now, if you could jump from the window in the roof, …
grts,
ludwig
architecture
Architectural photography – Shoes or No Shoes
architecture, Personal Picturesif you are into fashion design, shoe design or if you have any kind of shoe fetish, you absolutely need to see this museum collection. Without spending too much words about it, it contains the largest ethnographic collection of shoes in the world, next to a vast collection of designers’ shoes and artists’ shoes. More info on the opening times and location: www.shoesornoshoes.com
I visited the place several times now, and I’m especially fond of the architectural qualities of the building. The building is constructed as a combination of hexagon shaped rooms. The main floor exhibition rooms have special north faced windows that assure a neutral light in any kind of weather. Credits for the architecture: original building (1973) : Emile Veranneman and Arch. Christiaan Vander Plaetse. Redesign (2008): Lode Uytterschaut, Johan Ketele and Rutger Davidts.
Last visit was with my architectural photography class from KISP. I never can deny the urge to take some photographs myself, in between tuition and guidance. The main purpose of this excursion was to emphasize on the link between the building and the surrounding area. My personal selection:
Images taken with Canon TS-E 24 mm f3.5 L II, except third image, taken with Canon EF 17-40 mm f 4.0 L. All on Canon 5D mark II.
Some images are HDR composites, some are stitched panoramic. (although they all are square 🙂 )
Thank you for watching, and don’t forget to visit the place!
see you soon,
Ludwig
New court building in Ghent – architectural photography classes
architecture, Personal PicturesHello there,
as promised, some images of the new court building in Ghent.
architects Stéphane Beel and Lieven Achtergael, opened in 2007
I had lent my tripod to one of my students, so these images are not ‘top notch’, but they are well enough to show.
Normally you should never do architectural photography without a tripod. The advantages of a tripod are multiple:
It helps in fine tuning your camera position, a 3 way head is optimum for this.
It helps when light levels get low, a stable tripod allows using small apertures, even at dim light.
It allows for multiple exposures or bracketing exposure series, when you need to handle a too large dynamic range in your scene.
It slows you down, which I think is a good thing in architectural photography.
I use a Berlebach 2042 report tripod, which has a ball joint just beneath the 3-way head. This ball joint is of immense help in leveling out your tripod head. Both tripod and head are a heavy pack, but in the same respect very stable. I have been using it for about 4 years now, and it shows no signs of wear. In the image below, you should clearly see the ball joint in the tripods base. Oh, and it is the most beautiful type of tripod I have ever seen, with its solid ash wood legs.
The main goal for this evening was to concentrate on light and lighting, and again, these were taken without tripod. 😉
See you soon for the next series of images: Sanne at house Adelaide, the color version.
have a nice weekend, Ludwig
Paris strolling
Personal Pictures, streetI had the chance to finish these summer holidays with a 4 day leisure weekend in Paris, together with my wife.
We normally carry our bikes on this kind of city trip, and this time it was no different. We remembered well from 7 years ago that biking trough Paris was ok, except for the weather (last time we did it it rained four consecutive days).
We had better luck this time, with four sunny days, only a bit of rain one evening.
We had no special plans for this holiday, except seeing Paris not the tourist way, but just enjoying what we get to see, and trying different routes than the Champs-Elysees or visiting the Eiffel tower. So we just rode our bikes trough the city, with no particular plan.
We enjoyed the calm of the Père-Lachaise Cimetary and the charming buzz in the Rue Saint-André des Arts, we went to Bois de Boulogne, came back trough La Défense business centre, had some really nice food just down the hill of Sacré-Cœur, enjoyed seeing the ships go trough the Canal Saint-Martin, the small streets of Le Marais and the marketplace on Boulevard Richard Lenoir.
Enjoy the images, I hope you can feel some of the atmosphere in these places shine trough.
For those interested, all images taken with the Sigma 50 mm 1.4 DG, on my Canon 5D mark II.
thank you for watching, come again soon.
Ludwig
Teaching architectural photography
architecture, Personal PicturesHello there,
A post about my teaching job at Kisp this time.
KISP is a evening classes institute giving adults the possibility to change careers, enrich themselves with language courses, learn how to cook vegetarian meals, meals with Belgian Beer or learn how to execute bike repairs, amongst a ton of other things. Photography classes are immensely popular at our institute, so we count over 1000 students currently following one or more semesters of the photography program, a program that exists in 10 different classes, normally running over a 5 year period.
I have been teaching photography classes for 3 years now, and I am currently teaching 4 classes, two Lightroom development classes, two architectural photography classes.
Teaching is a good way of fine tuning and deepening your own knowledge on the subject, and I admit I have learnt a lot in preparing my courses over the last 4 months.
It has been a joy to see my students discover the multiple facets of architectural photography, something that a lot of them at first would classify as a boring and dull subject in photography. Architectural photography is one of the ‘advanced’ segments, so these students have done at least 4 preparatory classes.
We are not blessed with a lot of rich and blooming architecture here in Belgium, so it is quite a challenge to find interesting building projects that are accessible to a group of students. Especially since we arrive only at a time that most office desks close down for the day. We usually start at 6:30 pm and work trough the night, till 22:00 hrs. Often we have to deal with security people to get access to a building, mostly we are very welcome.
Unfortunately I cannot post work of others, but i would like to show you some of the pictures I took in between tutoring and solving technical questions from my students.
They are often not perfect because I carry very little equipment myself on these hands-on evening classes. I often don’t take a tripod with me and only a single lens, or maybe two.
Subjects tackled so far: building in it’s environment, perspectives, composition and equilibrating elements in your image, light and lighting. This is only a very small selection, there is some more on my facebook account here: Album architectural photography classes
thank you for reading, see you soon,
Ludwig
Justine autumn shoot
beauty, Personal PicturesHello there,
I had worked with Justine before, you’ve been able to see these images from my shoot with Justine at the Mansion here.
Justine is from Ronse, so we settled a second shooting moment some weeks later. We wanted to take profit from the beautiful autumn colors that day.
Unfortunately it rained all evening. Days are short already, we met at 16:00 h and a cloudy cover made for even darker shooting conditions. High ISO time it means. All shots between ISO 800 and ISO 1600.
Some images are developed in an even darker style, just to emphasize on the vulnerability of my model of the day.
Justine is really easy to work with. She’s not afraid of rain or cold, and is happy to be able to be part of it.
Thank you Justine.
Hope you like them, see you back soon.
Ludwig
Amsterdam Highlights
Personal PicturesIn my ‘highlights’ series, I had Barcelona and twice Paris (I) and (II), this time I visited Amsterdam hit-and-run style (about 24 hours between arrival and departure)
In short:
Bikes, old and new architecture, canals, (missing) prostitutes, a lot of wind, (noisy) dutch people, good company … and a restaurant cat.
Oh I love strolling around in a big city, taking pictures, watching people, searching for good subjects and good light.
I don’t wanna spend a lot of words on this one. I enjoyed my walks, I hope you enjoy the pictures.
I have taken these pictures with the only lens I had with me, Canon 50 mm f 1.4. It is a challenge worth taking. Take only one lens, look for subjects, frame them.
take care, and come again soon. There’s quite some beauty shoots on the planning.
Ludwig
architectural compositions
architecture, Personal PicturesWhen 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
Academy for music and word
architecture, Personal PicturesHi 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.
Juror Award of Merit
architecture, Personal PicturesMy image Casa Batllo has received a ‘Juror Award of Merit’ in the International Fine Art Photography Competition. Looks like I didn’t make it to the finals, but this is a very big motivational plus for my photography in general, and my free work in particular.
I had not expected this image to be rewarded. It is taken with my Canon s95 on a city trip to Barcelona. It shows the upper floor of Casa Batllo, one of Gaudi’s architectural masterpieces.
The image will be used on the ‘International Art Photography Competition’ Website, as well as on their Facebook page, with a link to this blog and my website.
I’m really pleased. I’m sure this will help my photography find its way into the art scene.
This is the image that was rewarded:
Thank you for looking, thank you for visiting my blog, hope you’ll keep supporting me!!
I’m gonna have a good glass of wine tonight, to support the french Photographic art community! Cheers!
Ludwig