Photographing the Harley

Personal Pictures, personal tips & tricks

As an end of study assignment for my studio/object module (photography courses at kips.be (Ghent Belgium) we had to propose an object to photograph.

amongst the possibilities were ‘perfume’ or ‘jewels’ …

I wanted to do something more ‘tangible’ and proposed a Harley Davidson motorcycle. My mentor could choose if he categorized it as being a perfume or a jewel. I guess both of the categories apply.

The Harley is not mine, its a customized 1981 Electra Glide from a friend of a friend, and hardly recognizable from the original. François is the owner of the bike.

I had surfed a bit for inspiration too. There’s not so many studio shots of motorbikes on the internet, here are a few:

I had made some preliminary studies in 3D rendering (thats still my main job). I had discussed with my teacher that it would be best to lit the subject indirectly, with a large soft box from above. Since we don’t have softboxes that big at school, I had to come up with something else.

and then the ‘thing’ arrived.

I had shown François where in the school we wanted to shoot the bike. (I had three other classmates doing their work in the proper school studio, so I had to move out to another class) And he just drove it trough the hallways of the school. All students were awake at once on this early saturday morning.

So, what’s next? You see me setting up the tripod and camera.

Checking on the framing, remote shooting with a portable mac, to be sure not to touch the camera in between shots. (I wanted to be sure I could compose different shots together in photoshop afterwards)

Me setting up a flash light for indirect flashing on the cloth. The cloth will serve as a huge soft box area.

The setup, seen from the backside, you can see the tripod in the back:

A big thank you to Serge (classmate) for these splendid behind the scenes pictures!!!

These are the original shots used for composing the final image. Note the shot with the white paper on the floor, for extra light from underneath.

For those interested, the shots were made with the Canon 85mm f1.8 at f10 shutter speed 1/125, ISO 100. Three 600Ws monoblocks at 3/6 upto 6/6 power, indirect on the cloth above.

then the photoshop layered file for compositing. I named the layers in english, for your convenience (dutch is not really an understandable language)

and then at last, the finals, click to see them bigger:

A big thank you to Anita, for bringing me in contact with the owner of the bike,

a big thank you to my assistants of the day – classmates Stef, Serge and Geert,

a big thank you to the owner of the bike, François, for driving about 60 miles to the studio, on a cold morning.

hope you’ve learned something.

take care, and see you soon,

Ludwig

shooting the Verdon with the Canon Powershot S95

landscapes, Personal Pictures, photo gear

Hello there,

I was on a men-only weekend with my oldest son a couple of weeks ago.

We had a lot of fun together, rafting, mountain hiking, drinking beer (at least me), etc. …

I didn’t want to focus on photography that weekend, because of the father and son thing so I only took my compact camera with me. The Canon Powershot S95.

I have used it on weekends out before, but never in a landscape environment. see my post Barcelona Highlights

It is a good compact, but probably not the best you can get.

I don’t want to go into details about this, just put the pros and cons next to each other, compared to my reflex camera.

Compared to the Canon 5D markII and some proper lenses, these are the most relevant cons:

the lens lacks sharpness in the entire zoom range

the sensor has a much smaller dynamic range (whites blowing out or blacks going dead)

it has a much slower reaction time (it’s not a reflex, so there’s a short time lag between pressing the shutter and the picture taken.

it has slower and not so performant AutoFocus (although the AF from the 5D mark II is not top either)

The colors tend to get over-saturated.

these are the pros:

its lightweight compared to any reflex camera 195g vs. 850g without lens for the 5D II

it fits in almost any pocket

it is almost stealth-like compared to a reflex camera, so it doesn’t bother people when it appears (not so important for landscape, but important for street photography)

its silent (except maybe from the lens ring clicks, which are quite noisy)

A pro for this compact, vs some other compacts:

it has all exposure modes, including full manual (P, AV, TV, M), so you can play with the settings as you would with a reflex camera, you can even choose to set the focus manually.

Enough talking, let me show you some pictures. For your info, I have done quite some editing in Lightroom. You won’t notice the lack of sharpness here, I worked a lot on the tonal range in the images, etcetera.

The last image is a photoshop stitched image from 6 shots.

So is it a worthy camera, yes sure it absolutely is a very good travel companion if you don’t wish to focus on photography, but it takes some more time to get good pictures out of it, and you’ll never be able to get really pro-quality pictures out of it.

After all I’m not really a material geek. Sure I love my camera and lenses, but for me a lot of photography is in the eye of the photographer. I’m sure a good photographer can make good pictures with a compact, a bad photographer will not manage taking good pictures with pro gear. I enjoyed being with my son, taking a picture from time to time for the memories, and that is a different mindset than going on a photography trip.

take care, and I hope you come again soon.

Ludwig

Salomé on a sunday morning

people, Personal Pictures, photo gear, Uncategorized

>Hi,

some weeks ago I did an impromptu shoot with Salomé.

Salomé is one of my nieces, and she needed some pictures for thank you cards.

She dropped in on a sunday morning and we had about half an hour for making some pictures.

Fortunately the weather was great, and since we have had so much rain these last 6 months, the green was GREEN!

I took my two main portrait lenses, 85mm and 135mm, but all these shots are with the Canon 135mm f2 L.

For me this is the best lens I have, in terms of image quality. It has plenty of contrast, even in strong backlit images, it is very sharp, from the maximum aperture on, and it has creamy soft bokeh.

Main advice in bright sun conditions: shoot with the sun in the back of your model. It will prevent your subject from peeping the eyes, and you get a beautiful hairlight (a bit strong I admit) for free.

Images have only slightly been enhanced in Lightroom. I have an import standard of +20 contrast +15 clarity, and I did nothing else.

The best of the pack (in my opinion 😉 )

See you soon for the Harley Davidson images (see my facebook page – Ludwig Desmet)

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

architectural compositions

architecture, Personal Pictures

When I was still in my architecture module (evening classes photography) we were asked to photograph a museum interior with composition in mind. Not the building as such was important in the result, but mainly the distribution of elements in the picture. Not a simple, but a very interesting exercise. Balancing weights, colors, working with lines, structures, perspectives. Photography becomes a very graphical art. The building is a museum building in Ghent, Belgium.

It is absolutely necessary to work on tripod for such an assignment, because this allows you to carefully study your preliminary results, and eventually do very subtle corrections to your composition. I have a tripod with a 3-way head, which is interesting, because you can just modify one axis, without moving the other ones. (vs. a ballhead, which releases all axes at once)

I just noticed yesterday that I hadn’t published these images before, so here they come. Clickable for a bigger size.

Thank you for watching. And remember, any question you have please ask.

Take care, 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

Flanders Horse Expo

people, Personal Pictures

I had never attended a horse event like this before.

Flanders Horse Expo is a quite big internationally oriented horse event. With our class group for reportage photography we were asked to deliver a small selection of images about the event. Total freedom subject-wise, so we could concentrate on what we saw and felt during the event.

What I saw was: A lot of good looking people, mostly blonde and pony tailed, junk food and the litter that goes with it. Beautiful horses in all kinds and sizes, too much commercial stands – selling horse food, horse boxes, horse trailers, horse riders clothes, horse riders hats, horse riders boots, horse art, horse saddles, horse pictures (!), horse anything you can imagine – a VIP room where I had no access, a horse jumping contest, a lot of horse shows, and a lot of people working behind the scenes.

The low light situation combined with the fast action (horses) made for a challenging situation technically.

I’m happy to have fast lenses (wide max. aperture) for these occasions.

Images taken with 24 mm f1.4, 85 mm f1.8 and 135 mm f2.0 lenses. ISO 640 to 3200, Canon 5D II.

I hope you like my selection: (clickable for bigger size)

take care, and come again 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

A different kind of Pauline.

people, Personal Pictures

You probably remember my posts with Pauline as a model, The Mansion shoot part I, part II and part III.

last Sunday I had another Pauline as a model. A little younger, but evenly charming to work with. In fact she had been also my subject for a free shoot somewhere in April last year. This time her parents asked me for the shoot. We met at the dance-school where Pauline has taken some dance classes.

I had told the mam before, that I’m not that much into children’s photography but she said she preferred it that way. She wanted a natural looking shoot, with no special extra’s.

For the technicians, not so much light in the dancing school, so an off-camera manual flash was used, to bounce some light from the ceiling. I use Cactus 5 trigger sets. All interior images with my trusted Canon 85 mm f1.8, the outside images (with the jacket) with 135 mm f2.0. On some interior images I used the Trigrip reflector in stead of bounced flash.

I’d like to share you these images. They each show a set of different facial expressions made during short communications between me and my model:

(you can click them to see them a bit bigger)

hope you like them, see you soon!

ludwig desmet alias charlemagne

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.

Winter in Belgium

landscapes, Personal Pictures

Hi all,

we are not so used to having cold winter in Belgium. We usually have a moderate climate, influenced by the warm gulf stream waters, coming from middle-America.

But, some two weeks ago, a package of snow arrived, about 5 inches thick, some extra snow fell a couple of days later, and we had cold winter temperatures, with -15°C as a minimum.

Enjoy the pictures I took in the morning, two days ago. I’m not so fond of the Belgian landscape in general, but I enjoyed the marvels of snow and ice, and the misty morning added to it’s magic.

No more words, just images!

see you soon, I have two more beauty shoots to post!

Ch.

(from Charlemagne – my other name)

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

Paris Highlights II

Personal Pictures

Last weekend I was in Paris again, for a short break of one and a half day.

I was there with the family, and we strolled around a lot. my kids got to see the Moulin Rouge, place Pigalle, the Sacré Coeur with place du Tertre, we visited an exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe, we saw the Panthéon, the Jardin the Luxembourg, visited the Tour Montparnasse and we walked a lot!

I’m not so much into the classical pictures of monuments and all, but couldn’t resist to include some of them. I love the city atmosphere and the typical details you get to see in Paris.

Imagine a gray overcast sky, chilly but not cold, horns tooting everywhere, and the constant chatter of the Parisians.

I hope you get a feeling of being there, at least a little.

All pictures taken with Canon 5D II and Canon 50mm 1.4. All images can be clicked for a bigger version.

Parisians love dogs, apparently. There’s dogs on every quay, in every park.

The institute of the Arabic World held an exhibition on the stories of 1001 nights. This was a listening area, where one could sit down in almost complete darkness and listen to the spoken versions of the stories. Next is the facade of the building, and a metal sculpture.

Nightlife in front of the Sacré Coeur chirch, and then down towards the place Pigalle. Made me think of the movie ‘Midnight in Paris’.

The banks of the Seine, with the Notre Dame, and next the Panthéon, the Jardin de Luxembourg and the magnificent view from the Tour de Montparnasse. No queue, and I believe it to be cheaper than the Eiffel Tower.

The woman felt my presence. She suddenly looked back at me.The ambiance in the restaurants and food almost as good as in Belgium. 😉

Academy for music and word

architecture, Personal Pictures

Hi all,

I’ve been very busy the last couple of weeks, sorry for the long wait.

This morning we had another gathering for the lessons of architectural photography. We are supposed to know all about the subject now, and we do, of course. 😀

It’s been a tough selection, we are supposed to deliver only 5 images. I’ll show you my favorites and leave you guessing about the final 5.

The academy has been deserted with the move to the new building, late september. It is still occasionally used for theatre plays and music concerts, but the classes have not been used since. The building is in good shape and will probably be rented to local artists.

All images with Canon 5D II and a selection of lenses: 85mm, 50mm, 24mm and 17-40mm

I hope you’ll like some images too!

See you again soon. I have had two shoots at the Mansion last week which I am eager to show to you, but I need approval from my models for my -selection for publication first. That’s the fairest way to go.