Tatjana at Sabine’s house, B&W

Next chapter from this same shoot.

I have shown some images I took on film, some digital, developed in color, now some digital images, developed black and white.

You will probably notice that I use square format more often in my images lately. i think they have a more balanced frame, more stable and that fits my photography well.

That is probably also one of the reasons why I love working with the analog 6×6 camera. It frees you from the question of shooting horizontal or vertical. Peace of mind, really.

All in all I think this was a very fruitful shooting session, don’t hesitate to communicate your thoughts and ideas.

Model: Tatjana DN

Hair: Nathalie R.

MU: Heidi H.

Lingerie and mask: Tutti-Passi

Thank you to Sabine, for granting me access to her house for this shoot.

All images except fourth (Canon 100mm f2.8 Macro L IS) and last (Canon 24mm f1.4 L) are taken with the new Sigma 50mm 1.4 DG.

I hope you enjoyed,

Ludwig

Tatjana at Sabine’s house

beauty, erotic, Personal Pictures

a series of color images I took at the house with the wonderful garden, in Ronse.

Sabine saw my work in the ‘Kunst omhulst in Villa 99’ exhibit, and she tracked me down on Facebook. Per return, I saw pictures of her garden and I immediately fell in love with the beauty and romantic feeling the garden expresses. I had a first shoot with Anna O. in the garden itself, and now her house interior was decor for this shoot with Tatjana. Sabine is a painting artist herself, and very open minded for these collaborations. Thank you Sabine, for having me at your home that day. Tatjana is a non professional model, but very experienced in model shoots anyway. She was really open to work with, and a lovely personality. We were so indulged in the shoot that we had to hurry to catch the train at the scheduled time.

Rain all afternoon, so we didn’t have the possibility to shoot in the garden that day, but the interior of the house proved very adequate for a ‘natural beauty’ shoot.

Make up: Heidi H.

Hair: Nathalie R.

Lingerie was willingly provided by Tutti-Passi, woman friendly pleasure shop.

Hope you like this small selection of images.

I will soon show a second series of black and white images from that same shoot.

Images taken with Canon 5D II and Sigma 50 mm f1.4 DG Art and Canon EF 100 mm f2.8 Macro IS L. In the first and second image I used a strobist flash off camera to get some additional light. It is bounced on a reflector, right side from the camera.

Hope to see you again soon, don’t hesitate to leave a comment, ask questions or whatever.

Ludwig

Tatjana on film

beauty, Personal Pictures

From the shoot Tatjana at Sabine’s house, Kodak T-max 400 on Rolleiflex 3.5

Model: Tatjana DN

Make up: Heidi Huys

Hair: Nathalie Renard

Many thanks to Sabine V. for letting me use her home as a setting.

I’ll do another post soon with a little more information on the camera.

thank you for watching,

Ludwig

Tatjana having coffee

beauty, Personal Pictures

I’m currently developing a series of images I did with Tatjana. She had coffee first.

Model: Tatjana D.

Make up: Heidi H.

Hair: Nathalie R.

Lingerie: Tutti-Passi.be

photographer: me, Ludwig Desmet

Image taken with the new Sigma 50mm Art, developed in LR5

soon more to come.

thank you for watching

Garden of Eden

beauty, Personal Pictures

Well, kind of anyway.

Model & Mua: Anna Orlova

Photography: Ludwig Desmet

Styling: me

Limited edition prints available

Garden of Eden

for a nice long hot weekend!

Ludwig

Table top I

beauty, erotic, Personal Pictures

I will continue my single image posts until I run out of stock :p

Result of the ‘At the Mansion’ shoot with Anna O., in Ronse Belgium.

Styling and photography by me.

Make up and model: Anna Orlova

Limited edition prints available.

Table Top Nude I

It is ok to like 😉

About the technique, I still work mainly (if not only) with natural light. This image has been made with the help of a tripod, because of the relatively long shutter speed, and in an attempt to keep a clean, frontal composition. I have multiple images of this session, but I think this one best expresses the beautiful shape of Anna’s body. No light source except the window light. Some light is bouncing back from the wall just behind me.

Canon 5D II – Canon EF 24 mm f1.4 L II – 1/10sec – f3.5 – ISO 100.

Ludwig

The Invitation

beauty, erotic, Personal Pictures

Another Single-Image post.

From the project ‘late night at The Mansion’

Photography: Ludwigdesmet

Model and Make up: Kelly Denauw

Accessories: Tutti-Passi.com

ludwigdesmet.wordpress.com

The Invitation

Limited edition prints available.

Flooded Bathroom

beauty, Personal Pictures

One single image today.

Result of the Mansion shoot with Anna Orlova, in Ronse Belgium.

Styling and photography by me.

Make up and model: Anna Orlova

Limited edition prints available.

I have to admit that I did some tricky stuff on this one.

Post processing and 3D image manipulation/rendering by me.

thank you for watching!

ludwig

In Control I

beauty, erotic, Personal Pictures

One single image today.

Result of the afternoon shoot with Anna Orlova, in Ronse Belgium.

Styling and photography by me.

Make up and model: Anna Orlova

Dog (Nono) and garden: Sabine V.

Limited edition prints available.

In Control I

Click for bigger image.

thank you for watching,

Ludwig Desmet

Photographing sculptures

assignments, Personal Pictures

Hi,

last summer I was asked by a belgian sculptor, to photograph some of her works. She’s working on ceramics and sculpting mainly. you can find her new site here: Sylvia Hens (the site is currently being rebuilt)

She had especially requested to work with existing light, and to try to emphasize on the emotional expression of her works, I was not sure I understood her completely, but she assisted during the shoot, and she was very happy with the results we achieved together.

So all the images are taken with available light, sometimes with the aid of a small reflector. The reflector could even be a simple sheet of white paper.

All exept the first two images were taken inside the lovely house of the artist, with little light. I made very good use of my tripod to prevent camera shake.

I hope you like the images, make sure to check out the website of the artist.

see you soon.

Ludwig

Justine at the Mansion

beauty, Personal Pictures

I met Justine a couple of weeks ago. She was keeping an eye on an artwork in a temporary exhibit walk in the city of Ronse. I asked her if she would like to be a model for my series ‘Natural beauty’ at the Mansion, and she was really enthusiast about the idea. She visited the exhibit at the Mansion a couple of days later, together with her mom. We fixed some shooting days soon after.

The Mansion is still my number one location for these shoots, it is beautiful, it has a lot of possibilities, nice light and what is new these latest weeks is that it gets furnished again, giving it a new feeling of life.

We had a very dark gray day making it extra difficult shooting inside. Wide open apertures and long shutter speeds.

All natural light. Canon 5D II and Canon 24 – 50 – 85 mm lenses.

Enjoy the images.

thank you for watching.

Soon to come, Justine autumn shoot

Ines at the Mansion

beauty, exhibition, Personal Pictures

I love it when I get people in for a shoot that have absolutely no experience with modeling. They are so much easier to talk into a ‘natural behavior’ than the wannabe models that stick to the 10 poses they learnt by heart. Two weeks ago, Ines came to the Mansion. She travelled for about three hours by train to get here. Thank you Ines, for doing this effort for this shoot. You were a wonderful model, fun to work with, a beautiful, smooth skin and very open in conversation. All these things make her into a real ‘natural beauty’. She confessed she had gone trough about every post in this blog, before she decided to come to Ronse.

The Mansion is in full preparation for our upcoming group exhibit I talked about previously. This means a lot of works still going on, and a big rush to get the ground level ready for the exhibit, but also some new furniture items arriving now and then, and that is of course of great use for my photography.

I hope you like the images, one image from Ines will also be shown in the exhibit itself. I’ll make sure to post some images when the exhibit has opened.

thank you for reading

ludwig

How to find a good location – shoot with Karen

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

Some people ask me about these locations I work in.

I have been into urban explorer photography (also called urbex) for a short period of time. I din’t really get far into this. Not that it didn’t please me, but modeling work pleases me more, because you work together with at least one other person to a result. There’s not much conversation possible with an abandoned building or a landscape. (another discipline in photography, that I still do from time to time)

In urbex, most of the locations are very abandoned, and you might get in with permission at rare occasions, but most of the time, you just don’t ask permission, don’t know who to ask to, or just simply don’t bother. This includes the risk of being ‘discovered’ by the owner, the housekeeper or even the police, … (never occurred to me 😉 )

As soon as I started doing model work, I convinced myself that it would not be a good idea getting the police behind my back whilst my model is working on the next intimate pose, or while she’s changing clothes, or some other awkward moment during the shoot. Finding locations is not easy, by far not. It has to be accessible, not too far driving from where you as a photographer are based (preferably), give plenty of light possibilities, give nice decorative possibilities etc. … And you need to get access at the times you want to shoot at.

My one and only advice in this matter is: Try to find the owner of the place, contact him or her, try to make a mutual beneficial agreement. Most people have shown great willingness whenever practically possible. I now have 4 different locations I regularly shoot in, and all 4 owners were very quickly sympathizing with the idea. I mostly offer free photo work – to some degree – if they would need any, be it for family or business matters.

This is what happened with the location of the shoot I’ll show you pictures of in this post:

While riding my motor trough the flemish ardennes (a part of our region called so because it resembles the ardennes – but actually it is more beautiful) I see this beautiful complex that seems like an old cloister, nursery school, orphanage, … and I decide to halt and look if I can find signs of people around.

After peeping trough some windows, knocking on the door, some kind of housekeeper gets his head out on the second floor, talking to me in a foreign language. (Being a Belgian citizen, I do speak and understand quite some languages, but clearly not this one) Impossible to talk to him, but he’s able to point me to a information panel hanging on the wall, that contains different phone numbers of the owner of the place. I have called the owner a couple of days later and she said:

“sure, no problem, I have been a model myself in my younger days. Just call me whenever you want to get in. When there are no groups (the location is rented as a summer camp house for big groups) you’re welcome.”

Easy as that, and something similar happened with the mansion, the old villa, the warehouse and the storage building. So, just ask, don’t ask for the impossible, be polite and be willing to offer some service in exchange. After that, be clear in your communication (when you want to shoot, for how long, with how many people, etc. …) and you’ll have a good chance for a lasting relationship.

One last remark about sharing locations with other photographers. Well, I’m very reluctant about that, and mostly for one reason. It is not because the owner granted me permission to shoot in a certain building, that he/she is also interested in receiving other photographers, or in being bothered by a different photographer every day, … Besides, the exchange offer they get from me, they won’t need it from another photographer, don’t they? 😉

So, enough about locations. I worked with Karen for the first time, first time in this new building too. The sky was cloudy, so there was really not much light inside. It required some searching, trying a lot of different angles, but we managed to get some really nice images after all. Karen told me afterwards “the pictures are really superb”. Thank you Karen.

All images taken with Canon 5D II at ISO 200 (except one at ISO 100), Lenses used in this selection: Canon EF 24mm f1.4 L II, Canon EF 50mm f1.4, Canon EF 85mm f1.8, Canon EF 135mm f2.0 L. All natural light.

happy viewing

Any questions about this post, just ask!

Ludwig

Eline V. at the mansion

beauty, people, Personal Pictures

hi, some new pictures from a new girl I worked with at the mansion. She came with her Uncle, who’s actually studying photography where I give classes, so I can present you some behind the scene’s pictures as well. Eline has only little modeling experience, and that is what I like the most. These models are easily posable the way I want, and don’t fall back into standard poses they’ve learnt with other photographers, ore standard poses from the fashion world. All shots done at the mansion, my favorite working location for natural beauty shoots, with a big thank you to the owners of the house!! I found this location with a bit of luck and a good word from one of my customers. I had worked in the building just in front of this one, when the mansion got sold to new owners. My customer introduced me, the owners saw my work, and a few agreements later, they granted me access to this magnificent place. Thank you Eline, for posing, thank you Gino, for the behind the scenes images and for driving Eline to Ronse! I’m sure you can couple some of my images to the behind the scenes shots 😉 Oh, and all pictures taken with natural light, some of them with the aid of a large reflector (thanks again Gino!) come again soon, I’ve photographed Karen at a new location, which I will be calling the orphanage!

some BTS pictures: (you’ll notice that my clothes are really smudgy and dirty on these BTS pictures. You have to know that the mansion is undergoing a full rebuild on the inside, and is thus covered with a layer of dust, from the cave, up to the attic. As a photographer, I tend to lean against walls, go flat on the floor, hang over staircase railings etc. . That’s why.) The very start of the shoot, warming up.

Me preparing the bath for Eline, Eline not sure what to think.

Eline taking a bath with clothes on. 😉

at the top floor of the building, the attic rooms. Dark but beautiful structures on the walls, me working with my Canon 24 mm f1.4 II L for a close up wide angle shot. In the garden, under the beautiful patio building.

Salomé on a sunday morning

people, Personal Pictures, photo gear, Uncategorized

>Hi,

some weeks ago I did an impromptu shoot with Salomé.

Salomé is one of my nieces, and she needed some pictures for thank you cards.

She dropped in on a sunday morning and we had about half an hour for making some pictures.

Fortunately the weather was great, and since we have had so much rain these last 6 months, the green was GREEN!

I took my two main portrait lenses, 85mm and 135mm, but all these shots are with the Canon 135mm f2 L.

For me this is the best lens I have, in terms of image quality. It has plenty of contrast, even in strong backlit images, it is very sharp, from the maximum aperture on, and it has creamy soft bokeh.

Main advice in bright sun conditions: shoot with the sun in the back of your model. It will prevent your subject from peeping the eyes, and you get a beautiful hairlight (a bit strong I admit) for free.

Images have only slightly been enhanced in Lightroom. I have an import standard of +20 contrast +15 clarity, and I did nothing else.

The best of the pack (in my opinion 😉 )

See you soon for the Harley Davidson images (see my facebook page – Ludwig Desmet)

Take care, and come again soon,

Ludwig

Eline at the Warehouse prt II

beauty, Personal Pictures

The shoot with Eline resulted in so many beautiful images that I decided to make two posts for this one.

The warehouse where we worked is one of my favorite locations in Ronse. It offers plenty in lighting situations, large rooms, corridors, staircases and a mix of contemporary and classic designed furniture (for sale 😉 ). It’s certainly worth the visit. I would like to thank the owners big time for letting me use it for my beauty shoots from time to time.

A word about the processing. I’ve been developing in both color and sepia tinted images. I tend to go more towards the black-and-white images for the more intimate shots, where my subject shows more tenderness and a gentle look. The fashion style images ask more for a color rendition. I don’t know if you agree with this. Just my feeling.

for the technical part, all images have been done with available light. Only the first image with the blue pull-over has an added flash light (highlights from left).

Anyway, I hope you like the images. Thank you Eline, for coming to Ronse and bringing half your wardrobe with you.

Thank you for visiting my blog. Come again soon!

ludwig

All images clickable for bigger size!

Free shoot results

beauty, Personal Pictures

Hi,

on ‘International womens day’ I gave a free shoot away to my like’s on FB (click here for my FB photography page).

The person who won the shoot gave it to her daughters Kim and Anoek. They are both not really familiar with shoots, but they have done it before.

Only natural light, a single reflector (try-grip) some pushing and pulling in Lightroom 4, no other fancy tricks.

Anyway, on the first of april, we shot for about three hours in two different locations. Natural light means I have no flash lights to set up, no big reflectors to hassle etc. … this works fast!

This telling, I just have to give this advice to all those eager to make better images themselves:

If you are still working in JPG for making pictures, then you should really consider switching to RAW format.

For me the biggest improvement in image quality is two-fold:

1. Switching to a full frame camera (from Canon EOS 450D to Canon EOS 5D mark II) which was huge, in terms of better noise control when working on higher ISO values, better color rendition and larger contrast range.

2. Starting with RAW images in stead of JPG’s. That suddenly allowed me to really work on the entire data captured by the sensor, which means you can push and pull exposure values a lot more, without losing much image quality or details etc. …

Lisa at the Mansion

beauty, people, Personal Pictures

Lisa came with her mother to the shoot. She’s only 15 years old, and I’ll never shoot a 15 year old without the approval of at least one of the parents. (written, signed contract). She was fun to work with, and presented a very adult attitude when posing. We had some great laughs, something between mom and daughter, and a very good shoot. Direct sunlight is generally not my favorite, but I tried to avoid too strong contrasts during the shoot. I did some different post processing on some shots. I hope you like the results. There’s more to come, so come again soon!

Take good care, and come again soon!

Ludwig

Shoot with Laur.

beauty, people, Personal Pictures

Laur was kinda unsure if she would fit into my ‘natural beauty’ portfolio.

We worked in the Mansion for about two hours, in different clothing outfits.

All natural light, with my trusted Canon 5D II twins.

I’ll leave it up to you if she fits in my portfolio. Personally I think we made some great photo’s together.

Oh, and happy easter to all of you.

thank you for watching, take care and see you soon!

ludwig

Jessika at the Mansion + snowshoot.

beauty, people, Personal Pictures, Uncategorized

Hi All,

some two weeks ago I had Jessika coming over to Ronse.

We had worked together for a shoot at Hallerbos, april last year, and she wanted to shoot again, in a different setting, with different clothing, etc. … Jessika didn’t feel totally comfortable about not wearing any make-up, and she didn’t like the first results of the shoot.

(women tend to be very very self-critical, if you asked me)

Anyway, I think we made some nice, moody shots at the Mansion, but then we got outside, and she put up some make-up 😀

It was during that week that we had a lot of snow here in Belgium, so we combined a shoot at the Mansion, with a wintershoot, on the same afternoon. I had timed quite well, so we got outside with the sun already very low, about an hour before sunset. I had a very nice backdrop this way. I only have one lens capable of doing this, without getting over-the-top flares anywhere in the image, and that’s my Canon 135mm f2. Although some images received some additional contrast in post, overall the images came out very well straight from camera. I hope you like them. No reflectors used this time, only natural light.

In one shot, I added some extra digital snow, to emphasize the cold character.

happy viewing, see you soon!