beauty and fine art.

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’ 😉

 

Ava playing Solitaire

beauty, erotic, Personal Pictures

It’s hot outside, very hot, so let’s remain in the freshness of the castle library. No-one bothering us, some time to spend with … solitaire.

 

 

Ava playing solitaire

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Model: Ava

Hair: Nathalie

shot on location in Tournai (B) thanks to the owners of the house and a big thank you to Ava for her confidence and charm.

© ludwig desmet – 2016

Cat-Suit – NSFW

beauty, erotic, Nude

Please enjoy Jane, posing in her catsuit.

rather difficult to make images of a good looking body in a catsuit not look ‘sleazy’ or ‘cheesy’ or whatever you might call it. (cheap looking soft erotic style)

I hope I managed in some way to prevent these images from looking that way. I’ll leave the judgement up to you.

Images taken with Canon 100mm f2.8 Macro IS L (1 and 2) and Sigma 50 mm f1.4 DG A (3-4-5) – ISO 100 on Canon 5D II.

 

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Thank you for watching, thank you Jane, for being my patient model on this cold day, thank you to the owners of the house for granting me acces to this great playground.

 

Ludwig

 

The Lady at the Castle II

Analog, beauty, Personal Pictures

Another set of images taken on film.

The advantage of film is that it is slow paced. A lot of things need to be double checked. I still have a lot to learn, but with Aude I managed to get a decent amount of good shots. The weather was cloudy, so there where no hard contrasts and that helps. Shutter speeds need to be kept under 1/25s to get neat and sharp images, unless you are able to work on a tripod. For this shoot I partly worked with tripod, partly hand held.

These images ‘at the Castle’ are taken with my newly acquired Rolleiflex TLR with Carl Zeiss Planar 75mm f3.5 lens. I have the impression that the focus is a little more accurate than with the other Rolleiflex, and I manage to get a decently sharp image with the help of digital techniques. The images are taken on Kodak T-max 100 film. Click for bigger version.

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The castle is the ‘Chateau d’Anvaing’, nicely surrounded by its water surface. There are some giant trees and remainder ornaments in the immediate surroundings.

Thank you for watching, soon I will post another set with Aude, taken with another Twin Lens Reflex that has at least 50 years: the Yashica 635.

 

Ludwig

The lady at the Castle

Analog, beauty, location, Uncategorized

The story is told that there is a ghost swarming above the castle lake at night. It is there to protect the treasure of gold and jewellery, hidden in the waters of the lake.
I’ve never seen the ghost, nor have I any proof about the treasures existence, but it sure does great as a photo shoot backdrop.

I have a lot more images from this series, analog as well as digital, so visit this blog again soon to see the remainder results.

This image: Rolleiflex 3.5 TLR with Kodak T-Max100 film.

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Model: Aude

Make up: Heidi

Hair: Nathalie

 

photographer: Ludwig 😉

Damsel in Distress

beauty, Nude, Personal Pictures

talking about archetypes 😉

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 The damsel in distress or persecuted maiden is a classic theme in world literature, art, film and video games. She is usually a beautiful young woman placed in a dire predicament by a villain or monster and who requires a hero to achieve her rescue. After rescuing her, the hero often obtains her hand in marriage. She has become a stock character of fiction, particularly of melodrama. Though she is usually human, she can also be of any other species, including fictional or folkloric species; and even divine figures such as an angel, spirit, or deity.

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I developed these images a bit ‘off style’ or at least off my style, like or not?

All images with Canon 5D II and Sigma 50 mm f1.4 A DG.

1/25s f2.2 ISO 500 (close up images)

1/8s f2.2 ISO 250 (full body images) on tripod.

thank you for watching,

Ludwig

Justine in my garden – Analog

Analog, beauty, location, Personal Pictures

a series of images from late summer.

A perfect morning sun joined us this day. I took a couple of rolls of Kodak T-Max with me, along with my Rolleiflex 3.5

Still struggling with the focus system. I suppose that ‘autofocus’ was called ‘out of focus’ in those days. 😉

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White – NSFW

beauty, Nude, Personal Pictures

as promised.

This image has an even more zen-look to it I think. The expression and the eyes closed make this image a witness to the models well being at that moment. Thank you Elisa, for being my model that day.

As I said yesterday, this image is taken at the exact same spot as the previous one. That is why I love working with available light, it gives you so much possibilities in a single space, …

 

‘WHITE’

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Technical details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro L IS at f2.8, 1/30s, ISO 160

thank you for watching, don’t forget to check out my galleries: Beauty Black and White – Beauty color

ludwig

Black – NSFW

beauty, Nude, Personal Pictures

a single image post.

I find it rather intimate and peaceful, expressing proud and stability.

 

 

‘BLACK’

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tomorrow I will show you the counterpart, same setting, same pose, same model, just I as a photographer have moved.

 

Technical details: Canon 135mm f2.0L at f2.2, 1/200s, ISO 320

thank you for watching, don’t forget to come back tomorrow for ‘WHITE’

ludwig

Wedding Dress – Nice and Naughty

beauty, Personal Pictures

I normally don’t do weddings, this shoot has been a kind of a ‘after wedding’ gift from the bride to the bride. 🙂

Never a bad thing if you can give yourself a gift. Elisa chose to have herself portrayed as a souvenir for later.

We played around with a lot of different themes, here’s the wedding dress theme. We started nice, we ended a bit naughty.

Extremely difficult shooting situation, with almost no light (1/25s at f2.8 and ISO640) a tripod is of good help in such situations. All images Canon 5D II and Canon EF 100 mm f2.8 Macro L IS. A tripod and live view allow for accurate focusing (using live view zoom modes and the tripod takes care of long shutter speeds. Be careful to tell your model not to move during exposures.

I hope you like them.

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thank you for watching,

ludwig

wake up – self induced posing

beauty, Personal Pictures

There’s a lot going on on the internet about how to get your model in the right pose. Workshops, do’s and don’ts, streaming video’s, the basic rules for a good pose, etc. …

Now what if we forgot all about it, and just have the person in front of the lens completely be herself? That is what I tried a couple of weeks ago with two ‘recurring’ models. They both had been with me for a shoot before, so they more or less know how I work and what to expect. I explained them that I wanted a part of the shoot to be completely void of instructions from my side. After all, I am a man, and when I put my models in a pose, this is man-mind driven, and can never be completely natural. I asked them to ‘not seek’ me with their eyes, pretend as if I was not there, and just slowly wake up from the comfortable spot I gave them.

Confidence is a key-word I guess, in this kind of work, since they do not know what I want, they do not know what I see, and they do not know when I’m going to take a picture. They must be self-aware, at ease with the surrounding environment, with me and with the idea that they can just simply enjoy this moment of quietness and peace.

Self induced posing, it is 100% the woman in the pictures. All natural. I hope you like them. Thank you Justine.

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The sun was slightly warming the place, it was quiet and nice, honestly I think she would have stayed in bed, but that wouldn’t have given us these nice pictures wouldn’t it.

thank you for watching, I have more images with Justine waiting to be published.

ludwig

Miss-Development / Developing sample LR settings

beauty, Lightroom, Personal Pictures

Hi,

Another example of a Lightroom development process.

Two stages of LR development, and in this image I added a bit of photoshop sparks.

Oh my, bad exposure in the first place. Working against bright light has an imminent danger: blowing out the highlights. That’s why I will be very careful not to over-expose. I had my model standing in the tree shade, but depending on her position, the sun would shine on her blonde hair from time to time. Be careful not to cram it! Original image: 1/500s f2.2 ISO 100 with the Canon 135mm f2 L lens.

stages of miss development

I first had developed the whole series as the second image:

if you have lightroom:

exposure +0,70

contrast +19

highlights -67

shadows +55

and a vignette darkening the corners.

I also added an extra +0,28 exposure on the face and breast area. (radial gradient)

After that I decided that I wanted to get some more warmth and glow to the images, so I went a step further (still LR)

I changed the white balance from as shot 5400/-2 to a slightly warmer 5847/-3

I pushed up the exposure to +1,05 stops.

This gave me a warmer tone, and a radiating model.

In photoshop I did two further things:

I added a sort of soft-focus filter to the image (layer copy with gaussian blurr on top of the originallayer, blending mode set to screen, with reduced opacity. Prevent the soft focus layer from covering the focus areas of your image – head, breast, hands – )

Add a combined unsharp mask/high pass sharpening layer to the ‘focus areas’.

Sharon – Reina Petita Belgica – Reina Intercontinental – Costa Rica

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Sexy

beauty, location, Personal Pictures

Long legs, high heels.

Sharon came to me for a shoot for her ‘Miss Universal’ – edit: ‘Reina Intercontinental’ – election in Costa Rica.

She’s not new to me. I worked with her before, here, here and here.

We did several clothing outfits, one even more ‘missy’ than another, not really my style as you probably know by now, but I found this image rather sexy at least.

You can express your support for Sharon here: FB page

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thank you for watching,

Ludwig

Blurb – book troubles / solved

print

I have printed a couple of books trough the Blurb services already, and wanted to make a new collection of prints for my location search. It is always handy to carry an overview of recent work with you, if you want to negotiate the possible use of a place/building/location for future shoots.

I had made a lightroom book, which I mostly do, and published it to the Blurb website the usual way.

Blurb has proved to be a quick and reliable partner, and this was not different this time, hardly a week later, my order got shipped, next day delivery at home. March 20th.

Curiously running trough the pages however, I noticed something wrong all the way, on two facing pages. A stain running vertically over the pages: (sorry for the sloppy images)

blurb print error

So I opened up a support ticket with Blurb.

Received a message that same day, that I would get a replacement copy printed, at no extra cost.

(very swift reaction and no discussion, thumbs up for Blurb)

Second copy arrived a week later. March 27th. Of course I ran trough the book immediately, finding out that there were no stains in this book, but that every page had an ugly bue-green color cast on it. My models certainly don’t look good in green. 🙁

2d print copy book

Re-opened the same support ticket I had before, thanking them for dealing with the print stains, but complaining that my models looked green, and that the color reproduction was too far off target for a photo book. … It took a while before I received an answer this time, and first thing they answered me was that they needed advice from a colleague that was not present at that time to make sure that this qualified for a reprint, so it could take a while. It took a week, before I got nervous and re-asked my question on the status of my support ticket. Then came the answer from another person, that indeed ‘people at Blurb need to work very fast and that colour shifts happen in digital printing, etc … ‘

Well then, I’ve answered the friendly person, I have been working in the printing industry before (which is true, I am a graphic designer and I worked in prepress and publicity companies before) and that I am aware that some colour variations do occur, but that I was also aware of the existence of calibrated workflows, and that Blurb, as a main partner with Adobe Lightroom needed at least to be able to prove that they could do better than this, as they had done in the first print (which had good colour reproduction). That this was a portfolio piece that I wanted to be proud about, and that it was not the case right now.

One day later I received a message that I would receive another printed copy of the book, at no extra cost.

A week later my new book arrived, a good one this time.

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thank you Blurb, for dealing with your own quality issues.

ludwig