movement visible – too little continuous light, only the flash fixes the image

cable release gets stuck, way too long exposure

start too early, left foot clearly visible in starting point, stop also a little too late, left foot is coming down already.

start and stop too late, left foot is almost up at start, and way over the best position at stop.

thanks for reading, it was fun to do, and I learned a lot about dancing

cheers, come back again soon.

 

Ludwig

 

Vita! for Life!

beauty, erotic, location, Nude

Let’s celebrate female beauty and the joy it brings us.

Let’s celebrate life and the good things it brings us.

 

My model of that hot summer day in april was named Vita, which stands for ‘Life‘ …

I have taken a lot of pictures with her, so more will follow, see it as a little preview.

Often I have to convince professional models not to pose, or in any way not to pose as a fashion model would do. I love it when they are not trying to seduce me or the camera, but in stead they manage to be just themselves, fierce, self confident, somehow unattainable women, living the life and enjoying their own bodies.

oh, and I have another thing to celebrate, I just saw today that in the last 365 days I had over 100.000 visitors on my site and blog. It was for the first time I noticed it. Thank you for being so present!

new behind the scenes video – Charisse black lingerie shoot

beauty, Behind the scenes Video, Nude

Hi there,

I published a new video to my Vimeo and Youtube channel today, you can see it here:

or here:

this is a condensed summary of a 45 minutes session of the shoot day I did with Charisse, you can figure out some of the light situations I make, see which poses get it to the final selection of images, etcetera. Learn by looking 🙂

for your info, all images were shot at f1.6, ISO100, Shutter speed 1/80 or 1/100s.

 

you can find more details about the reflector panels I use ‘by clicking here’

thanks for watching, if you liked the video, you might as well give it a thumbs up or subscribe to my channel(s)

thanks,

Ludwig

two for the price of one …

Analog, location, Nude

well yes, sometimes things don’t go as expected, certainly when shooting with an old camera and film, you are having no instant feedback and surprises occur 🙂

there is no automatic film advance stop, so you have to look for film frame numbers in the dark red window at the back of the camera. Clearly I saw something that wasn’t there.

shot with a Voightländer Bessa I 6×9 film camera, with Kodak TMax400 film, in a small roof flat in Leuven (Belgium)

Model Yana Mood, click for bigger version

 

the camera: