Personal Pictures

Pictures I took myself.

Film portraits with the dropped Fujica GW690

Analog, people, portrait

sometimes weird things happen … or not

I dropped my Fujica GW690 a year ago 😱 it smacked to the ground and as a result the front lens element got all skewed. I was in quite a shock.

I still shoot with it though and it keeps producing excellent shots. I would have expected some kind of tilt effect happening but I see no faults in sharpness or anything like it. I shot a film of Kodak T-Max recently and all shots came out flawlessly. The film has been developed in Bellini Eco Developer and camera-scanned, edited in Adobe Lightroom. Thank you for watching!

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

Eros was in the studio – the sequel

erotic, Nude, studio

With Sahri I always have a good time, she’s gained full confidence, we always have a good laugh during the sessions and most often the results are very good. We met again a couple of weeks ago (see my previous post) and did a couple of different things. This series made me remind of an earlier session we had done, titled ‘eros was in the studio’, hence the title of this post. Less slippery than the previous set, and in a slightly different light setup (just trying to work with different approaches every time) but still very intimate.

I hope you like them, I thought Wednesday was a good day for a mid-week pause 😉

it has been a while, the previous set of ‘Eros was in the studio’, you’ll need to scroll down quite a lot to find them, so under the images I’ll post a link to the original series.

Hope you liked them, if so, here’s the link to the previous set: eros was in the studio – NSFW please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below. Thanks!

the full package

assignments, beauty, erotic, Nude

The full package …

I’m not really good at commercializing my art nude photo sessions and I’m not really sure I would want that either. I’m afraid I would quickly evolve into ‘what works well for every body’ (literally every body) poses and tricks and loose a bit of my creative freedom and explorations. Hence, I don’t do a lot of assigned sessions.

But once in a while people find my website and call me for a private session, as in this case, I’ll call them Mr and Mrs S. for privacy reasons.

For a couple of days, maybe weeks, we had an ongoing conversation via WhatsApp about the style and content this young couple was looking for and we agreed on a session date somewhere last summer. We looked together for some location options, and they chose a nice-looking place that included an exterior swimming pool and garden area.

They rented two consecutive nights in this beautiful B&B for the occasion, so in-between we had a full day available for the session. This left some room for additional session time if needed.

They also wanted professional make-up service and I looked for someone that was available and not too far from the shooting location.

Already some days before the shoot the weather announced ‘unstable’, with shattered showers and some sun. Prepare for the worst I thought, and I rented some extra light sources (led panels, color variable)

We met at 09:00 am, Mrs S’s make up was already ongoing and whilst I could move all my stuff into the house. I had a nice conversation with Mr S. He was about to leave to do some sports and have lunch with a friend, he wanted me to feel completely free and did not want to interfere in the session.

Mrs S. and I worked together all day, first started with some clothed shots to get warmed up and for her to understand my way of communicating for poses, then shifted to lingerie and nude shots, making full use of the entire place. The fact that we had an entire day available meant that we could develop a lot of different sets without running out of time. We had a bread lunch and coffee together and worked on afterwards within some new scenarios. At about 03:00pm Mr S. came back and then we worked on some duo shots, The session ended at about 05:00 pm. The weather had cleaned out and the swimming pool became very inviting, I left the couple to enjoy the rest of the evening in private.

After the session I came home with close to a thousand digital images, from which I selected about 150 really good images for them to choose from. Normally for a session of about 6 hours I provide 30 retouched images, with the option to choose more at an extra cost. They picked out 100(!) images. The session included a free ‘pillow book’ but on top of that they ordered a beautiful luxury ‘coffee table’ album containing the entire selection of 100 images.

I love this kind of assignments, the ability to tailor-make the entire session to the customers’ demands and delivering great products afterwards.

For privacy reasons I cannot show recognizable images, but these images already give you an idea of the results achieved. If you feel like having yourself photographed, please do contact me. I know it may seem daunting, but it’s a first for about everybody, and I don’t bite. I don’t even bark 😉

Why I prefer women surprising their partner than vice versa

beauty, Nude, studio
Men often have the wildest fantasies about photo sessions.
They see their partner as the next playboy centerfold model … (if that still exists?) which of course is good and proof of how attracted they are to their partner …
With the best intentions they order a gift voucher from me for a nude photo shoot to surprise their partner, already excited by the idea (fantasy goes wild)  …
pwoaa, pwoaa, pwoaa … anticlimax (you know that sound from any TV quiz when a wrong answer is given)
Perhaps the lady is not at all ready for such a photo shoot, and certainly not if she has not chosen to do it herself, or if she has not been able to choose the photographer with whom she wants to collaborate. She feels forced, insecure, worried, even a little angry maybe …
Then as a photographer you get the difficult task of meeting the expectations of the man on one hand (he paid for the session and expects the best of results) and on the other hand guiding the lady in a photo session that she is not really ready for … no fun.
I personally prefer to get the lady on the phone: “I would like to surprise my partner with a spicy photo shoot of myself, is that possible with you?”
“Yes, ma’am, of course it is, shall I go over the options with you?” and off we go, with a guarantee of success, a happy, excited lady and most certainly a surprised, happy and exited partner.
So go on ladies, be brave, get that phone and call me now, you’ll be surprised how good you look on photo’s, your partner will be going wild you came up with the idea and you decided to do this for him (or her).
For the privacy of my client I made the images below ‘private’ 😉

 

The male nude, long awaited by female fans but an absolute premiere for me

Nude, studio

I admit, I am attracted to women more than men, that’s nature I suppose.

On the other hand, I rarely had the request for doing male nudes, until now. For me this was a premiere and an interesting experiment. Although I felt a little lost in what to photograph, and in the poses to work on, still I think we did a good session together. My model wanted to stay anonymous in the images, so that was a limitation to take into account.

I worked mainly with a low-key approach, but it was a continuous search for angles and light settings. We also experimented with some body lotion, and although I found it too greasy it did give different results.

Happy viewing, pls leave me your thoughts and comments below.

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:

 

 

 

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

Thank you!

beauty, Personal Pictures, studio

Thank you,

I hope that everybody is fine and in good health,
thank you to my public, thank you to my audience, loyal followers and fans of my personal work.

2020 was not an easy year, with Covid measures that have made it largely impossible to photograph people outside the bubble of one’s own family. In the meantime, when regulations were a little less strict, I was able to schedule a number of sessions, both personal work and private sessions, and that was good, I experienced a lot of pleasure doing them, because photographing people is and will remain my favourite activity.

The Covid Lockdown also has had a positive effect. During the first lockdown I rolled up my sleeves and built a separate room for a studio within an outbuilding in my garden. The studio is now ready for use, 4.5mx 8m and 3m high, one side black, the other side white, offering a ton of possibilities. A cozy wood-burning stove has also been installed so that the space can be used in both summer and winter.

My private clients, from fine art prints and private photo sessions, as well as my commercial clients, for product and architectural photography, make it possible to continue financially. Thank you again for that.

Of course I look forward to the opportunity to have more contacts again, I would love to put workshops back on my schedule and I also get a lot of demand for this, but I do not really see possibilities at the moment. Time will tell whether this will be possible again soon. For those who are interested in this, please be patient until then.

please don’t hesitate to comment and share your thoughts trough any channel, instagram, facebook, my blog or email …

Namaste,

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.

New Studio – first results

Nude, projects, studio, studio light setup, Tips and Tricks, Uncategorized

I have finally decided to create a studio space in an old factory building that is situated in my own garden. The building is not really in good shape, but it is more or less weather-proof and this should be enough to keep me running for the next couple of years.

What I did: Within the volume of the first floor (approximately 8 x 12 meters) I created a smaller volume, approx 4.5 x 8 meters that I have completely ‘re-finished’. I got rid of the roller shutters in the windows, I re-plastered the brick walls with natural clay, I put up a new wall in timber structure and re-painted the whole thing. I just finished a large double barn door this week. This ensures the poly-valence of the space. In case I need to bring in large items, that’s perfectly possible.

I wanted to keep the space as simple as possible, and I divided the long side in two halves, a dark side and a bright side. The dark side is handy if you want to have full control over your light, with virtually no light spill off the walls/ceiling. The bright half is interesting whenever you are looking for fill light on your subject.

There’s still a lot to be done, but last week I could do a first shoot in this new space, and I’m very glad my client Sofie has approved to use some of the images in this blog post. The session took about 3 hours and  I’m sure you’ll be as impressed with these results as I was. Sofie never posed before, she’s a natural! Thank you Sofie for your enthusiasm and your confidence!

Some of the images were taken with studio light (studio flash) and others were taken with available light only. All were taken with the help of ambient music 🙂

First a series with a single flash head, standard reflector with 20° grid aimed at a white wall. The grid limits the width of the light beam and creates a nice falloff on the wall. It creates a rather hard shadow. The flash light overrules any available light there might be in the space.

I found them to be very fashionable.

We continued with the same setup, single flash but I’m using another wall as background.

Below the white wall reacts as a perfect reflector for the models face. The shadow gets harder the closer the model comes to the wall.

As I have a dark side and a white side, I have one sharp black/white edge. I used a styrofoam board as a second white surface behind the model. Single flash with 100 cm octa softbox.

From the garden shed I recovered this old work bench, cleaned it up and it will now serve a second life as studio prop. Full of character, a ton of possibilities and well contrasting with the female curves. Two flash heads left and right, small square softbox 66 cm each. By removing the subject from the back wall I can keep the background perfectly black.

Another setting at the dark side, a single softbox slightly higher than the model, model laying down on a black trunk. Using the light as a feather light over the body. Styrofoam panels on the opposite site give just a hint of volume in the shadow areas.

And then at last, over to the bright side again, using available light only, and with the help of the white wall for fill light I get a beautiful overall light.

And last but not least, did we have fun? Yes, of course, we had a lot of fun.

Sofie wrote me in a message afterwards ‘Ludwig, thank you for making this such a wonderful experience … ‘ . Well, I guess that’s what this is all about. Making women feel great about their body, giving them the space they need to build self-confidence and then, as a privileged witness capture this beautiful moment in images.

Thank you for reading this blog post, If you are a photographer and interested in building your own space, I hope you’ve learnt something. If you are thinking about booking a shoot session yourself but you are not really sure what to expect, here you have it. In an afternoon’s time, you can have yourself depicted in beautiful, sensual, intimate images and never forget that moment!

 

 

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