woman

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!

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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.

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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!

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Sara at The Mansion

beauty, Personal Pictures

Hello there,

Another shoot at The Mansion to show.

Sara seemed a bit stressed when she arrived. She has some experience with shoots, but my kind of shoots is a bit different than others, because:

1. I work alone (no assistants, no make up artists)

2. In a strange environment (no studio setup but an empty house)

3. They get to me for a rather intimate kind of shoot (they all respond to a moodboard where some nudity and a lot of sensuality is shown.

Nevertheless, we got a good shoot, Sara got cold in the end, and thats visible in the goosebumps appearing on her arms and legs. Luckily she didn’t get a cold afterwards.

As usual, we worked throughout the  entire house, ground level, first level and the attic. On the attic, the plastering from the ceiling has been knocked off, and now the wind is blowing freely under the roof. For some pictures I installed an off camera flash to lighten up a bit the entire scene, because circumstances were really not good (too little light) and I got too many risk for unsharp images.

good viewing! All images can be enlarged by clicking them.

Ludwig.

 

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Eline at the mansion

beauty, Personal Pictures

Hi all,

I’m continuing my series ‘at the Mansion shoots’ for I still am able to use the Mansion as a shooting location. I hope this will last some more time. Another big thank you to the owners of the house.

As you all know, the mansion is being restored and updated to modern standards. This means the house is changing about every week. Some two weeks ago we had this room completely packed in thin plastic foil, to prevent the woodwork from any damage during the plaster renovations.

About Eline, we met trough Facebook. She had seen my moodboard in my call for models and was very happy she could get a shoot with me. We never met before, never spoken etc. … During a short ‘warming up break’ we were talking about her studies and my professional career and about my wife studying again, and guess what, … after a few moments we found out that her mom is in the same class my wife is in!!! No need to tell that the atmosphere got even better after that.

I think Eline is really beautiful, she’s got a strong facial expression, long wavy hair and a tall, slim body. As a photographer I couldn’t wish for nothing else. She’s easily ‘posable’ and she took a lot of pleasure in dancing with the plastic foil at the end. Thank you Eline for this pleasant shoot!

About the shoot. It was very dark that day, but I still wanted to shoot only natural light. I had a trigrip reflector with me, but we only used it on the first part of the shoot (with the lace curtains) I love to work in different places of the house, to create some different looks in every shoot. All images shot on Canon 5D II with my Canon lenses.

I hope you like the pictures, come back again soon, as I have some more shoots to publish! thank you for watching, thank you for reading. All images click’able. 😉

ludwig

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Helga Rock’n Roll

beauty, people, Personal Pictures

Helga asked me if we could do a quick shoot together. She said it could be a little rock’n roll. She brought her electric guitar and I brought a single flash and a cactus trigger.

I am lucky enough to have some locations in my immediate neighborhood. Not that they are always available, but I have at least one available most of the time.

This time an old textile factory where some rooms are empty and ready to shoot in.

first two images with Canon 24 mm f1.4 II L and the others with Canon 85 mm f1.8.

Only the first two images are made with flashlight, rest is natural light only.

Black and white conversion with LR4, as well as some minor retouching.

thank you for looking.

The Mansion Shoot – prt II – The mirror & Curtain play

beauty, people, Personal Pictures

Hi,

I promised you to post another part of the shoot today, so here it is.

This house is really full of marvelous decoration elements, so we tried to make use of them. The floor is covered up with thick plastic sheets, to protect it from damage during restoration works, so that was the only thing to avoid. some of the curtains are gone, but in this very particular room they are still there, and they offered a lot of different possibilities.

I hope you enjoy the images. I hope you are not bothered with the mild nudity in some of them. If you are bothered by the nudity, please continue here and have fun.

All images can be clicked for a bigger view.

Next week I’ll publish the last part of this shoot: The upper floor. Happy viewing!

see you soon!

The Mansion shoot – Prt I – the directors office –

beauty, Personal Pictures

A week ago I had the opportunity to shoot in beautiful mansion style house. The building is from the first half of the 20th century, and full of splendid decorative details that make for a perfect setting for beauty shoots. I had never shot there, only visited it once for a very short moment, so it was new to me.

I had Pauline for a model. We never met before. Actually her mother linked the two of us together to get a shoot organized. We discussed some things over FB about the style and the mood we would work in. I sent her two mood boards I made before: Natural beauty and clothed sexy. I’ll leave it up to you what genre the results best fit into.

Pauline has some previous experiences with modeling work. She has a well sculpted muscular body and beautiful blue eyes. We worked together for about three hours, finding our ways trough the house. It is not really big despite its appearance from the outside, and currently undergoing restoration. This made for an extra challenge to cover that up. (ladders, floors being covered with protective sheets, bags of old tapestry all over the place, tools, etc.)

All images taken with Canon 5D II, with Canon 24 mm 1.4 L II, Canon 50 mm 1.4 and Canon 85 mm 1.8. No artificial lights were used (except for the desk lamp). In some settings an extra Lastolite Trigrip reflector was used. Some minor touchups have been done in Lightroom 4. Mainly getting back highlights in some pictures and adding some contrast here and there. The sepia tinted images all got some extra contrast.

Click for a bigger view!

Thank you Pauline, for this wonderful shoot, and a big thank you to the owners of the house, who willingly gave me access.

Next week I will post the second part of this shoot – the mirror & curtain play – so come again soon.

thanks for reading

Leyla – a long time ago

people, Personal Pictures

Leyla and I have been colleagues when I still worked in Brussels. She was the office secretary in the design bureau I was at that time. I left the design bureau some 8 years ago, and a lot happened since then. Leyla has studied to become a midwife, and she finished her studies last summer. Congratulations to her, for it is not simple to combine studies, a job and a family. Leyla has two kids in the same age as mine. We got in touch again trough Facebook, and Leyla loved the idea of a photoshoot.
She never posed before (seems to become a rule in my shoots) but with a little help she did really really well. We worked in the garden, the glasshouse, and in different rooms of the villa. I think she has very beautiful bambi eyes. Unfortunately she had to leave shortly after the shoot, so we didn’t get time to catch up on a lot of things. Thank you Leyla, for this wonderful morning shoot.

I hope you like the results. Click to see a bigger version.









I hope you come back soon.
Don’t forget, I’m finishing my exhibition today, it will be open on october 20 – 21 – 27 – 28 and then during Pinehouse opening hours till the end of november.

Ludwig

Morning mood in old villa.

people, Personal Pictures

Hi there,
I’m very pleased to be able to share these images with you.
I did a model shoot with Lien, in the old villa where I shot the urbex shoot some weeks ago.

I did a call for models some weeks ago, on my Facebook Page, asking for models for a ‘natural beauty’ shoot. No make-up, no special hairdo, no flash or other light accessories. Just a female model, some sensual female clothing, a nice location and limited photo gear. Lien was happy to volunteer. Thank you Lien, it was a pleasure working with you, and you did really well!

Lien has never posed before, she’s a mother of two young boys and just a regular mom and wife. I think it is important to tell you this, because I want to stress on the fact that for a good shoot, you don’t need any specific experience or training. It is the photographers task to talk his model into the right poses, and I think we worked together very very well. I knew Lien before, she’s a daughter of a couple of good friends of mine, so she was quite relax from the beginning of the shoot, that helped of course. But, it could have been anyone, … really.

We have worked with some different clothing sets, in different rooms of the villa. It is really a wonderful place to work in as a photographer. I would like to say thank you here to Dirk, owner of the house, to let me in for these shoots. Thank you Dirk.

I will not tell a lot more about this shoot, except that we worked together for about two hours, we had great light, good atmosphere, and we could easily start all over tomorrow and come with another complete set of fine pictures.
All images taken with my Canon 5D II, and Canon 50 mm f1.4, Canon 85 mm f1.8 and Canon 135 mm f2.0 . I love fast lenses and wide open apertures. A limited gear setup like this allows working fast, and concentrating on poses and light. Post processing was done in Lightroom 4, that took me another 2 and a half hours for the entire set of 115 selected images. I’m sure I could work more on any of the images, but I’m not that picky on details. 😉

Click on any image to view a larger version.


Comments are most welcome!

My website: charlemagne-art

Hope you come back soon!

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

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.

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:

low light model shots

people, Personal Pictures

Did a shoot tuesday afternoon in Ghent, with model Annelies.
We got so cold during the shoot that we decided to go for a coffee late in the afternoon. Good moment to test my new 50mm 1.4. Very little light, not too much place for moving around. These are the results (heavily tweaked in LR I admit), think I’m gonna love my new lens.





All images wide open at f 1.4, 1/30th of a second, ISO 640.

Sanne modelshoot

people, Personal Pictures

Sanne is a model describing herself as a ‘Plus model’, this means, not fitting into the ‘ideal size’ category.

We had a fun shoot last week after someone else cancelled on this superb location. Sanne immediately jumped in to take this opportunity! Please enjoy these pictures. Click for bigger images!




The shoot was shot with 85mm, 135mm and wide angle 17-40 (last image). We had a large reflector and an off camera flash, used trough umbrella. Images were shot at ISO 500 – ISO 800 on Canon 5D II.

struggle for a portrait

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

Hi,
I’m at number 15, people who have come at my studio to pose for the professions project. All people I have photographed are un-easy with posing, and it has been a challenge to make them feel comfortable enough to get a good portrait and a nice depiction of their professional occupation.
Last I had a directors assistant and I would like to show you a bit of the shoot in evolution. I always ask people to bring something related to their job, and to be creative in what they bring (otherwise everybody brings a computer nowadays). She had brought a small calculator and a cellphone, because she does a lot of pricing calculations and she is on the phone half of her working time.

First of all I do a shot to verify my light setup, a quick close portrait will do to check on the detail in the highlights and the shadows.

First we tried with the calculator and a portable home phone I have here at hand. Phone in left hand, phone in right hand, didn’t work out to my feeling.

Ok then, let’s try only the calculator, maybe we’re going to get somewhere, … duhhhh, nope, nothing ‘directors assistant’ alike.

Maybe when we use only the phone, the pose will be less ‘forced’ and more natural, try putting a hand on your hip, nice, but not so ‘verymuchbusywithalotofthingsatthesametime’. This looks more like a well dressed woman calling her friend.

Now what do you really do in your job, I asked Ellen, …
Well, I’m often occupied with a lot of papers, trying to fix a date for an appointment in my bosses agenda, whilst running from here to there, …
Oh, okay, let’s find you some papers, an agenda, a pen, and hold that calculator and phone while I go find what we need.
I gave her some invoices strolling on my desk (she gave them back after the shoot 🙁 an agenda, a pen, …) and I quickly grabbed my camera.
While she was struggling to get all those things comfortably in her hands, I took a shot, MY SHOT! We did some less panic’y shots for her too, but I had my shot! The directors assistant, getting thrown ten things at the same time to her head, and trying to deal with all of them.

I have no proper background system yet, so I need to do some retouching on the background, painting some areas black, next I do some local adjustments for some extra exposure to the hands, the shadow side of the face, the shadow side of the dress, I add some more exposure to the orange tones and that’s it for my final image.

After that, I took a picture of Ellen and her husband Bart, as a bonus, because I made her work so hard. Thank you Ellen, thank you Bart!