location

Getting ready for you …

beauty, location, Nude

In some dark and deserted house I created this series together with Roos. She bought the house but it is still empty. I wanted to create a little story-line, so I asked her if I could photograph the process of first getting undressed and then getting all dressed up and ready for her partner …

somewhere in Belgium, on a cloudy day.

Thank you for watching, if you would also like a set of intimate images from yourself, for yourself or surprise someone else, please ask, I’m sure I can help you out!

For those interested, all images approx 1/100s at f/2.5 and ISO320 except for those in the hallway, shot at 1/13th. Canon R5 with Sigma 50mm f1.4 – developed in Adobe Lightroom

The skippers wife – Lazy morning

location, Nude

This is a selection of images I made in the master bedroom of a skippers barge. It was cramped, I had literally no place around the bed, it was dark, it was everything you fear for as a photographer, but it was nicely decorated with authentic elements, it was cosy and heated and I had a very willing model. (Sahri Nimi) As you might have noticed before, I love working with light, and I prefer too little light over too much light, how strange it may sound.Enjoy this wake-up moment, the skipper is having a beer and the lady of the house … errr … boat is enjoying a lazy morning.

enjoyed it, pls subscribe to my mailing list by clicking the triangle on the bottom of each page and fill in your email address. As an apprentice photographer you might be curious about my settings: I use a full frame Canon R5 camera, Sigma 50mm lens at f/2.8 and ISO 1000. Shutter speeds between 1/50th of a second and 1/250th. If that is of interest to you, you might also want to take a look at my Patreon page where you’ll find a full behind the scenes video of this session there.

When I look back I suddenly realize that all these images (and a lot more, I admit) have been taken within one hour of time. … Efficiency 😉

how about a game of pétanque

location, Nude

Images always have a little extra when there’s a little storytelling involved I think.

I had this magnificent garden at my disposal and then I -per accident- found a set of pétanque balls, you know, the game that originates in the French ‘Provence’ where you have to aim heavy metal balls at a little ‘piggy’ ball. …

And that was that, I had my story • how about a game of pétanque •

thank you Sofie for being my perfect model that warm and sunny day.

 

thanks for watching!

Ludwig

another lazy Sunday morning session. + BTS Video.

beauty, Behind the scenes Video, location, Nude

hi there,

please enjoy with me these results from another ‘lazy Sunday morning’ session I did with Alisson this time. Below you’ll find a link to the behind the scenes video of this particular session.

 

you wanna see how the session looks like, behind the scenes:

check it out here, you’ll need a Youtube account, as it is 18+ and it won’t play outside Youtube:

 

 

 

the beauty of available light – workshop results

location, Nude, Workshop

Hi there fans and followers,

I’m pleased to be able to show you some results from the individual ‘available light – art nudes’ workshops I gave last summer. It seems a long time ago already. …

The location proved very well suited for a range of light situations and with some creativity we managed to turn a ‘standard’ bed and breakfast location into a perfect photo location.

Model of the day, the always beautiful and elegant Riona Neve (http://rionaneve.com/)

Remember you can be part of this too, If you want upgrade your ‘available light’ portrait skills,  please drop me a line trough this page 

In the coming weeks I’ll post some images from the second individual workshop day, with Violaine as my model.

all the best,

Ludwig

A little bit of fashion … the sequel

Analog, beauty, location, people, photo gear, portrait, street, Uncategorized

remember these: … A little bit of fashion ? Those were all taken a couple of years ago in Brussels, when I met Erika Albonetti for a morning session. They were shot on film with the Rolleiflex twin lens reflex I have been cherishing for a couple of years now.

Time for a new ‘working collectible’, (although you’ve seen some results before with this camera here). The Fujica GW690ii, with a fixed 90mm f3.5 lens. Nicknamed the Texas Leica, it handles more or less like a Leica, but then one for big hands 😉

See the comparison with my Fuji X100f here, a big chuck of camera:

It is a viewfinder camera, but then in the medium format class, the negatives are with their size of  6×9 cm also huge in comparison with the X100f sensor size. (14.66 times bigger area)

This large format gives a narrower depth of film, so even with relatively closed apertures you still get narrow sharpness and softer backgrounds.

Like a lot of analog camera’s of older age, the Fujica has the shutter built into the lens, not in the camera. The shutter is a leaf shutter, a bit similar like an aperture, so opening from the center of the lens. The shutter speed is to be set on the lens as well as the aperture. focusing is manual and the viewfinder proves to be a lot more accurate than the matte screen on the Rolleiflex.

The camera itself is very simple in operation, there’s only a switch to be set to the right type of film 120 or 220, two shutter release buttons (one on top, one on the front side) and a film advancing lever (which you need to crank one and a half turn for a complete transport). There’s no built in light meter and no electronics at all, despite its rather modern looks and recent built year(1985), that’s rare. It has a built in frame counter (counts one unit per 10 frames) on the bottom of the camera. If the counter says 10 it has shot 100 frames. It also came in 6×7 (GW670) and 6×8 (GW680) film formats. These camera’s are well known for their robustness, with a fixed lens and so little things that can break, that seems logical. It weighs 1440 grams. It is frequently sold on Ebay, for prices ranging from €400 – €700.

As said before, focussing is a lot easier on this camera than on the Rolleiflex or for what its worth with the Voightlander Bessa I also have and which has the same film size but only a metering scale on the lens. With the Fujica I get every frame to be sharp (if I pay attention)!

Altough I still like the square format more, I’m ok with this 2×3 aspect ratio which we all know from current digital reflex camera’s. The number of shots per roll gets more limited though (8 in stead of 12) and thus you even need to be more attentive for each shot.

The images were made in Brussels, with Sofi ka, an Ukrainian model traveling Europe on a regular basis. We had a walk in Brussels in the morning, enjoying beautiful light in the city.

I shot this film in colour (Kodak Portra 160) and then another film in Black and white (see below). One film, alle shots: Sofi Ka in Brussels.

All negatives are ‘DSLR-scanned’ and converted to positives with Negative Lab Pro in Lightroom.

I also shot another film, which apparently was a gift from someone, and after further investigation by Ilford, the film turned out to be from 1992 … it came out all mottled and speckled, including the backpaper frame numbers in the negatives 🙁  bummer, although some people seem to appreciate the artistic qualities of it. …

Mjeah, maybe with a little bit of sepia colouring and some vignetting 😀 let me know what you thing

that’ll be all for today, thanks for reading!

Ludwig

 

 

 

Another lazy Sunday morning – self induced posing

beauty, location, Nude, people, Uncategorized

As you might have seen I hosted two private ‘available light art-nude’ workshops in July. I had rented a flat in the historical centre of Ghent for a couple of days and I had two different models coming in. My second day participant wanted to find out how he could enhance his story telling abilities trough images. I had Violaine as a model (currently also on the front page of my website) and one of the sets we did was the ‘lazy Sunday morning’ set, in which I had Violaine improvise and pose without instructions, I had done this before with models I worked with multiple times, and I knew these images prove to be very genuine and ‘real’ looking. The idea behind it is that when you simply observe your model during her daily routines, you’ll get your story without having to invent one. I was not sure how Violaine would (re)act, but she wonderfully expressed her ‘lazy morning feeling’ over the course of about half an hour, without me or the participants’ need for intervention in the form of posing instructions or imposing our ideas. I had my participant move freely about the bed, and took the opportunity to grab a series of images from different angles at the same time. I think it was a very good experience for both participant and model, and I think the images are great.

The images below are of course a selection of the shots made during this set, and selected to convey the idea we were after, but they all came naturally thanks to Violaine’s non posing qualities.

Please scroll down to the end for this weeks ‘specialty’ 😉

 
















 

 

Attention please!

Now for the specialty of this week, from next month on, I’ll offer one free photo session every month* to you, my audience.
• The nature of the session (portrait, fashion, glamour, nude …) will be your choice entirely.
• These sessions will be either studio or outdoor sessions, digital or film, to my choice.
• The first session will be scheduled on Wednesday afternoon September 1st, and then every month after that on the first Wednesday of the month. Count for two hours, always in the afternoon as I eventually want to be able to shoot with available light.
• If you want to participate in a free session, send me an email at ludwig-at-ludwigdesmet-dot-com right away. First come first serve. Your subject line should read ‘free photo session’.
• Don’t be shy, you don’t have to be a model, you can bring a buddy if you’d like, and I’ll make sure you get some wonderful souvenirs, for free!
• Open for women and men, but only for adults.

*The session will result in a uncertain number of images, digitally delivered in a watermarked version, available for purchase if you’d like that.

Lily plays pingpong

Analog, erotic, location, Nude

Some of you may or may not know the series of children’s illustrated books about the life of tiny (no caps), a little girl going trough all kinds of adventures, domestic or somewhere in a near/far garden.

It was very popular at the time I was a kid, and very beautifully illustrated. Titles were very varied but always started with the name tiny, check out the titles below on the www and you’ll see what I’m talking about. They were largely translated and distributed worldwide.

tiny op de boerderij (tiny on the farm)

tiny vindt een poes (tiny finds a kitty)

tiny doet aan sport (tiny does sports)

tiny viert feest (tiny has a party)

 

and that inspired me to do my own series of images, with a girl named Lily (Lilith actually, but to make the story complete I call her Lily) In my stories Lily is not the overly enthusiast girl from the original series but a ‘nothing ever happens here’ version of her, sometimes showing boredom or unhappiness. I made this series during the summer workshop week in August 2019, Lilith stayed overnight and we had an hour left before the participants would show up. I used the Rolleiflex TLR to make these shots. Enjoy!

• Lily cleans the workshop •

• Lily goes  cycling •

• Lily feeds the chickens •

• Lily gets firewood •

• Lily plays ping-pong •

• Lily makes firewood •

• Lily helps the plasterers •

• Lily gives water to the vegetables •

hope you enjoyed viewing this little fun series as much as we did making it, and sorry for not cleaning the dust speckles.

thanks to Lilith Etch for being my ‘stand-in tiny’

see you soon,

thanks for visiting,

Ludwig

Relaxing at the pool

beauty, erotic, location, Nude

Another series of images I did with Riona Neve last summer, the one and only model shoot I did this summer, in between two periods of lockdown there was not much time and I was very busy finishing off the studio room …

We had this beautiful modern house with swimming pool at our disposal for the afternoon, and started with some classy images with long black pants and a black blazer, paired with the inevitable sunglasses of course.

Riona

beauty, erotic, location, Nude
This is Riona Neve, Riona has received some pieces of furniture when I left my previous studio space, and in return she offered me a day of modelling. I’ve put her on an old carved wood box, don’t know how old, but old, genuine, not the kind of fake stuff you can buy in your latest webshop. The image was taken in a house I do not own, but I was granted access to it because I have a good relationship with the owners. Riona’s husband joined us on the shoot. They had a light dinner at my house and then we enjoyed a warm afternoon at the Photo shoot location. In this spot, I found I had perfect light.
…
Facebook and Instagram think I need to cover up the nipple’s of Riona, as well as the intimate parts. …
I think the human body is worth to be seen as it is, without the censoring that is forced upon us, artists and models.

On the carved wood box:

 

 

and a bonus image because you took the effort to come look on this page

Strolling trough Paris with the Rolleiflex – B&W

Analog, location, street

some images from last summer.

all taken with the Rolleiflex 3.5 TLR on Ilford film (FP4 and HP5plus)

• too hot for Uber •

• Split interests •

• Follow the guide •

• The Hoop •

• Are we lost? •

• A goodbye moment •

• The gang •

• Tagging on command •

Soon I will post some images of Paris in colour, taken on Kodak Portra 160, a première in my film-photography career! Stay tuned.

Thanks for watching,

Ludwig

Sahri at the swimming pool – film

Analog, beauty, location, people, portrait

always fun to combine digital and film photography, and get my ‘working collectables’ off the shelf again. This time I shot a roll on the Rolleiflex, and one roll on the Voigtländer Bessa 6×9 folding camera. The latter is even more difficult, as it has no matte screen to focus on, and a very tiny visor that ‘remotely’ gives you an idea of the framing of the shot. You might find a dust spot here and there, oops. I have the films developed in a standard photo lab, and then scan them just the way I scan my B&X films, with the Canon 5Ds and 100mm macro lens. I use Negative Lab Pro for converting them to positive, but I need to find my way around in that program. It’s good but I don’t feel I have everything in control yet. Rolleiflex images first, the square ones, then the Voigtländer images.

Both films Kodak Portra 160, enjoy!

 

Julia on film

Analog, beauty, erotic, location, Nude, portrait

when I met Julia in Brussels, the weather was really dull, but I shot some film images anyway. Dull weather is technically less challenging than the harsh sun, at least if there is sufficient light. I had no excess light but could manage to shoot the film at box speed, with the widest aperture of the Rolleiflex, f/3.5 … rather tricky on the focussing, but some of the images came out really well. Hope you like them. Shot on Ilford HP5 Plus

Julia Yaroshenko on the balcony, in the series of hidden gems 2019

 

thank you for watching and be sure to check out this blog next week, I might have more interesting images coming up

Ludwig

 

Sahri at the swimming pool

beauty, location, portrait

I did a call for locations in August last year, stating that I needed a beautiful location with swimming pool, in a private garden. I received 4 offers in a couple of hours 🙂

I have picked the one that seemed best suited for the occasion, and I got a doggy model as a bonus. The models did great together.

Model: Sahri Nimi, Jack, location disclosed 😉

thanks to the owners of the location, for providing willingly access

in the series hidden gems from 2019: Jack and Sahri at the swimming pool.

 

Remember, all images are available as a fine art print, send me an email if you need any more information, and … see you next week!

Ludwig

 

Workshop Lingerie with available light – results

beauty, location, personal tips & tricks, Tips and Tricks, Workshop

Same as last week, you’re getting spoiled, aren’t you 🙂

Some results I managed to capture during my own workshop Model/lingerie photography with available light. Models during this workshop: Riona Neve and Sahri Nimi – behind the scenes video at the bottom of this post.

All images are available as a fine art print, inquiries please send me an email.

Hidden gems 2019, workshop Lingerie with available light

behind the scenes video on my Youtube Channel

thanks for watching, make sure to come by next week!

Ludwig