Lisa at The Mansion – Part II – Upstairs

beauty, Personal Pictures, Uncategorized

The mansion has 4 levels: a ground level that is fully restored, and fully equipped with furniture, curtains, beautiful light fixtures etc. A first level that looks like someone is currently moving in whilst doing a rebuild, with plaster on the walls, cables hanging from the ceilings, water pipes on the floor, just simple light bulbs protruding from above where the sink is supposed to be etc. … Another level that I call the attic, with dark rooms just below the roof. No plastering at all, you can directly see the roof structure and the shingles on the roof. There is also an underground level, which I haven’t used yet. Its cold, dark, dirty and damp. Nothing nice really, oh and it has doors with bars, maybe those might lead to something.

I love using the dirty textured walls as a background in contrast to my models. Sometimes my models get a little bit textured too, by standing against the walls, but mostly they don’t care. Lisa certainly didn’t care too much.

A jeans short and a loose tank top. Lisa needed nothing else.

All natural light, 24 mm (first one only), 50mm and 100 mm. Canon 5D II

thank you for looking, share me your thoughts and come back again for part III really soon.

Ludwig

Lisa at the Mansion – Part I – The Attic

beauty, Personal Pictures

Well, here they come. Lisa is a dancer, and she can’t keep from moving and being graceful and elegant. She’s also very well trained, and her body shows. The attic is dark, and cold and deserted, but it has window light that plays well with the curves and contours of a beautiful body. This is the first half hour of the shoot, and we still had to get ‘warmed up’, …

I feel it helps getting my models comfortable and at ease when my wife spends some time getting their hair done. They feel less vulnerable and helpless, knowing there is a third person involved and also I believe they feel less threat knowing that I have a relationship that works well etc. … Lisa at least felt at ease from the start of the shoot.

images taken with 24mm (first one only) 50mm and 100mm

come back again soon.

Ludwig

Lisa at the Mansion – preview

beauty, Personal Pictures

A single image to get you all warmed up for the next few posts. Lisa at the Mansion. We met trough Facebook, we have tried to fix a date for a shoot on several occasions in the last two years, and then finally, at the end of august, Lisa came to Ronse for a beauty shoot. She did absolutely wonderful, I can’t wait to show you the results. The image below has received a 97.4 score by the 500px.com audience, and there’s a lot more images that have the same amount of tenderness, beauty and sensuality. Come back again really soon, and enjoy the rest of this wonderful afternoon photo session. Lisa told me when she saw the pictures: ‘amazing, that with so little equipment, you can produce this kind of result’. A great compliment for my available light photography, and another proof that you don’t need a ton of gear to produce beautiful images.

Image taken with the Sigma 50mm f1.4 DG Art 1/80 – f2.0 – ISO200

Juliette at the Mansion

beauty, Personal Pictures

Another series at the Mansion. Juliette had seen my images on modelmayhem (I have a free account there, so my portfolio is limited to 15 images) and contacted me for a shoot early summer. It took a while before we could arrange a date. Juliette, like most of my models, had to travel quite some distance to get here. Worthwhile? Take a look at the pictures and decide for yourself. Juliette happy, me happy, … Thanks again to Nathalie for the hairdo, thank you to the owners of the Mansion, still granting me access to it whenever I want to shoot. Thank you Juliette for your patience and trust.

All images except the last one available light only, Canon 5D II and Canon 100mm f2.8 IS Macro L/Sigma 50mm f1.4 DG Art.

Last image with additional Canon Speedlite 580EX II flash.

Thank you for watching, hope to see you again soon.

Kimberly at the Mansion – the digital ones

beauty, Personal Pictures

I’ve spoken about this shoot in an earlier post (in which I talked about the pro’s and con’s on film photography vs. digital).

But I yet have to show the digital images of this shoot with Kimberly. We fixed a date only a couple of days after she became 18. I generally don’t work with people under 18 because I don’t want any discussions with mad parents, or I do not want the hassle of somebody else having to sign the release contract I work with, and I don’t want to picture any nudity of a model under 18 (at least).

Anyway, here are the pictures, I don’t believe Kimberly posed in a shoot before, and she did really well, I think she has a very cute face.

I hope you like them. All natural light, at one of my favorite locations, The Mansion.

Hair was done by Nathalie, my wife. She’s joining in regularly for a hairdo lately.

thank you for watching. Come again soon.

Ludwig – Ronse – Belgium

Pauline M. at the Garden of Eden NSFW

beauty, Personal Pictures

If i remember well, I think Adam and Eve met at the garden of eden.

I think they must have had a similar feeling as the one I had when I first saw this garden.

It is absolutely fabulous, and I love taking my models here. I can’t thank you enough, Sabine, for lending me the result of your hard labour and work.

Next chapter in the shoot with Pauline.

A great model, lots of character and willing to integrate my ideas in this shoot.

Thanks again Pauline, I enjoyed working with you.

Come again soon for my next post, another before and after image, with Lightroom development tricks explained.

happy photography,

ludwig

Pauline M. at the Mansion

Uncategorized

Pauline is studying to be a drama artist. She also has some experience with photography. She contacted me trough a model website where I have some portfolio images. She’s originally from Liège, but residing in Brussels.

I loved working with her, she does not have the typical model figure, and although she was a bit shy at first she posed very easily and naturally, and that is mainly what I’m looking for in models.

We worked trough the afternoon, first at The Mansion, then at the Garden of Eden. I’m very happy to have some exquisite locations really nearby, as this gives me the possibility to combine as the day evolves, and eventually as the weather changes. I’m still thinking about finding some additional locations for extra variety and possibilities. Not an easy thing to do, but I’m working on it.

Pauline brought a friend for make-up, and my wife did her hair. She made me think of a classic film diva in some of the images.

I’ll post the images in two series, The Mansion first. The house has been decorated with new curtains lately, and I’m happily making use of them.

Gear list: Canon 5D II, Canon 100mm f2.8 macro IS L, Canon 24mm f1.4 L, Sigma 50mm f1.4 DG.

Hope you like the images, come back soon for Pauline at the Garden of Eden.

Tatjana at Sabine’s house, B&W

beauty, erotic, Personal Pictures

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 II

beauty, Personal Pictures

A couple more film images 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

This is the first model shoot where I used the 60 years old Rolleiflex camera and it did just fine.

I found the square aspect ratio from the middle format Rolleiflex a relief to work with. No more hard decisions on shooting vertical vs. horizontal.

Sabine’s husband is collecting ‘snail houses’, we made good use of them. 😉

thank you for reading,

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

Table Top Nude II

beauty, erotic, Personal Pictures

Styling and photography by me.

Make up and model: Anna Orlova

Limited edition prints available.

Table Top Nude II

Soon more images from the shoot with Tatjana, and also a series of analog images from that shoot.

thanks for viewing!

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

Going commercial? Kim at the Mansion – color.

beauty, Personal Pictures

Hi there,

I’ve been wondering for a while now if I should start promoting my model shoots commercially. Yes I have done some shoots that have made me gain some money from them, but mostly my ‘natural beauty’ shoots are initiated by myself. I have the location, I look for a model, we get an agreement and an appointment, and we get together.

We discuss shoot contents over some moodboards I have at hand, and I shoot under my own command.

That last sentence is the most important reason for me not to start too fast shooting commercially. (By commercial, I mean privately ordered beauty shoots, not publicity work or fashion or anything else) The fact that I can decide on the style, the make up, the model and the location is a big plus for creating my own style. Whenever I’m working in any kind of assigned shoot, I’m no longer the sole decision maker, and I’m afraid that that could interfere with what I call my own personal, slowly getting defined style. As soon as the model starts interfering, and even saying “hey, but I would like an image like you made with that other girl” I’m not longer the boss of my shoots, and I will no longer be able to decide on anything I want (as far as I’m not interfering with the limits of my model of course).

On the other hand, a little extra money from my shoots would be more than welcome. I have been investing a lot in equipment and time lately, and I would like to have some kind of ‘return on investment’ in the months to come. A problem with that is that demand for the kind of shoots I do (or even a regular prom shoot session) is virtually inexistent here in Belgium, so I’ll have to ‘convince’ my customer potential that a shoot with me, and the resulting images are worthwhile.

Anyone need a gift for mother’s day? Shoot plus pillow book maybe?

some more results from the shoot with Kim. Color images this time. Enjoy!

Justine autumn shoot

beauty, Personal Pictures

Hello there,

I had worked with Justine before, you’ve been able to see these images from my shoot with Justine at the Mansion here.

Justine is from Ronse, so we settled a second shooting moment some weeks later. We wanted to take profit from the beautiful autumn colors that day.

Unfortunately it rained all evening. Days are short already, we met at 16:00 h and a cloudy cover made for even darker shooting conditions. High ISO time it means. All shots between ISO 800 and ISO 1600.

Some images are developed in an even darker style, just to emphasize on the vulnerability of my model of the day.

Justine is really easy to work with. She’s not afraid of rain or cold, and is happy to be able to be part of it.

Thank you Justine.

Hope you like them, see you back soon.

Ludwig

Natural Beauty at the Mansion – The book

beauty, Personal Pictures

Well, it’s finally here.

I’ve made a book to accompany my latest exhibit, to be able to show some more of my work, next to the 10 images on show.

Quite a bunch of people have signed in to reserve their copy, and today the pre-orders arrived by parcel service courier.

The book contains a selection of the best images from my series ‘natural beauty’, shoots done between oktober 2012 – september 2013.

It is a large square book (30x30cm), 66 pages, hard cover, premium lustre paper. The book has been composed in Lightroom, printed trough Blurb.com

It has a printed dust cover and features about 65 large images.

This is looking quite cool I think, my own work, published in a pile of books.

I’ll be happy to hand a copy to all the people who have been so kind of ordering one.

People who would like to do a back-order, can still order the book HERE, straight from the blurb.com book-store. If you order now, it will arrive soon enough for your christmas tree 😉

I’m quite busy now with my Nude (In)cognito project, but I prefer not to show anything before the actual presentation, which is on jan 18th.

I’ll make sure to update with some other nice images soon.

Come again.

thank you for reading

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

Nathalie M. at the Mansion

beauty, Personal Pictures

Still working hard at the mansion, doing natural beauty shoots whenever I find the time.

I never prepare these shoots I must tell, I prefer working into the magic of the moment, and taking instantaneous decisions based on the conditions of that day, based on the mood I am in, and the model I am working with. The results are varying of course, but always a true result of a spontaneous collaboration. The mansion is still being renovated, and some places are unusable, while others are near finished. I can’t but express my feelings of joy for being able to expose my work in the mansion soon. I will try to show the images in the same place they were taken, to make a direct link with the building and the atmosphere that reigns in every room.

enough talking, here are the images. Thank you Nathalie, for being my model that early morning, thank you to the owners of the place, for letting me in.

All images with Canon 5D mark II and Canon 50mm f1.4, Canon 85mm f1.8 and Canon 135mm f2 L. Processing in Lightroom 5.

Thank you for watching, come again soon!

ludwig

ludwig desmet

beauty and fine art photography

natural beauty

Lisa at The Mansion – Part II – Upstairs

Lisa at the Mansion – Part I – The Attic

Lisa at the Mansion – preview

Juliette at the Mansion

Kimberly at the Mansion – the digital ones

Pauline M. at the Garden of Eden NSFW

Pauline M. at the Mansion

Tatjana at Sabine’s house, B&W

Tatjana at Sabine’s house

Tatjana on film II

Tatjana on film

Table Top Nude II

Tatjana having coffee

Garden of Eden

Going commercial? Kim at the Mansion – color.

Justine autumn shoot

Natural Beauty at the Mansion – The book

Justine at the Mansion

Ines at the Mansion

Nathalie M. at the Mansion