photography

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

Simple setup for kids shoot

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

I did some kids shoots in the previous weeks and I wanted to share this simple setup for nice pictures.

I was asked to do some portraits for a cousin and then with the same setup I took some pictures with our two boys together. Setup is the same and is like this:

I have a simple black cloth as a backdrop, a flashgun EX 580 II with a small softbox on a stand as a main light, a large styrofoam board (220×120 cm) as a reflector panel and a second flashgun (snooted with a self made insulator foam snoot in the back) to provide some rim light.
The results look like this (not the outdoor shot, nothing to do with this setup):

After the ‘brothers’ shoot, we had some fun with a balloon. They threw it up before their heads, and I shot it when it just passed their face. (I admit, we had to repeat this several times) I had some fun in photoshop afterwards.

Hope you liked this post!
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

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!

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

Free shoot results

people, Personal Pictures, Uncategorized

Hi, 

some weeks ago I offered a free shoot to my FB and other followers (FB followers are more nearby than my blog followers) I wanted to show you some results. Berlinda won the free shoot, and she received her pictures already.

– she was very pleased –

So I asked her if I could post some images of her daughter, a real natural poser and fun to work with.

Here they come: All done with natural light and one reflector. 50mm and 85mm lens.ImageImage

 

Hope you like them too!

Ludwig

 

Workshop Bert Stephani

Internet tips and tricks, Tips and Tricks

Hi,

Last week I had the chance to follow the workshop ‘advanced speedlight techniques’ with Bert Stephani, contemporary portrait and fashion photographer from Steenokkerzeel, near Brussels.
There were three participants, of the four spots available. We had some coffee to start with, typically Bert I guess. 😉
Bert is easy going, cool, relax and above all, willing to share his experience. We had an interesting day, full of practical tricks and tips.

Some of the lessons learnt:

• When setting up a light situation, use your hand as a stand in for your model. It’s freely available, and never bored with your tweaking lights over and over again. In the meantime, your model can freshen up or relax a while.
• When setting up a combined available/flash light setting, first expose for the available light, then the flash, and last but not least, take pictures.
• When taking pictures with a model, encourage your model, talk it trough the shoot, give clear posing instructions, … introduce mini-breaks from time to time to make your model relax, and to offer yourself some time to think about new ideas. Don’t break the posing flow or the contact between yourself and your model by looking at the results. When your light setup has been setup well, all images should be fine afterwards.
• Be relaxed and confident as a photographer. Whatever your mental status is, it reflects on your subject and in your images.
• Work your light situation in function of the story you want to tell.
• Don’t give workshop instructions and bake sandwiches at the same time. (first bakery products got carbonized)

Some of the strong points of the workshop:
• Bert has a large studio space – the barn – , offering plenty of possibilities, different light situations, props, …
• We could freely ask for personal advice on challenging projects and thus influence on the content of the workshop.
• The atmosphere is cool and informal

Some of the weak points of the workshop: Sorry Bert if this bothers you, I feel like I need to be complete for my readers.
• The workshop seemed not prepared and rather un-structured and slow-paced. I don’t know if this is typical for Bert’s workshops, or just on this particular occasion.
• Workshop was marketed ‘including teaching, model fee and bread lunch’, the teaching was there, the bread lunch too, but there was no model, so participants had to stand in as a model for the other participants. I have no problem with modeling as such, but it limits your ‘photography time’ during the day, and on our last ‘assignment’ only one person could be the photographer, so neither me nor the third participant had images from this setup. As a participant I felt I had not the same level of ‘hands on experience’ during the teaching, when I was acting as a subject.

some images taken during the workshop:

Lynn Studio shoot

people, Personal Pictures, photo gear

I wanted to share some pictures with you from my latest school work. Yes, I still follow classes in Photography. I’m currently in the people/portrait class, and the first studio shoot was to be done with one flashlight. We could use whatever modifiers we wanted, and we had to work towards a chosen sample image.

I had chosen this image as my goal for this assignment: I don’t know the photographer of this image, if someone knows, pls. let me know so I can credit the image.

I knew that it was going to be a fairly hard thing to get, this soft light coming from everywhere. I was pretty sure that I needed indirect light, so I chose for two huge reflector panels (Polystyrene boards, 1.20m wide at 2m heigh). I already had left the idea of lighting the background as in my sample image.
I had a perfect model for this picture, Lynn. She is a hairdresser, and specializing for make-up-artist, and she prepared herself the best she could, based on this example picture.
This is my setup:

I have been working with my 85 mm 1.8 in order to be able to just hide behind the reflector. Otherwise I had too much flare from the lightsource.

these are some results with this setup:


After that we tried a second alternative, the softbox, and one reflector to the left of my model. I experimented a bit with different positions for shooting, and different poses.

Result was quite satisfactory, so we decided to do a completely different setup, just for fun.
I wanted a very localized light, and I had no snoot available, so a gridded flash with barndoors did the trick.
I turned these images into BW because they made me think of these movie stars, longing for the hero to come back home.

Second half of the evening, we didn’t have the studio available anymore, so we did some freestyling in the hallway after that, with a reportage flash off-camera, combined with my Tri-Grip silver/white reflector. These are taken with the 135mm f2.

Hope you liked reading, feel free to comment!

In bed with Sue

Interesting Links

Last weekend I got a message on the ‘belgian weddings professionals’ facebook group about a 3 day online streaming course by Sue Bryce. Sue Bryce is what I would call a feminine beauty photographer, specialized in make-over shooting experiences. slightly based on the 80’s glamour, but totally reworked into a contemporary portrait style, with modern posing, make-up, hairdo’s etc. trying to create a unique experience for the women being photographed.
I took some quick glimpses of the course, in-between work, and I decided to immediately buy the course. At 99$ it is worth every penny. I’m only at the end of day one, in my viewing, and I’ve got tons of very useable tips already. Can’t wait to see the rest.

Sue’s website:
www.inbedwithsue.com

the link to the 3-day course: (sorry the price of 99$ was only during the course, now its some more)
www.creativelive.com/courses/glamour-photography-sue-bryce

I immediately used some of her posing tips in my first model shoot this week and I was very pleased with the results:

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

85/85 day 36-42

Personal Pictures, projects

6th week already for my 85/85 project. May I remind you that all previous posts have been updated every day during a whole week, so don’t forget to look back to earlier 85/85 posts to discover all images from that week.

Day 36 – 2012 02 03 – 13:24 h. – ISO 125 – f1.8 – 1/50 sec
One of our chickens had an off-day some days ago. … Can’t be a success every-time can it? With these quick changing, rather unusual weather conditions, I guess our hens lost track of seasons.
A quick setup on our wood dining table.

Day 37 – 2012 02 04 – 16:48 h. – ISO 125 – f8.0 – 1/80 sec
Belgium got surprised by snow yesterday. We had a new traffic jam record, about 1275 km, for a country of about 350 km long, that counts. 🙂
Very cold these days, -12° C this morning. Took some pictures late this afternoon, during my ‘dog-walk’.

Day 38 – 2012 02 05 – 11:55 h. – ISO 100 – f1.8 – 1/160 sec
My wife is a hairdresser, and sometimes she cuts hair of her brothers/sister/mother, …
Here her oldest brother is waiting for a haircut. The image was quite a bit underexposed, but I managed to get this one out of it. Kinda liked the dramatic contrast in the face.

Day 39 – 2012 02 06 – No image, due to sickness.

Day 40 – 2012 02 07 – 19:28 h. – ISO 800 – f2.0 – 1/60 sec
I had a really bad day yesterday, sniffing and sneezing all day long, didn’t really have my mind into photography, …
But today we had our first real lesson in portrait photography. We had 6 flashlights set up in different classes all with different modifiers. We could only use the modeling light, so care had to be taken not to get blurry images. We worked in pairs, to be able to photograph each other as a model. Walter was my companion of the day. I judged this my best shot. Light with barn doors, large insulating board to the left, as a diffuse reflector. Walter used to be a school director.

Day 41 – 2012 02 08 – 20:04 h. – ISO 3200 – f2.5 – 1/1250 sec
And another B&W image today, our two boys brushing their teeth before going to bed. I had done some high iso shots in the kitchen just before, and I liked this setting, my oldest sun was aware of my presence, hence the ‘hi’ finger.
With the EOS 5D mark II, ISO 3200 is fairly useable for color images, perfectly usable for B&W.

Day 42 – 2012 02 09 – 19:51 h. – ISO 3200 – f2.2 – 1/100 sec
Played around with my camera just after supper. The boys were playing on the floor, and the cat came in. She just paused to sit just in between our two sons, as to say, here I am, and I don’t really care what you are doing. High ISO’s to enable faster shutter speeds indoors without flash. I normally use flash white balance, so this came out too much orange. I prefer not to correct white balance to a neutral white, for this kind of shots, because then you loose the warmth of artificial lights. That’s also why they sell warm white TL bulbs, …