kisp

Silent sea

landscapes, Personal Pictures

Image taken on a trip with my ‘landscape photography’ class, a couple of weeks ago.

In between tuition moments, I get to snap an image here and there.

 

Silent Sea

Ludwig Desmet_capgriznez-01

135mm at f11 – 30sec.

Image taken with Canon 5D II and Canon 135mm f2.0 L

Taken with a ND1000 (10stops) filter from B+W and converted to black and white in Lightroom. I only have a 10stops screw filter for 77mm lens diameters (for my Canon 17-40mm f4), the 135mm has a 72mm diameter filter thread. I simply positioned the filter in the back of the lens shade, worked fine, don’t tell anybody. 😉

The image depicts old mussel growing poles. they get floated at high tides, become apparent at low tides. taken a little east from Cap-Griz-Nez

 

thank you for watching.

Architectural photography – Shoes or No Shoes

architecture, Personal Pictures

if 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:

Ludwig Desmet-KISP--2 Ludwig Desmet-KISP--3 Ludwig Desmet-KISP- Ludwig Desmet-KISP-3618 Ludwig Desmet-KISP-3627 Ludwig Desmet-KISP-3647

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

Teaching architectural photography

architecture, Personal Pictures

Hello 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

LudwigDesmet_Kisp_archi-5096

LudwigDesmet_Kisp_archi-5057

LudwigDesmet_Kisp_archi-5081

LudwigDesmet_Kisp_archi-5368

LudwigDesmet_Kisp_archi-5379

LudwigDesmet_Kisp_archi-6658

LudwigDesmet_Kisp_archi-6689

LudwigDesmet_Kisp_archi-8411

LudwigDesmet_Kisp_archi-8416

LudwigDesmet_Kisp_archi-8498

LudwigDesmet_Kisp_archi-8558

LudwigDesmet_Kisp_archi-8548

thank you for reading, see you soon,

Ludwig

Nude (In)cognito – the exhibit

beauty, exhibition, Personal Pictures, projects

hi folks,

last weekend seemed like a roller coaster of happenings and emotions.

last friday evening, I’ve built up the exhibit for my ‘end of studies’ project Nude (In)cognito.

Saturday morning I had my Jury presentation at 9:30. The jury was rather severe, and focused mainly at the weaknesses of the project/the selection/the presentation.

That’s the best thing they can do, show you the possible points of attention, but it left me full of doubts and questions. Had I not worked 5 months within the idea of presenting a very good body of work?

After that we had a funeral to attend to, unfortunately. Very strong emotions of sadness and helplessness. A very good friends grandchild died after being born prematurely, and a short life of only 8 weeks. Tears and deep deep sorrow.

Saturday evening came the reception, where I had the opportunity to speak to some of the jurors, and already better rumors came my way. (about my work presented) This helped me understand the questioning I had had early that morning. A glass of sparkling bubbles and a fine meal afterwards, and then off to bed.

Sunday, at about 10 am the exhibit opened, and we literally had to search for an escape route at midday, to get some food in between. An overwhelming amount of people have come to visit the exhibition. Rightfully, absolutely. I think there were about 23 students who presented their work. I have seen a lot of beautiful work, and I’ve met a lot of enthusiastic people, both photographers and visitors.

I would like to thank all the people who have attended the exhibit, thank you for your warm reactions, your attentions and the good talks.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed the exhibit. I enjoyed it for sure. Literally broken yesterday evening, but happy after all.

I’ll include a picture of my part of the exhibit, and I will probably post some more detailed ‘making of’ articles on the different shoots I did for this project.

For all those interested in posing nude, I’m rather sure that I will continue this project, so please do contact me if you feel like taking part in this.

thank you,

Ludwig

LudwigDesmet-portfolio-4697

Disaster struck!

people, Personal Pictures

Hi,

I dropped my camera to the floor last week and my CF card broke.

Luckily enough my camera seems to be fine (Kudos to the magnesium body of the 5D II, only some exterior body-coating chipped off). So no reason for not posting anymore, then what has been the reason?
Work mainly. I have been overly demanded this last week, with finishing up my latest big assignment. I made about 40 minutes of 3D animation for a multimedia exhibition about the birthday anniversary of Mercator, 500 years ago. pls check out the link: www.mercatordigitaal.be for more info. I really had no energy left for photography, unfortunately. This should get better in the next few days, as I’m finishing the final touches on the last animation. So pictures will soon find their way to my blog again. I will take up the 85/85 project where I abandoned, and just continue the days to go.

Just wanted to share you this one. A homework from photography classes: take a portrait of your neighbor! And sorry, no this has nothing to do with the title of this post.

thank you for your patience, see you soon!
Ludwig