Nathalie M. at the Mansion

Still working hard at the mansion, doing natural beauty shoots whenever I find the time.

I never prepare these shoots I must tell, I prefer working into the magic of the moment, and taking instantaneous decisions based on the conditions of that day, based on the mood I am in, and the model I am working with. The results are varying of course, but always a true result of a spontaneous collaboration. The mansion is still being renovated, and some places are unusable, while others are near finished. I can’t but express my feelings of joy for being able to expose my work in the mansion soon. I will try to show the images in the same place they were taken, to make a direct link with the building and the atmosphere that reigns in every room.

enough talking, here are the images. Thank you Nathalie, for being my model that early morning, thank you to the owners of the place, for letting me in.

All images with Canon 5D mark II and Canon 50mm f1.4, Canon 85mm f1.8 and Canon 135mm f2 L. Processing in Lightroom 5.

Thank you for watching, come again soon!

ludwig

How to find a good location – shoot with Karen

beauty, Personal Pictures, personal tips & tricks, Tips and Tricks

Some people ask me about these locations I work in.

I have been into urban explorer photography (also called urbex) for a short period of time. I din’t really get far into this. Not that it didn’t please me, but modeling work pleases me more, because you work together with at least one other person to a result. There’s not much conversation possible with an abandoned building or a landscape. (another discipline in photography, that I still do from time to time)

In urbex, most of the locations are very abandoned, and you might get in with permission at rare occasions, but most of the time, you just don’t ask permission, don’t know who to ask to, or just simply don’t bother. This includes the risk of being ‘discovered’ by the owner, the housekeeper or even the police, … (never occurred to me 😉 )

As soon as I started doing model work, I convinced myself that it would not be a good idea getting the police behind my back whilst my model is working on the next intimate pose, or while she’s changing clothes, or some other awkward moment during the shoot. Finding locations is not easy, by far not. It has to be accessible, not too far driving from where you as a photographer are based (preferably), give plenty of light possibilities, give nice decorative possibilities etc. … And you need to get access at the times you want to shoot at.

My one and only advice in this matter is: Try to find the owner of the place, contact him or her, try to make a mutual beneficial agreement. Most people have shown great willingness whenever practically possible. I now have 4 different locations I regularly shoot in, and all 4 owners were very quickly sympathizing with the idea. I mostly offer free photo work – to some degree – if they would need any, be it for family or business matters.

This is what happened with the location of the shoot I’ll show you pictures of in this post:

While riding my motor trough the flemish ardennes (a part of our region called so because it resembles the ardennes – but actually it is more beautiful) I see this beautiful complex that seems like an old cloister, nursery school, orphanage, … and I decide to halt and look if I can find signs of people around.

After peeping trough some windows, knocking on the door, some kind of housekeeper gets his head out on the second floor, talking to me in a foreign language. (Being a Belgian citizen, I do speak and understand quite some languages, but clearly not this one) Impossible to talk to him, but he’s able to point me to a information panel hanging on the wall, that contains different phone numbers of the owner of the place. I have called the owner a couple of days later and she said:

“sure, no problem, I have been a model myself in my younger days. Just call me whenever you want to get in. When there are no groups (the location is rented as a summer camp house for big groups) you’re welcome.”

Easy as that, and something similar happened with the mansion, the old villa, the warehouse and the storage building. So, just ask, don’t ask for the impossible, be polite and be willing to offer some service in exchange. After that, be clear in your communication (when you want to shoot, for how long, with how many people, etc. …) and you’ll have a good chance for a lasting relationship.

One last remark about sharing locations with other photographers. Well, I’m very reluctant about that, and mostly for one reason. It is not because the owner granted me permission to shoot in a certain building, that he/she is also interested in receiving other photographers, or in being bothered by a different photographer every day, … Besides, the exchange offer they get from me, they won’t need it from another photographer, don’t they? 😉

So, enough about locations. I worked with Karen for the first time, first time in this new building too. The sky was cloudy, so there was really not much light inside. It required some searching, trying a lot of different angles, but we managed to get some really nice images after all. Karen told me afterwards “the pictures are really superb”. Thank you Karen.

All images taken with Canon 5D II at ISO 200 (except one at ISO 100), Lenses used in this selection: Canon EF 24mm f1.4 L II, Canon EF 50mm f1.4, Canon EF 85mm f1.8, Canon EF 135mm f2.0 L. All natural light.

happy viewing

Any questions about this post, just ask!

Ludwig

Eline V. at the mansion

beauty, people, Personal Pictures

hi, some new pictures from a new girl I worked with at the mansion. She came with her Uncle, who’s actually studying photography where I give classes, so I can present you some behind the scene’s pictures as well. Eline has only little modeling experience, and that is what I like the most. These models are easily posable the way I want, and don’t fall back into standard poses they’ve learnt with other photographers, ore standard poses from the fashion world. All shots done at the mansion, my favorite working location for natural beauty shoots, with a big thank you to the owners of the house!! I found this location with a bit of luck and a good word from one of my customers. I had worked in the building just in front of this one, when the mansion got sold to new owners. My customer introduced me, the owners saw my work, and a few agreements later, they granted me access to this magnificent place. Thank you Eline, for posing, thank you Gino, for the behind the scenes images and for driving Eline to Ronse! I’m sure you can couple some of my images to the behind the scenes shots 😉 Oh, and all pictures taken with natural light, some of them with the aid of a large reflector (thanks again Gino!) come again soon, I’ve photographed Karen at a new location, which I will be calling the orphanage!

some BTS pictures: (you’ll notice that my clothes are really smudgy and dirty on these BTS pictures. You have to know that the mansion is undergoing a full rebuild on the inside, and is thus covered with a layer of dust, from the cave, up to the attic. As a photographer, I tend to lean against walls, go flat on the floor, hang over staircase railings etc. . That’s why.) The very start of the shoot, warming up.

Me preparing the bath for Eline, Eline not sure what to think.

Eline taking a bath with clothes on. 😉

at the top floor of the building, the attic rooms. Dark but beautiful structures on the walls, me working with my Canon 24 mm f1.4 II L for a close up wide angle shot. In the garden, under the beautiful patio building.

Sharon low key studio test shoot

beauty, Personal Pictures

Hi,

I launched a call for models on my Facebook page last week, for some test shoots in my studio.

I’m not really fond of studio work, but that might probably be because I’m not familiar enough with it, so time to work on my skills.

I’m not really into white studio backgrounds, and brightly lit models, so I went for some kind of low key approach. I feel more like keeping some mystery in my images

Sharon was one of the models that volunteered, she’s from the same town I live in, so we can easily fix a render-vous (a get-together) whenever time allows.

I had worked with her in these shoots: Model Sharon – fall and model Sharon I think we both learned a lot since. I’ll leave that for you to judge.

So Sharon was here last thursday afternoon. We worked some different settings, for about 2 and a half hours. I worked a lot with indirect light on the side facing the camera, and just some backlight directly on my model.

The light setup for the first 2 images looks as follows:

One softbox light left of my subject, as high as my light tripod goes, aimed towards the model and covered all around by a black cloth to prevent light spill on the background. The background is a black roll of paper, not white as indicated in the diagram

One big reflector panel at the right side of my model, simple styrofoam, aimed towards the model thus bouncing back light of the softbox.

Gridded and partially covered (with a cloth) torch to the right, aimed at the background, for the soft spot of light on the background.

Model is sitting on a wooden plank, suspended by two shelve racks I normally use to pile up my studio gear.

I used some additional black panels and black cloth to prevent too much light to bounce around in my small studio.

The images were all taken with Canon EOS 5D II and 85mm, 135mm and 50mm Canon lenses. Settings vary.

Don’t forget, all images are clickable for a bigger version.

the other images are with different setups, all based on the same theme.

I will probably study this subject further, so models can always sign up for a studio session.

Take care, and come again soon,

Ludwig

Eline at the Warehouse prt II

beauty, Personal Pictures

The shoot with Eline resulted in so many beautiful images that I decided to make two posts for this one.

The warehouse where we worked is one of my favorite locations in Ronse. It offers plenty in lighting situations, large rooms, corridors, staircases and a mix of contemporary and classic designed furniture (for sale 😉 ). It’s certainly worth the visit. I would like to thank the owners big time for letting me use it for my beauty shoots from time to time.

A word about the processing. I’ve been developing in both color and sepia tinted images. I tend to go more towards the black-and-white images for the more intimate shots, where my subject shows more tenderness and a gentle look. The fashion style images ask more for a color rendition. I don’t know if you agree with this. Just my feeling.

for the technical part, all images have been done with available light. Only the first image with the blue pull-over has an added flash light (highlights from left).

Anyway, I hope you like the images. Thank you Eline, for coming to Ronse and bringing half your wardrobe with you.

Thank you for visiting my blog. Come again soon!

ludwig

All images clickable for bigger size!

Eline at the warehouse prt I

beauty, people, Personal Pictures

ok,

I love shooting pictures, and I love feminine beauty. In the last year I managed to bring those two things somehow together, and I love this combination even more.

I have had a shoot with Eline before, remember Eline at the mansion

Although not a professional model, Eline is was very motivated during our first shoot together, and that made me want to shoot with her again. This time I asked her to think about ideas.

We worked in a different location this time. A very beautiful warehouse in my neighborhood, situated in a historical building of the beginning of the previous century.

I will not write too much words about the shoot. The cooperation was great, I think Eline is a beautiful woman, and she expresses confidence, strength and sensuality all by herself.

The space we used for these images is big (about 10 m wide and well over 15 m deep) On the short north side there’s a huge glass wall, floor to ceiling, which is a great soft light source. I used a bare flash from the other side to create some hair light in some of the images, or to create some fill light for the backlit images.

Overall I was very pleased with the results, I hope you like them too. Thank you again Eline, for being my model on this cold morning.

Thank you for watching. I’ll post the second part soon.

Free shoot results

beauty, Personal Pictures

Hi,

on ‘International womens day’ I gave a free shoot away to my like’s on FB (click here for my FB photography page).

The person who won the shoot gave it to her daughters Kim and Anoek. They are both not really familiar with shoots, but they have done it before.

Only natural light, a single reflector (try-grip) some pushing and pulling in Lightroom 4, no other fancy tricks.

Anyway, on the first of april, we shot for about three hours in two different locations. Natural light means I have no flash lights to set up, no big reflectors to hassle etc. … this works fast!

This telling, I just have to give this advice to all those eager to make better images themselves:

If you are still working in JPG for making pictures, then you should really consider switching to RAW format.

For me the biggest improvement in image quality is two-fold:

1. Switching to a full frame camera (from Canon EOS 450D to Canon EOS 5D mark II) which was huge, in terms of better noise control when working on higher ISO values, better color rendition and larger contrast range.

2. Starting with RAW images in stead of JPG’s. That suddenly allowed me to really work on the entire data captured by the sensor, which means you can push and pull exposure values a lot more, without losing much image quality or details etc. …

Nude Studio shoot – NSFW

beauty, Personal Pictures

Hi,

although I prefer natural light settings, I recently did a studio shoot. The one thing I love about studio is that you can create light exactly where you want, and omit light were it is not wanted.

Typical usage for this is when you want to obtain a low key effect. Only put the light where you want it, and keep everything in the darker tones except some highlighted details.

I’m not really experienced with this, but I love to experiment with it. Especially when I have a willing subject to experiment with.

I got a bit inspired to do this shoot when I saw the latest book from Andreas Bitesnich ‘more nudes’. He however, is really really experienced 😀

This shoot is done with two monobloc lights (Elinchrom 500 BRXi) and some simple styrofoam boards for directing the light, and a black paper background.

At the left a monobloc flashhead with small softbox (60x60cm) at the right a gridded monobloc flashlight, 50% covered with a simple black cloth, because it was too prominent and I couldn’t go to a lower setting. I still wanted some DOF play so I didn’t want to close down aperture too much either.

Two styrofoam boards keep the light within a small area, and prevent flashlight spill on my background.

I hope you like the images!

take care, and come again soon!

ludwig

The best possible add-on for your dslr.

beauty, Personal Pictures, photo gear

I give evening classes for adults, teaching them the very basics of photography. They learn about aperture, shutter speed and iso settings, the basics of composition, light metering, Depth of Field, how to handle their camera etc. …

In about 5 months, they become a bit more aware of the ins and outs of digital photography.

Soon, after a couple of months, the same question comes up in every group: ‘I’m willing to invest in some more equipment, what should I buy?’.

You should see this question in the understanding that most people bought a DSLR (digital single lens reflex) without any technical knowledge about photography, and mostly they have followed the sellers advice of buying a body and a kit-lens (or two kit-lenses).

These zoom kit-lenses generally have a maximum aperture of about f 1:4.0 closing further down to f1:5.6 on zooming.

Especially when we talk about DOF (depth of field) and the relation between the aperture setting and the span of depth of field, my students quickly realize that with their zoom lenses with relatively small maximum apertures, they will never get the result they want.

A bigger aperture setting gives a more shallow depth of field, this means that the bigger your aperture is, the blurrier the background will be. An effect often sought after, to make the subject ‘pop up’ from the background.

So my advice mostly is: ‘buy yourself a good portrait lens, that is a fixed focal length lens, 50 mm for a camera with crop sensor, 85 mm for a full frame camera. It’s cheap, it’s lightweight and small, you can shoot in low light conditions, because the big maximum aperture lets in a maximum amount of light, and it will allow you to work creatively with the shallow depth of field it can give you.’

The best value for money you get with a 50mm f1:1.8 lens, which will cost about 120 € in Canon and Nikon.

Some examples with my Canon 50 mm f1:1.4

see you soon for more pictures!

Take care and happy shooting!

Ludwig

Lisa at the Mansion

beauty, people, Personal Pictures

Lisa came with her mother to the shoot. She’s only 15 years old, and I’ll never shoot a 15 year old without the approval of at least one of the parents. (written, signed contract). She was fun to work with, and presented a very adult attitude when posing. We had some great laughs, something between mom and daughter, and a very good shoot. Direct sunlight is generally not my favorite, but I tried to avoid too strong contrasts during the shoot. I did some different post processing on some shots. I hope you like the results. There’s more to come, so come again soon!

Take good care, and come again soon!

Ludwig

Shoot with Laur.

beauty, people, Personal Pictures

Laur was kinda unsure if she would fit into my ‘natural beauty’ portfolio.

We worked in the Mansion for about two hours, in different clothing outfits.

All natural light, with my trusted Canon 5D II twins.

I’ll leave it up to you if she fits in my portfolio. Personally I think we made some great photo’s together.

Oh, and happy easter to all of you.

thank you for watching, take care and see you soon!

ludwig

Queen of Sheba: Honorable mention.

beauty, contests, exhibition, Personal Pictures

UPDATE:

The image has been awarded an ‘Honorable Mention’. Out of almost 500 images, 5 received this title.

It will be digitally sent to the Gallery in Vermont USA, it will be printed by their services and exhibited in the upcoming SKIN exhibition.

for people interested in visiting the Gallery:

DARKROOM GALLERY

12 Main St.

Essex Jct., VT 05452-3132

Hours: Monday-Sunday 11:00-4:00 and by appt.

(802) 777-FOTO (3686)

My picture ‘Queen of Sheba’ (don’t ask me where I got the name from, it just came to me like that) has been selected for the exhibit contest ‘SKIN’ by The Darkroom Gallery in Vermont USA.

Allen Birnbach, famous fine art nude photographer himself, and juror of the ‘SKIN’ contest found my work to be good enough to be in the final selection for the exhibit.

Now try to find out how I get my printed work to Vermont. Anybody going on a trip to Vermont in the next few weeks?

about the image, it was taken on dec. 30 2012, in one of the locations I use for my beauty shoots.

It features a nude woman, besides from the shoes she’s wearing behind a thick velvet curtain. Her body shape is clearly defined, but it show’s no recognizable details. The prolongation of the head shape made me think of some kind of queen with a headpiece.

Image details: Canon 5D mark II, Canon EF 24 mm f1.4 II, ISO 200 – f1.4 – 1/125 sec.

thank you for looking,

for the website of mr. Birnbach, Juror of the exhibition contest: www.birnbachfigureworks.com

I have some beauty shoots planned in the near future, so see you again soon.

take care,

ludwig

Jessika at the Mansion + snowshoot.

beauty, people, Personal Pictures, Uncategorized

Hi All,

some two weeks ago I had Jessika coming over to Ronse.

We had worked together for a shoot at Hallerbos, april last year, and she wanted to shoot again, in a different setting, with different clothing, etc. … Jessika didn’t feel totally comfortable about not wearing any make-up, and she didn’t like the first results of the shoot.

(women tend to be very very self-critical, if you asked me)

Anyway, I think we made some nice, moody shots at the Mansion, but then we got outside, and she put up some make-up 😀

It was during that week that we had a lot of snow here in Belgium, so we combined a shoot at the Mansion, with a wintershoot, on the same afternoon. I had timed quite well, so we got outside with the sun already very low, about an hour before sunset. I had a very nice backdrop this way. I only have one lens capable of doing this, without getting over-the-top flares anywhere in the image, and that’s my Canon 135mm f2. Although some images received some additional contrast in post, overall the images came out very well straight from camera. I hope you like them. No reflectors used this time, only natural light.

In one shot, I added some extra digital snow, to emphasize the cold character.

happy viewing, see you soon!

Sara at The Mansion

beauty, Personal Pictures

Hello there,

Another shoot at The Mansion to show.

Sara seemed a bit stressed when she arrived. She has some experience with shoots, but my kind of shoots is a bit different than others, because:

1. I work alone (no assistants, no make up artists)

2. In a strange environment (no studio setup but an empty house)

3. They get to me for a rather intimate kind of shoot (they all respond to a moodboard where some nudity and a lot of sensuality is shown.

Nevertheless, we got a good shoot, Sara got cold in the end, and thats visible in the goosebumps appearing on her arms and legs. Luckily she didn’t get a cold afterwards.

As usual, we worked throughout the entire house, ground level, first level and the attic. On the attic, the plastering from the ceiling has been knocked off, and now the wind is blowing freely under the roof. For some pictures I installed an off camera flash to lighten up a bit the entire scene, because circumstances were really not good (too little light) and I got too many risk for unsharp images.

good viewing! All images can be enlarged by clicking them.

Ludwig.

Eline at the mansion

beauty, Personal Pictures

Hi all,

I’m continuing my series ‘at the Mansion shoots’ for I still am able to use the Mansion as a shooting location. I hope this will last some more time. Another big thank you to the owners of the house.

As you all know, the mansion is being restored and updated to modern standards. This means the house is changing about every week. Some two weeks ago we had this room completely packed in thin plastic foil, to prevent the woodwork from any damage during the plaster renovations.

About Eline, we met trough Facebook. She had seen my moodboard in my call for models and was very happy she could get a shoot with me. We never met before, never spoken etc. … During a short ‘warming up break’ we were talking about her studies and my professional career and about my wife studying again, and guess what, … after a few moments we found out that her mom is in the same class my wife is in!!! No need to tell that the atmosphere got even better after that.

I think Eline is really beautiful, she’s got a strong facial expression, long wavy hair and a tall, slim body. As a photographer I couldn’t wish for nothing else. She’s easily ‘posable’ and she took a lot of pleasure in dancing with the plastic foil at the end. Thank you Eline for this pleasant shoot!

About the shoot. It was very dark that day, but I still wanted to shoot only natural light. I had a trigrip reflector with me, but we only used it on the first part of the shoot (with the lace curtains) I love to work in different places of the house, to create some different looks in every shoot. All images shot on Canon 5D II with my Canon lenses.

I hope you like the pictures, come back again soon, as I have some more shoots to publish! thank you for watching, thank you for reading. All images click’able. 😉

ludwig

Developing beauty – LR4 – example.

beauty, Personal Pictures, personal tips & tricks, Tips and Tricks

Since september this year I started giving Lightroom 4 classes. I have a group of 18 students, and they manage quite well.

Although there’s quite a lot to learn, most people with a normal level of intelligence, and some motivation and a basic knowledge of computer usage must be able to learn all the techniques available for developing in Lightroom.

The biggest problem however is to get a feeling about what decisions to make when developing. Actually what steps to take to improve an image.

Without claiming that I can give you a perfect example of a perfectly developed image, I would like to show just an example of a image development I did just recently.

I chose to turn it into a black and white image, and used some tinted processing. This is all very individual, and you should always adapt to your personal choice. That’s why this is the most difficult thing to learn I guess. It’s by no means an exact science.

First of all maybe a small light setup diagram, to show you how this image was lit.

Left you see the light diagram. I have two monoblock heads with soft boxes headed straight at my model. (one octa and one smaller square box) They are about equally powered, both on the lowest setting to allow for a large aperture setting. EXIF: ISO 100 – Canon 85 mm f1.8 at f4.0, 1/125 sec. Canon 5D II.

You can see two behind the scene’s pictures from my friend Michel. In the middle You see me metering light at the approx spot where my model will be, and at the right you see me working with the model. -Click for bigger image-

I have fairly evenly lit images with this setup, with the white wall bouncing back a lot of light to the shadow side of my model.

Next image shows the four stages of development:

Left: straight out of camera, no development settings applied in LR.

2nd: just some basic overall adjustments

3rd: Conversion to BW and split toning applied

last: final, local corrections applied

-Click for bigger image-

Some more into the details:

2nd image corrections:

I adjusted white balance to 5500 (5D II chooses 5600 for flash)

Added some contrast +20 to give some more punch to the overall image

Shadows +26 to brighten up the shadow side of the model

Clarity +15 I feel like using clarity slightly makes the details stand out more

that’s all

3rd image corrections:

I rather bluntly converted this image to black and whit by dragging all saturation sliders in the HSL to 0.

Furthermore I experimented with the split toning colors and came to this setting: Highlights hue 67 – saturation 24 – balance 0 – Shadows hue 235 – saturation 19

This gave me a rather flat (for the skin) black and white – toned image.

The Split toning (or cross processing) is a good feature, but is often used to create a wow effect on an otherwise not so interesting image. Beware of it’s use!

About the black and white conversion, the image could have converted with some more lightness in the oranges, to lighten up the skin, but I did it afterwards with local brushing.

In between these, I applied some local retouches to the face, to remove some blemishes and imperfections. I worked around the eye and just under the lips. Far from correct, but just a quick edit.

Settings: Heal, with an opacity of 66

Charlemagne-art_developing_local blemishes

and then for the final corrections. I have used different brushes, and will show them all stripped apart. Here are the brushed images for each of the corrections. Sometimes I have to search for myself what is the best setting, so some brushes may undo some previous ones. Unfortunately you don’t see the image change, since I have all effects applied on every image. This is just to show you the different area each brush is applied to: -Click for bigger image-

then from left to right, what did I apply in my brushes (local adjustment tool):

1. Exposure 0,41 – Shadows -30 A rather bluntly applied overall skin enlightenment, also applied to the hair, but there I took some away again after.

2. Exposure -0,71 – Added some extra volume to the arms and face.

3. Exposure -0,27 – Contrast 54 to give some additional punch to the facial features. (eyebrows, eyelashes and lips)

4. Exposure -0,53 To accentuate some volume in the female shapes (I’m not into plastic surgery, but this is something I sometimes do)

5. Exposure 0,70 Idem

6. Exposure 0,26 To highlight the iris a little bit

7. Exposure 0,71 To soften the eye rings

8. Exposure 0,61 To clear up the eye whites a bit.

I’ll leave it up to you if this is a better image than the one I started with. Again, this is to each and everyones personal taste. Most of my images I don’t process that much, and this took me some 5 minutes all together.

Finally some more images from the same shoot, processed in the same way. -Click for bigger image-

Thank you for reading, come again soon!

Ludwig – alias Charlemagne –

Helga Rock’n Roll

beauty, people, Personal Pictures

Helga asked me if we could do a quick shoot together. She said it could be a little rock’n roll. She brought her electric guitar and I brought a single flash and a cactus trigger.

I am lucky enough to have some locations in my immediate neighborhood. Not that they are always available, but I have at least one available most of the time.

This time an old textile factory where some rooms are empty and ready to shoot in.

first two images with Canon 24 mm f1.4 II L and the others with Canon 85 mm f1.8.

Only the first two images are made with flashlight, rest is natural light only.

Black and white conversion with LR4, as well as some minor retouching.

thank you for looking.

The Mansion Shoot – prt II – The mirror & Curtain play

beauty, people, Personal Pictures

Hi,

I promised you to post another part of the shoot today, so here it is.

This house is really full of marvelous decoration elements, so we tried to make use of them. The floor is covered up with thick plastic sheets, to protect it from damage during restoration works, so that was the only thing to avoid. some of the curtains are gone, but in this very particular room they are still there, and they offered a lot of different possibilities.

I hope you enjoy the images. I hope you are not bothered with the mild nudity in some of them. If you are bothered by the nudity, please continue here and have fun.

All images can be clicked for a bigger view.

Next week I’ll publish the last part of this shoot: The upper floor. Happy viewing!

see you soon!

The Mansion shoot – Prt I – the directors office –

beauty, Personal Pictures

A week ago I had the opportunity to shoot in beautiful mansion style house. The building is from the first half of the 20th century, and full of splendid decorative details that make for a perfect setting for beauty shoots. I had never shot there, only visited it once for a very short moment, so it was new to me.

I had Pauline for a model. We never met before. Actually her mother linked the two of us together to get a shoot organized. We discussed some things over FB about the style and the mood we would work in. I sent her two mood boards I made before: Natural beauty and clothed sexy. I’ll leave it up to you what genre the results best fit into.

Pauline has some previous experiences with modeling work. She has a well sculpted muscular body and beautiful blue eyes. We worked together for about three hours, finding our ways trough the house. It is not really big despite its appearance from the outside, and currently undergoing restoration. This made for an extra challenge to cover that up. (ladders, floors being covered with protective sheets, bags of old tapestry all over the place, tools, etc.)

All images taken with Canon 5D II, with Canon 24 mm 1.4 L II, Canon 50 mm 1.4 and Canon 85 mm 1.8. No artificial lights were used (except for the desk lamp). In some settings an extra Lastolite Trigrip reflector was used. Some minor touchups have been done in Lightroom 4. Mainly getting back highlights in some pictures and adding some contrast here and there. The sepia tinted images all got some extra contrast.

Click for a bigger view!