Personal Pictures

Pictures I took myself.

After the work is done …

beauty, erotic, location, Nude

ludwigdesmet_srs-3802

ludwigdesmet_srs-3778

ludwigdesmet_srs-3877


 ludwigdesmet_srs-3841

 ludwigdesmet_srs-3868-2

with Rubia

These images were taken on a ‘available light’ workshop with Sacha Leyendecker in Köln.

He has a great available light studio, and gives plenty workshops throughout the year. Be sure to check his site here. Main goal of this one on one training day was to review my habits and to try to learn some more about light usage. I made use of the available -lockers-on-wheels for this setting and Rubia acted perfectly as a stand in worker. All images Canon 5Ds with Sigma 50mm f1.4 DG A. All images f1.6 at 1000ISO, varying shutter speeds.

Model and make up: Steffi Rubia Stringsi

photography by me

thank you for watching.

ludwig

Pearls II

beauty, Personal Pictures, portrait

Remember ‘Pearls’ ? Wow, one and a half year ago already. Time to meet Pearls II, with beautiful Eva this time. Hope you like it.

• Pearls II •

ludwigdesmet_evdm-pearls-ii

 

Canon 5Ds with Sigma 50mm f1.4 A DG. 1/80s f2.0 ISO100

Shot on location in Tournai – Belgium.

Model: Eva

Make up: Danitsha

Assistance: Nathalie.

Photography: ludwig desmet

dust in the wind …

landscapes, Lightroom, location, Personal Pictures, Tips and Tricks

… nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky

 

Milky way over Fort Mahon (Ambleteuse France)

 

ludwigdesmet

the recipe:

  1. Find yourself a group of crazy photography students, willing to go out at night in freezing temperatures for yet another experiment. Cover up well. Provide yourself with a headlight.
  2. Look for a low light environment, some kind of deserted landscape, no cities around. (This only half worked out, the Fort is near the village of Ambleteuse, hence the brightly lit right side of the building)
  3. find yourself a nice location that can serve as a foreground: A Fort, pebble beach, some straying rocks will do. Use your headlight to find your way around. (things will be black out there)
  4. Locate the milky way in the sky (if you have fulfilled step 2. of the recipe it should be visible to the naked eye), put up your sturdy tripod and compose. Fix your tripod well.
  5. Take some pictures (settings here: 10sec f1.4 ISO1600) I took a panorama of 5 images vertically. Taken on a Canon 5D mark II.
  6. Merge images in Lightroom (you’ll keep a RAW editable file). Post Process if needed. It probably will be needed, I played with exposure, contrast, blacks, white balance, …
  7. Sit back and start counting the stars.

grtz,

Ludwig

Cyperus Papyrus

beauty, location, Nude, Personal Pictures

a single image post.

beautiful Kate in the botanic greenhouse.

 

“Cyperus Papyrus”, named after the plant flower

_ds_4544

 

Model and Make up: Kate_Ri

Styling and photography by me.

Plant stem kindly provided by the gardener who was pruning down several plants at the time of the shoot.

Canon 5Ds with Sigma 50mm f1.4 DG A – 1/200s f1.4 ISO400

Thank you for looking.

ludwig

dear David … I am sorry

beauty, location

I was sorry to hear about your death, earlier this week. I think your images have been a great inspiration to many young boys.

I mentioned you in a Facebook comment no longer than a few days ago. … ‘Unwanted David Hamilton effect’, as a comment on the below image.

What I am even more sorry about however, is that your death might be related to the accusations/assumptions made against your person, … for incorrect behaviour towards young, very young women. I think of that as a very very sad thing.

I feel sorry for all the models out there having been, or being wrongly treated by so-called photographers, mis-using the context of photography to cover up their abuse towards them.

• Kate in the greenhouse •

ludwigdesmet_kr-4469ds

about the image, and the (I won’t call it D.H. effect any longer) soft focus effect, it was created by extremely humid conditions (75% humidity and about 25°C) and a too cold camera coming from outside (5°C at most), immediately damping my front lens, again and again and again. Couldn’t wipe it off, it re-appeared after 10 seconds. … A lot of dehaze, extra contrast and clarity in LR kind of saved this image from deletion.

Model and make-up: Kate_Ri, styling by me.

Canon 5Ds with Sigma 50 mm f1.4 DG A

1/50s  f2.2  ISO100

ludwig

Bedroom mood – with Rubia

beauty, Nude, personal tips & tricks

as a final setup on the Sacha Leyendecker workshop (yes, I can still learn a lot too) we had a mattress and some white bed linen and a very enjoyable – wasn’t it Rubia? – down bed cover.

I tried to create an atmosphere of comfortable well being in this series. Rubia is a professional model and she understood the idea well. The advantage of professional models is that they know very well how to move to have a good looking pose, the downside of it can be that they are very hard to be photographed as their real personality. They often get some kind of ‘model layer’ that gets in front of their person. This was not the case with Rubia. We had a long talk before the shoot, that helps to get barriers down. We both got very relaxed before the shoot started. I rather have the habit of giving quite some direction to my models, Sacha asked me to try to let Rubia do her own thing, easier said than done, this set is the result of a mixture of ‘self induced posing’ and ‘directed posing’. See here for the technique used to create the high key effect.

Bad lighting conditions (dark) which means high ISO settings, but a nice set after all.

 

Bedroom mood

ludwigdesmet_rs-3918

ludwigdesmet_rs-3928

ludwigdesmet_rs-3924

ludwigdesmet_rs-3938

ludwigdesmet_rs-3934

ludwigdesmet_rs-3948

All images Canon 5Ds with Sigma 50 mm f1.4 A DG

1/60 f2.2 ISO 2000

Thank you for watching, come again soon,

ludwig

www.rubiasworld.com

www.sachaleyendecker.com

Hey Taxi ! …

Analog, beauty, Personal Pictures, street

I cannot prevent this happy feeling coming back when I start thinking about this session.

We were all in a great mood, the weather was excellent (remember, way too hot today) and Erika was more than happy playing the roles I gave her. I asked her to be the lazy tourist in our Brussels most upscale shopping lane, the Avenue Louise.

Nathalie managed to fix a taxi driver willing to cooperate for some nice shots too.

All images shot on Rolleiflex 3.5, Kodak T-Max100

Thanks to Erika Albonetti for being my model, her manager for carrying all the stuff she had, my wife Nathalie for being a splendid assistant and hairdresser …

Remember, all my images are available as a fine art print, so if you are still looking for a lasting present for Christmas or New Year, don’t look any further, scroll trough my blog, take a look at my portfolio pages and take your pick!

 

Hey Taxi ! …

ludwigdesmet_ea-3442-2  

ludwigdesmet_ea-3

ludwigdesmet_ea-7

ludwigdesmet_ea-23

ludwigdesmet_ea-8

ludwigdesmet_ea-24

ludwigdesmet_ea-25

ludwigdesmet_ea-4 

 

ludwigdesmet_ea-3460

 

thank you for watching,

see you again soon,

 

ludwig

 

Erika – a little bit of fashion – in Brussels

Analog, beauty, location, people

I shot this entire day with my 60 year old Rolleiflex camera. Kind of stressy and awkward feeling to get home with nothing but some rolls of film. … I only found out in the evening that I didn’t even have a memory card in my digital camera. … I must have had some kind of enlightenment when I decided in the morning to go ‘all analog’ that day.

Continue reading →

Vic Toria – preview

Analog, beauty, people, Personal Pictures, portrait

I photographed this young lady in the grey and dull city of Charleroi, on a grey and dull day, but she proved to be all except grey and dull, we had a wonderful morning session, and made some great images together! Thank you Victoria!

– Victoria –

ludwigdesmet_victoria-2

Rolleiflex 3,5 with Ilford FP4 Plus film

thank you for watching,

ludwig

High Key made easy

beauty, Lightroom, Nude, Personal Pictures

hi there,

this below image had quite some succes on Facebook and different groups I published it onto. Actually people were asking about the way I did the high key development.

It was a rather straightforward and easy process, a little explanation below.

ludwigdesmet-3948

The lighting conditions where not good, NOT. 🙂

I needed an ISO setting of 2000 to be sure to have sharp images, that’s at least way over my usual limits. (I rather keep ISO settings below 800) You’ll see that the image has some noise in the shadow areas (like the throat area).

the original image looked like this: quite even light conditions, although the light was a little directional (from the left), there were no hard lights, no deep shadows.

ludwigdesmet-3948-2

I work in lightroom, my settings:

exposure: +2.10 / contrast: +40 / highlights: +67 / shadows: +36 / blacks: -42 / Clarity: -11 … that was about all I did. The image looks like this now:

ludwigdesmet-3948-3

next I added some light using a local brush with + exposure, to get rid of the remaining bed sheet shading. No big secrets, just add plenty of exposure to make things white.

At last I added some noise reduction to get rid of too much grainy noise in the shadow areas. …

I hope  you like the image, I certainly do.

The image was taken at a private tuition day with Sacha Leyendecker.(http://www.sacha-leyendecker.com) The model is Steffi Rubia Stringsi, from Brussels. The image was taken in an available light studio in Köln, Germany.

see you soon.

ludwig

Just a little word …

beauty, Nude, Personal Pictures

to tell you that a lot happened lately

I officially announced my www.renderhouse.eu customers that I will stop providing rendering services for them from januari 31, 2017. I am still looking for someone willing to continue this service, so my customer base is for sale. (3D rendered marketing illustrations and animations)

Hopefully this decision will free some space, energy and time for more photography in the nearby future. I have no idea where this will lead me to, but It is my absolute will to spend more time developing photography projects, continue giving my classes, and maybe start doing some workshops on a more regular basis.

It has not been an easy choice, since Renderhouse still provides a good income, but as you know I have been inspired a lot by the Holstee manifesto (see this post) , and I still think it is a good way to prevent boredom, burn-out, depression and other mental blockades.

…

next to that, I had the opportunity to work together with some afro-models, both great personalities to work with, one more experienced than the other, but they both did great and had a great story to tell.

I love this image, so does she.

• kamaliza •

ludwigdesmet_kd

 

Canon 5Ds with Sigma 50mm A DG 1.4

1/60 – f1.6 – ISO 320

thank you for watching

ludwig

La dame du château – preview

beauty, location, Nude, Personal Pictures, portrait

a first one from a series of analog images I did with Ava

too hot outside, we fled for the cool interior of the chateau. The atmosphere was great, the castle was quiet, Ava was feeling comfortable. Some of the main ingredients for a great shoot. The models, although more accustomed to getting undressed than any other person, still prefer a quiet, unbothered atmosphere. There’s nothing more disturbing than people hopping in at unforeseen moments. A kind of understanding builds between model and photographer (and eventually assistants, make up artists etc …) and this makes intimate pictures possible.  Thank you Ava for your confidence, and for being my model during this shoot.

 

• La dame du château •

LudwigDesmet_AL-

model and make up: Ava Lacour

Hair and assistance: Nathalie

Shot on location in Tournai, Belgium

Rolleiflex 3,5 TLR on Kodak T-Max400 film.

all images © ludwig desmet

thank you for watching.

DUO

Analog, beauty, people, Personal Pictures, portrait

you’ve seen one of this series before here: envy

a new experience,working with two models at the same time,

I shot digital and analog for this series, all available light at the former Pinehouse interior shop in Ronse.

• Laura and Pauline – Duo •

LudwigDesmet_PandL-1739 LudwigDesmet_PandL-1744 LudwigDesmet_PandL-1781

 

analog:

LudwigDesmet_LMandPM--6 LudwigDesmet_LMandPM--9

first one not entirely sharp, this means not enough dept of field due to low light (large aperture needed) and medium format negatives (gives a shallower DOF than 35mm film).

I especially like the last image, don’t know why.

thanks for looking,

ludwig