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!

Thank you Pauline, for this wonderful shoot, and a big thank you to the owners of the house, who willingly gave me access.

Next week I will post the second part of this shoot – the mirror & curtain play – so come again soon.

thanks for reading

Leyla – a long time ago

people, Personal Pictures

Leyla and I have been colleagues when I still worked in Brussels. She was the office secretary in the design bureau I was at that time. I left the design bureau some 8 years ago, and a lot happened since then. Leyla has studied to become a midwife, and she finished her studies last summer. Congratulations to her, for it is not simple to combine studies, a job and a family. Leyla has two kids in the same age as mine. We got in touch again trough Facebook, and Leyla loved the idea of a photoshoot.
She never posed before (seems to become a rule in my shoots) but with a little help she did really really well. We worked in the garden, the glasshouse, and in different rooms of the villa. I think she has very beautiful bambi eyes. Unfortunately she had to leave shortly after the shoot, so we didn’t get time to catch up on a lot of things. Thank you Leyla, for this wonderful morning shoot.

I hope you like the results. Click to see a bigger version.









I hope you come back soon.
Don’t forget, I’m finishing my exhibition today, it will be open on october 20 – 21 – 27 – 28 and then during Pinehouse opening hours till the end of november.

Ludwig

Morning mood in old villa.

people, Personal Pictures

Hi there,
I’m very pleased to be able to share these images with you.
I did a model shoot with Lien, in the old villa where I shot the urbex shoot some weeks ago.

I did a call for models some weeks ago, on my Facebook Page, asking for models for a ‘natural beauty’ shoot. No make-up, no special hairdo, no flash or other light accessories. Just a female model, some sensual female clothing, a nice location and limited photo gear. Lien was happy to volunteer. Thank you Lien, it was a pleasure working with you, and you did really well!

Lien has never posed before, she’s a mother of two young boys and just a regular mom and wife. I think it is important to tell you this, because I want to stress on the fact that for a good shoot, you don’t need any specific experience or training. It is the photographers task to talk his model into the right poses, and I think we worked together very very well. I knew Lien before, she’s a daughter of a couple of good friends of mine, so she was quite relax from the beginning of the shoot, that helped of course. But, it could have been anyone, … really.

We have worked with some different clothing sets, in different rooms of the villa. It is really a wonderful place to work in as a photographer. I would like to say thank you here to Dirk, owner of the house, to let me in for these shoots. Thank you Dirk.

I will not tell a lot more about this shoot, except that we worked together for about two hours, we had great light, good atmosphere, and we could easily start all over tomorrow and come with another complete set of fine pictures.
All images taken with my Canon 5D II, and Canon 50 mm f1.4, Canon 85 mm f1.8 and Canon 135 mm f2.0 . I love fast lenses and wide open apertures. A limited gear setup like this allows working fast, and concentrating on poses and light. Post processing was done in Lightroom 4, that took me another 2 and a half hours for the entire set of 115 selected images. I’m sure I could work more on any of the images, but I’m not that picky on details. 😉

Click on any image to view a larger version.


Comments are most welcome!

My website: charlemagne-art

Hope you come back soon!

Ludwig

Diabolo Event

assignments, Personal Pictures

I think I forgot about this one.
An event coverage I did for Dialink, the constructors of the Diabolo tunneling project under the Brussels National Airport. This project connects the Brussels Intl. Airport to the north with Antwerp and Amsterdam, and makes it possible for TGV trains coming from Brussels to stop at the Airport both on the lines towards Germany and towards Holland.
The entire event was held in one of the track change zones in the underground project. It was rather challenging taking photographs here, because they started with an angle-grinder concert, creating plenty of smoke and dust in the tunnel. Away goes any possibility to use flash. Furthermore, with this kind of light show, it is very hard to get good light metering. I decided to go fully manually over the entire event. After all, I think I did rather well. 😀

Money nor efforts were spared to make this an impressing event. There was Royal presence that day (King Albert II of Belgium was the main guest) and things had to run flawlessly. Probably one of the main reasons why photographers got tucked away in a little corner. Anyway, after the king arrived, the public was given a light and sound show I have rarely seen.

And then for the official part, all VIP guests had to push a little button to inaugurate the new underground train section. this was symbolized by two red lit tubes, eventually becoming green after ‘activation’. After that, the first of the newly acquired Desiro trains rolled into the tunnel section. I made a hand-held panorama to give an idea of the entire setting for this event. Make sure to click it to view full size!!!


And off they went, towards the Brussels Int’l Airport train station, where the reception was held. In the mean time, musicians, clothed as workers (not the other way around) gave a brass concert to accompany the people leaving on foot. Impressive sound, impressive colors! Another panorama worth checking out closer!


At the reception area, the VIP area was well divided from the press area, so not much to do there. I managed to make this shot of Albert II, talking to Herman de Croo (back towards camera). Next to our king is Didier Reynders, Vice Prime Minister and Minister of foreign affairs under Di Rupo I.

Thank you for watching!

Ludwig

Urbex shoot

architecture, Personal Pictures

Hi there, it’s been a while since my last post, but a lot has been going on here. I have been pretty busy with my Renderhouse jobs, and next to that, I have been assigned as a teacher for two evening classes in photography. YESSS!! I will be giving the basics of photography to one group (all about camera settings, exposure, composition basics, etc. …) and another evening class will handle Photoshop Lightroom 4 editing. I’m all excited, today is the first day I will be in front of one of the groups. …

I still found the time today to finish my urbex shoot post-processing from two weeks ago. I have been shooting in a place that has been abandoned for about two years I guess, but is still in pretty good shape. No vandals have passed by here (yet) The place is owned by one of my Renderhouse customers, and we made a deal. I would to shoot the ‘heart and soul’ of the villa as it is now, and then I can make use of of the location for future model/beauty shoots. Great, I love that kind of deal!

What you see here is the result of a 3 hour shoot, a short time of image selection, and about 3 hours of postprocessing. Hope you like them. click images to see a bigger size version of them.
Most of the images have been made with the 17-40 mm f4 L wide-angle zoom lens, some with 50mm f1.4, some details with 85mm f1.8. All on Canon 5D II.
Thank you for watching, please leave a comment if you feel so.










Come again!!

ludwig

Barcelona Highlights

architecture, people, Personal Pictures

Hi,

I went to Barcelona two weeks ago, partly for business, partly citytrip. I stayed for 4 days, together with my wife Nathalie. We met a 3D designer to discuss a future project, and we visited a lot.
Barcelona is famous for its pick-pocket plague, so we travelled really light. When walking trough the city, we had only the most necessary things with us. Also for my camera I didn’t want to take risks, so I only took my Canon Powershot S95 with me. I finally learned how it works. 😉 I photographed in highest quality .jpg. Images were treated in Lightroom afterwards. I originally intended to show only black and white images, but some things simply must be seen in color. I hope you like my selection

Some highlights:

Gaudi’s Casa Batllo:

Citylife:

Laribal Gardens, Miro Museum, Olympic Stadium and Calatrava tower:

Parc Guell:

Sagrada Familia:

The verdict for Barcelona: Great city, lots of things to discover, great weather and fine food if you know what to look for.
The verdict for the Camera: Small camera with potential, tucks away in about any pocket, good battery life, fairly good image quality. Lens distortions can be annoying sometimes, not as quick as a DSLR.

Hope to see you soon.
Comments are welcome, questions as well!!

Ludwig

Emotions

people, Personal Pictures

Hi,

My wife Nathalie is currently studying to be a psychotherapist. She’s finished her first year now yahoooo!
One of the final presentations had to be a creative interpretation of a theme in the psychotherapist world. She choose disidentification. A difficult word, for explaining how anybody had different personalities in life. Sometimes we are parents, sometimes we are colleagues, sometimes we are student, … but even so with emotions: sometimes we are happy, mad, sad, or any other type of emotion you experience trough daily life.

Nathalie’s idea was to depict a series of emotions, from herself as a subject. Not an easy task, some emotional states are really deeply touching, but we tried, and she was very pleased with the results, as were her teachers!

Sadness – In thoughts

Balanced – pleased – happy

Strong – angry – feminine

all shots were done with a very simple setup: black cloth in the background, a softbox at the right side of the model, and a large reflector on the left side.
All taken with Canon 85mm f1.8

Cheers, see you soon,

ludwig

Marcia studio shoot

people, Personal Pictures, Uncategorized

Marcia volunteered to be my model in this studio shoot.
She is unfamiliar with modeling work, so this was kinda’ new to her. She brought different clothing sets based on a small mood board I sent her to start with. It is a good thing to have a direction to work to. (I claim no credit for these images, this is just a selection of tumblr images.)


This was the narrowed down selection from the mood board, at least what direction we aimed at. Three different things, 1. is a three light setup, 2 is a single light setup (at least we reduced it to a single light setup) and 3 is also a single light setup.

Shots for number 1:
just some shots in the same tonalities as the moodboard shot. Don’t forget to click them for a bigger size!

Then Marcia started to feel a bit more comfortable and at ease, and we started doing some expressions, I made her untie her hair etc.

Sometimes I like to add some processing to create a different mood and atmosphere to the image. Just to show you what a quick edit can do:

All these images were shot with the same 3-light setup, two umbrella’s left and right behind the subject, pointing a little towards the camera, and a softbox just above Marcia’s head:

Then up to the second mood board image.
I wanted to recreate a window like shadow, with direct sun falling into it.
We have very limited gear in the school studio, so we had to ‘be creative’.
We used four large styrofoam reflector panels to create a window, and barn doors on the flash light. A 5th reflector panel just to the right of Marcia created some fill light at the shadow side. I had my assistant of the day (Gert) to hold a black light blocker next to the flash-head, because we got too much spill light into the studio otherwise.

Marcia loves sunglasses, so we used them. (I always please my models, or at least do what I can do to do so 😉 )

And for the results:

And then the number three from the moodboard.
(Actually we did this one second, and the sunglasses last, because we re-used the setup from 1, except without the umbrella flashes, so only the top softbox)
Marcia has too much hair to do something similar to the mood board, so we had to improvise. She did really well, she posed quite easily now, so we could try out different things quite quickly.

At last, don’t be afraid to do some post-processing. This one image I especially liked, and I processed it a bit like the mood board example, and then a second time I processed it to my likings. Look what difference this makes:

What have I learnt from this shoot:
You don’t have to be an experienced model to create great looking images, as long as both model and photographer feel comfortable in each others presence. Thank you Marcia for stepping forward on my request for a volunteer!
There’s a lot that can be done in only a short period of time, at least when you are a little bit prepared as to what are your targets. (mood board) This shoot took one and a half hour, from start of first setup back to a cleaned up studio room. Thanks again to my assistant of the day at Kisp, Gert.
Dare try some post-processing to change the mood of your images.

Next post will be a series of images I took from my wife Nathalie – EMOTIONS

come again soon,
Ludwig

Kellogs and Pringles

assignments, Personal Pictures

Sorry it took me so long since my last post. I’ve been rather busy, both with photography and 3D renderings.

What do Kellogs and Pringles have in common? Kellogs, the healthy breakfast company just acquired Pringles, the (rather unhealthy?) chips company. 🙂
I was asked to cover the announcement event some two weeks ago, and so I did.
On the menu: Healthy breakfast, some funny moments with the Kellogs characters that were present, some high-class speeches, and a videobridge with the US Kellogs HQ …

I enjoyed working with two 5D II bodies, and I prefer having my 17-40 mm on one body, my 135 mm on the other one. I only switched the 135 mm for a 50 mm lens in my small mobile studio setup.
A small selection of images of the day:

Hope to see you soon again, I have a lot more images in stock for publishing.

ludwig

exhibition

exhibition, Personal Pictures

I am currently taking part in a group exhibition with the ‘Kwaremontse kunstkring’, a group of artists working with a varied range of media: Aquarel, oil on canvas, ceramics, jewelry, glass art, and myself as a photographer.
This time I’m presenting a more artistic selection of my work, where as in the ‘WAK’ exhibition, I have mainly presented landscape photography.

here are some pictures of the current and the past exhibition.
You are still very welcome to visit the exhibit. It runs till june 3rd, and is open every wednesday saturday and sunday afternoon, from 2 pm till 6 pm.

North Sea

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

Hi,
long time since I posted some new images. I have been busy preparing the two exhibitions and that is now over, with the last exhibition opening this saturday evening. You are still very welcome to come visit the exhibition. (wednesday, saturday and sunday from 14:00 h till 18:00 h. in ‘de Oude Brouwerij’ Ronse.)

I have been to the North sea on april 22nd, and I wanted to show you some images I brought with me. I have further experimented with the ND Grey filters, I used them before in Calais/Cap-Griz-Nez too.
Here I used only the ND 1000 filter, which blocks about 8 stops of light, and let’s pass only 1/1000th of the light. This allows for long exposure times in plain daylight.

The technique is quite simple: you setup your tripod (best a good sturdy one, because when the sea surface is coming over the breakwater, you get some nasty winds blowing you almost out of your clothes.) and make your best composition possible. Verify your normal exposure. Now without further touching your camera, switch to manual focus if not already done, screw on your ND filter and calculate your new exposure time. In my situation, I had to lengthen the exposer time x1000. E.g. 1/100 sec without filter became 10 seconds with filter.
Then wait for the sea tide to come up. Get cold, try to protect your camera from waves splattering on the rocks, almost get blown over, get wet feet, get a rain shower on your head, and then decide you tried your best and try to find some shelter.

All images taken with 17-40 mm on Canon 5D mark II, exposure times of about 50-60 seconds. Aperture f1/16 up to f1/22. The first shot is composed out of 4 exposures, I converted the images to BW in Lightroom, then added a blue’isch color cast in Photoshop.

Hope you liked them, click for bigger version!

ludwig

Workshop announced

personal tips & tricks, Tips and Tricks

I just announced a new workshop for starting photography enthusiasts. It will run over 4 saturday afternoons, and will cover the basics you’ll need to improve your summer holiday pictures. More information on www.charlemagne-art.be .
If you happen to know somebody who’s interested in improving his/her photography skills, this is the occasion. Spread the word.

School show

people, Personal Pictures

Hi there,
the boys had their annual school feast in the last weekend of april, and I made some shot from the children’s performances. Difficult conditions, dark tent, unstable light conditions (showlights) and quick moving kids.
I decided to go fully manual, and high ISO, to allow for quick shutter speeds. I only had my 135mm f2 with me. I aimed for 1/500 sec shutter speed, with full open aperture. I focused manually too, since the 5D II couldn’t follow the action in these circumstances.
Some shots I’m proud of, I hope you find them good too. Click for bigger view!

thank you for watching!

Hallerbos shoot – BTS

landscapes, people, Personal Pictures, personal tips & tricks, Tips and Tricks

A 10 minutes behind the scenes video from our shoot in Hallerbos.
Some parts are english spoken, in-video conversations are mainly dutch, without subtitles, but nevertheless great to look at. 😉

thanks to Martine and Raf for filming

Enjoy!

Exhibition

exhibition, Personal Pictures

For those interested in seeing my work printed:
I’m all excited about two group exhibitions in which I will take part in the next few weeks.

First is part of the ‘Amateur artists week’, opening this friday at 20:00 h. I will be showing some nice landscape works (4) and one environmental model portrait, all in large format prints (up to 220×57 cm!) The exhibition will be open on saturday, sunday and wednesday-afternoon from 14:00 – 18:00h , from this saturday28/04 till next week sunday)

Next exhibition is the ‘Kwaremontse Kunstkring annual exhibition’, with a local group of artists, presenting a wide variety of genres. There I will show more artistic works (5) and one portrait, also in large format. This exhibition opens on 19/05 at 20:00 h and will be open till 03/06.

Both exhibitions take place in ‘Oude Brouwerij’ Priestersstraat in Ronse.

You are of course very welcome to visit both these exhibitions. I will not always be present, but if you give me a call, we can meet. 😉 . If you can make it to one of the openings, there will be a drink and a little bite.

Cheers!

Ludwig

Hallerbos part 1

landscapes, people, Personal Pictures

I did a shoot last Sunday in Hallerbos, with models Jessika and Sari. I’ll show you some of the images of the shoot with Jessika.
We had a great time, and we got some great pictures as a result. My first goal was making some composed panoramic images. I shot a lot of poses of Jessika, and then some images left and right of her. I picked out some nice poses to compose a wider final image. The largest pano’s are about 100 Mpix in size, large enough for a very wide print 😉
It was quite a challenge to picture her in the middle of the flowers, because you are actually not allowed entering the flower beds. We worked at some path crossings to achieve these results.
I am currently making a BTS video that shows a little more of the day. Make sure to come and check this page again soon!

After the wedding dress shoot, Jessika tried to get warm again (12°C outside), and then she changed for a nice ‘roman style’ blue dress, almost matching the colors of the Hyacinths -bluebells-. She also brought a kind of an antique bird cage. We shot for another 45 minutes, and at the very end of the shoot, we experimented a little with off camera flash. One single Canon flash, triggered with Cactus V5 transmitter. I had an assistant with me, and she handheld the flash. This allowed for quick changes in position and distance, and very much liked the results. I’m especially fond of the last image, I think it got a sense of drama in it.

Don’t forget to click them to view a larger version.
thank you for reading, come again soon!
Ludwig.

Côte d’Opale

landscapes, Personal Pictures

Some pictures I took on our family trip to Calais – Cap Griz Nez and Cap Blanc Nez.
The use of an ND filter and long exposures make for foamy sea-surface. I loved experimenting with it an will surely go back there for some more of these. All three with the Canon 17-40 mm on 5D MarkII.
Don’t forget to click them to see a bigger version.

Remember, all of my images are available for sales. they are perfect for your modern home decoration. 😉

Ludwig