nude

tough decisions in life

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a little resume

I have studied to be a graphic designer, that led to a degree back in 1991. I have worked in several pre-press studio’s and a packaging design agency before starting my own company, not in graphic design but in 3D rendering services. I was rather successful, with clients such as product developing companies Barco, Melexis, SAS winches, Duco, Marketing agencies, artists such as Mark Manders, André Rieu, next to a lot of architects and project developers.

I loved being on the front edge of new products, developments, technologies, events, and being able to provide marketing material for these customers. I did this on my own, and home based. Very convenient, but in the end also very lonely as a job. Orders were sent by email, some explanation on the phone if necessary, and finished jobs were sent out by email as well, or by means of online data transfer sites like wetransfer. This meant that in the following years, I had no social contacts anymore. I went looking for a solution, and this showed up in photography. I had started a weekend class in photography when I had just left my studies, but never finished it. Honestly because I was a bit discontent about the chemicals being poured down the drain. (talking about film photography at that time)

But I never really quit photography, and with every job change, I looked for a job related to photography in some way. This has made me decide back in 2009-2010 that I wanted to pick up classes again to further build my photography skills.

I could do some exams to skip some classes, as I was familiar with photography basics (from the two years I did previously) and with retouching (from my graphics background) and I sped up the process by taking two classes at a time. Very soon I could enrol a job into teaching Adobe Lightroom in the same institution I was following my own finishing classes. A kind of a strange situation but it turned out well as most of the students I gave classes to didn’t even realise I hadn’t finished my studies yet.

At the same time I started following classes again I also started portraying women, which led to the portfolio you can see on this website. This started as being very occasionally, but I got more and more into it, and tried to use every free moment of time to get a shoot planned.

Very soon I had a larger amount of classes to teach, and I tried being more selective in my clients/jobs in my self owned business, but nevertheless I worked like 4/5 in teaching classes 3/5 in doing 3D rendering jobs and 1/5 self organised photography shoots.

Too much indeed, so last year in november I announced to all my clients for 3D rendering that I would finish this service, look for somebody interested in acquiring the client base, and only do photography jobs from 2017. I found nobody interested so I had to disappoint some of my customers for sure, some still are customers for photography services, one is hard to convince and stubborn in still giving me 3D rendering jobs. I announced yesterday that I will no longer be of service from 2018 on.

why tough decisions, well, 3D rendering services have long been a good source of income to me, and they still were in 2017, it has paid my photography investments in material, exhibition prints, workshop costs, … photography has grown slightly but not enough to compensate, since I have not enough time to really build up this service due to a lack of time.

This comes down to cutting one safety line before you have another one :/ … of course I have my classes that serve as a stable base income, but they are by far not ‘wealthy paid’ and getting noticed with my photography has proven to be a long and difficult process. I have had a good exhibit with some book sales and some large format print sales, just enough to compensate for the costs made (printing material, giving everybody a drink, making some new large format prints for the exhibit, …).

I would like to invest more time in artistic researches and getting further in analog photography. I am currently investigating the options for working on 4×5 inch format, requiring a large format camera and the need for development in house (till now I had my 120 roll film developed by a lab, but 4×5 film sheet lab development is out of budget)

A whole lot of words to explain why posting rate has dropped a little the last months.

Things should take up again when I finished my last 3D rendering job 🙂 if someone is interested in my earlier client base, just give me a call. The website is here: www.renderhouse.eu

Can’t post without an image, you will understand why photography is so much more pleasant than 3D, it is working with people rather than pixels :

 

 

The birdkeeper

beauty, location, Nude

• The birdkeeper •

Summer is long gone it seems, but this shoot was taking place on one of those hot summer days, when models do not hesitate to pose in lingerie or nude, sun will keep them warm.

The image was taken in a little castle near my hometown, on a shady terrace. The owner had opened the door and then vanished. Eva was in a good mood, the birds were singing all around.

Shot with my old Rolleiflex TLR, on Kodak TMax 400 film. Shooting on film is a strange thing, it is slow, expensive, delicate, cumbersome … but I love it. It makes the experience more real, and the waiting for the negatives makes you take some distance from your own work. It is always exciting to see the images coming, 3, 4 weeks after you’ve shot them.

have a nice Sunday afternoon,

 

ludwig

 

A treasure on the attic, …

beauty, erotic, location, Nude

as promised here by the full series from this part of the shoot with Eva Evian,

• A treasure on the attic •

all images shot on Canon 5Ds with Sigma 50 mm f1.4 DG Art or Canon 135mm f2.0 L
all at f2.2 ISO 800, shutter speeds vary.

come again soon,
Ludwig

alternative beauty – Alopecia

beauty, Nude, portrait

We met at my last exhibit in Ronse. She’s not trying to hide her baldness, and wears it with pride. We agreed on a cooperation, she loved the pictures.

Alopecia is a disease that results in partial or total hair loss, for Marlies it is total.

Make up: Heidi

Model: Marlies

Shot in my atelier in Ronse/Belgium. It has been a long time since I used my studio flashes. This was the first time in my re-organized studio space.

 

A photoshoot for your own, please contact me at ludwig -at- ludwigdesmet -dot- com

 

all images shot on Canon 5Ds, with Canon 100mm f2.8 L IS Macro

thank you for watching, please come again soon, there’s a lot to publish, with landscape images from Scotland, Corsica, some more beauty shoots etcetera, …

Ludwig

Lady Madonna – I think I made a new fine image

beauty, location, Nude

• Lady Madonna •

shot today in a remote castle in Tournai, Belgium,

lots of thanks to the owner of the place, and to my model of course.

sometimes all falls into place and beauty is the result of it.

 

Model and make up: Eva Evian

styling and photography: Ludwig Desmet

shot on Canon 5Ds with Canon 135mm f2 – ISO 200 f2.8 1/250s

thank you for watching,

Ludwig

New Publication – Goodlightmagazine

Nude, personal tips & tricks, Tips and Tricks

Goodlightmagazine, an online magazine specialised in photography lighting techniques has published an article by me about photographing nudes with available light. It contains a lot of examples, what to look for in a location, some basic rule explanations and very well crafted light diagrams.

make sure to check it out here:  http://www.goodlightmag.com/gift

just fill in your email address and you’ll be granted a free download of the current issue.

Personally I’m not very fond of the magazine layout, but the content is very good 😉

a sample of the first two pages of this 9 page editorial below:

best,

Ludwig

be sure to put your feet in the right place, then stand firm

beauty, erotic, Nude

… it is something I try to repeat to myself every day

the exhibit was good, a lot of people passed by to see it, despite the very good weather we had in these weeks. It was a pleasure to talk to so many people about photography in general, my work in particular. I have received compliments, appraisal and suggestions, they are all welcome. Still, doing what I do remains an investment in time, energy, money and other resources so I have to stand firm and not surrender.

the quote is by Abraham Lincoln.

• be sure to put your feet in the right place, then stand firm •

image details:

model: Elise

Make up: Heidi

Assistance: Nathalie

Photography: ludwig desmet

Canon 5Ds with Canon 135mm f2.0

1/125s f2.0 ISO 100

 

Best wishes for 2017 – Thank you for 2016

Personal Pictures

Hello there on this very first day of the year, I would like to wish everybody a very good start, good health and some dreams that get you moving.

A second ‘you’ to love, family and friends to care about, a safe home and a world that is ruled by peace.

2016 has been quite a busy year in photography for me, with three exhibits, a lot of photo shoots, and some portfolio presentations here and there. All this next to my daytime job and teaching evening classes, educating two boys and keeping the wife happy 😉 … quite busy indeed.

You have been an amazing audience in 2016, that is for sure. Since I switched this blog over to this domain (late january) it has registered over 45.000 (!)  visitors and over 325.000 clicks. I would like to thank you all for this. What is even more fulfilling is the fact that my works starts to find its way to people’s home interiors. This means a lot to me, and certainly not only the small revenue coming from these sales.

Some images I gladly remember from 2016 to keep you warm until the new images for 2017 arrive.

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I hope to see you all back this year, I held back some beautiful images from my latest shoots to start with in 2017. Also I bought some new gear that I will review here soon. Don’t hesitate to make comments, ask questions, … and keep enjoying beauty.

Happy New Year !!!

ludwig

My body my double …

beauty, erotic, location, Nude

one more before Christmas …

a tribute to feminine beauty, to art, to nature

• my body my double •

ludwigdesmet_kr

See you next week with an overview of my year in photography, some numbers and memories from 2016. Happy Christmas everybody and take care!

Ludwig

image details: Canon 5Ds with Canon 17-40mm f4 – 1/50s f4.0 ISO200

shot on location in the Brussels area, model and make up: Kate Ri

 

After the work is done …

beauty, erotic, location, Nude

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with Rubia

These images were taken on a ‘available light’ workshop with Sacha Leyendecker in Köln.

He has a great available light studio, and gives plenty workshops throughout the year. Be sure to check his site here. Main goal of this one on one training day was to review my habits and to try to learn some more about light usage. I made use of the available -lockers-on-wheels for this setting and Rubia acted perfectly as a stand in worker. All images Canon 5Ds with Sigma 50mm f1.4 DG A. All images f1.6 at 1000ISO, varying shutter speeds.

Model and make up: Steffi Rubia Stringsi

photography by me

thank you for watching.

ludwig

Bedroom mood – with Rubia

beauty, Nude, personal tips & tricks

as a final setup on the Sacha Leyendecker workshop (yes, I can still learn a lot too) we had a mattress and some white bed linen and a very enjoyable – wasn’t it Rubia? – down bed cover.

I tried to create an atmosphere of comfortable well being in this series. Rubia is a professional model and she understood the idea well. The advantage of professional models is that they know very well how to move to have a good looking pose, the downside of it can be that they are very hard to be photographed as their real personality. They often get some kind of ‘model layer’ that gets in front of their person. This was not the case with Rubia. We had a long talk before the shoot, that helps to get barriers down. We both got very relaxed before the shoot started. I rather have the habit of giving quite some direction to my models, Sacha asked me to try to let Rubia do her own thing, easier said than done, this set is the result of a mixture of ‘self induced posing’ and ‘directed posing’. See here for the technique used to create the high key effect.

Bad lighting conditions (dark) which means high ISO settings, but a nice set after all.

 

Bedroom mood

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All images Canon 5Ds with Sigma 50 mm f1.4 A DG

1/60 f2.2 ISO 2000

Thank you for watching, come again soon,

ludwig

www.rubiasworld.com

www.sachaleyendecker.com

High Key made easy

beauty, Lightroom, Nude, Personal Pictures

hi there,

this below image had quite some succes on Facebook and different groups I published it onto. Actually people were asking about the way I did the high key development.

It was a rather straightforward and easy process, a little explanation below.

ludwigdesmet-3948

The lighting conditions where not good, NOT. 🙂

I needed an ISO setting of 2000 to be sure to have sharp images, that’s at least way over my usual limits. (I rather keep ISO settings below 800) You’ll see that the image has some noise in the shadow areas (like the throat area).

the original image looked like this: quite even light conditions, although the light was a little directional (from the left), there were no hard lights, no deep shadows.

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I work in lightroom, my settings:

exposure: +2.10 / contrast: +40 / highlights: +67 / shadows: +36 / blacks: -42 / Clarity: -11 … that was about all I did. The image looks like this now:

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next I added some light using a local brush with + exposure, to get rid of the remaining bed sheet shading. No big secrets, just add plenty of exposure to make things white.

At last I added some noise reduction to get rid of too much grainy noise in the shadow areas. …

I hope  you like the image, I certainly do.

The image was taken at a private tuition day with Sacha Leyendecker.(http://www.sacha-leyendecker.com) The model is Steffi Rubia Stringsi, from Brussels. The image was taken in an available light studio in Köln, Germany.

see you soon.

ludwig