In April I finally got to do a photo shoot with Sanne Ebbesen By from Trend Models, where she has been represented for a while. Luckily for us one of my favorite stylists was back in town and had time to do the styling for us. Since all three of us had roots from Orkdal we figured we should do the shoot there as well. Marthe booked Bårdshaug Herregård where I have done some shoots with Unni L and Maren Elise Aasen, both from Trend Models, earlier. After having studied at London College of Fashion for almost a year, Marthe had improved her style a bit and had picked out some cool outfits for us to work with.
Here are some old photos from an editorial fashion series I did at Bårdshaug three years ago.
Instead of just relaxing my day off, Ascension of Jesus, I had made planes with Kofi Gyimah (Trend Models) to do a little video promo for him and his friend, Jeffter Ohene Kwaah Osafo, dancing the Ghanaian dance azonto. We started filming at Kristiansten festning and the plan was to drive around Trondheim shooting scenes. Here’s the result of todays little side hobby project. The locations we used, including the famous fortress, was Clarion Hotel and Conference center and their skybar and Skansen at Ila. The last location they had an idea that they wanted to act like they were tagging on some walls. Jeffter said that it would be fun if the police showed up while we were filming. They did. You can watch the following conversation between Kofi and the police officer at my Facebook Page.
Written by: Daniel Mandal, Thomas Løseth og Fred Amadeus Zakariassen
Produced by: Fred Amadeus Zakariassen
Recorded: Amadeuz Music
Mastered by Björn Engelmann, Cutting Room Studios, Stockholm
Model: Tonje Krogstad
Last Friday I grabbed my old Nikon D700 and a Nikon SB-900 and joined Tempo photographing their promotional stunt. They had printed around 1000 flayers with a free download link to their new single YOLO, a big cardboard of the single cover I shoot late April, and rented a big ass speaker. The plan was to set up a camp down town Trondheim and get people to pose with the band with the single cover in front of them while the song was playing on the speaker. Afterwards people could tag themselves and friends on their Facebook page, and of course download the single.
After around three hours of fun marketing and promoting we had about 100 different photos with people enjoying the song! The day after they had around 11 000 views on the album. Great success!
Here is the previous music video for the single “Deilig” which was filmed at Blæst in Trondheim. We are planning to do a video for “Yolo” in near future, stay tuned, enjoy the single!
Lyrics from an old hit by Coolio, Gangsta’s Paradise, which was a soundtrack for Dangerous Minds back in 1995. Back then I didn’t really know what the lyrics meant, but something was really going on during the shoot with Kim van Tuijl. These are the last shots from this series. Helping out on the set was Ryanne Sambros working for Episode, a second hand store in Copenhagen. Both girls are originally from the Netherlands, had moved to Denmark to study and work. Kim is represented by the model agency CPHWOLVES. Outfits aren’t my specialty, but I know what I like once I see it. The Deutche Bahn railway hat for instance was spot on cool and made this outfit.
The camera setup for these shots are quite easy. I used a Nikon Nikkor 35mm f/1.4G paired with my Nikon D800. I wanted Kim, the model to have a dark front with a lot of back light to sculpt her body shape with a more silhouetty style rather than a direct flash. I don’t like revealing to much of the background and therefore shot most of the photos at a wide open aperture from f/1.4 to f/2.0 and thats about it.
Stephanie and I have been planning this shoot for a while, but this weekend we finally got to this shoot, though it was a bit impulsive. Saturday evening I asked Stephanie if she was keen to do the gipsy / bohem-inspired fashion shoot in near future and she answered that Natalia, her older sister was doing a stylist assignment at school (Norsk Fotofagskole) with just the theme we had been planning for. Though the shoot had to be on Sunday because the assignment was due this week. Natalia was glad to hear that I could do the shoot for her.
The first location Natalia had planned was around the rural area of Moholt, but I didn’t feel that it add the right atmosphere for the shots I had in mind. Instead thought back to the first years when I first moved to town. I lived at Voll Studentby a student village, not far from the model and regularly went for walks in the area. and remebered one of the trails in the area with some vacancy, but was still open enough for the right mood I had pictured. They both agreed that we should try my location. After 45 minutes of shooting, the clouds drifting in and changed the light we worked with and we were kind of done with four costumes.
Below are some of my shots with a Minolta Dynax 7 (analogue camera) from 2004. At that time I mostly shot film and the cheapest way to get the shot digitalized was with a DIY contraption consisting of a black tube with home made film dias. The first photo is of Kjetil Høiby scanned with his film scanner, and the two following was shot with my DIY contraption.
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, Kjetil Høiby at Voll Studentby
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, Voll Studentby
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, My Dog, a Cocker Spaniel
If you didn’t know it, #YOLO is an abbreviation for You Only Live Once, meaning about the same as Carpe Diem. If you don’t know what that means, try using google. Anyway, last Tuesday I meet up with Tempo, the band I’ve been photographing for the last six months. They introduced a new single, a quite catchy summer buzz that is going to be released the fourth of May. And for that they needed a cover photo. After some brainstorming pitching different ideas, some more stupid than other, we decided to go for this photo. I don’t think I can reveal the lyrics, but having in mind that it was a summer tune we had to have something that could be related to summer. The only problem was that the photo was suppose to be done by Monday 22. and the forecast for the weekend was showing sleet and around 4 degrees Celsius. After spending some time finding the perfect model Thursday evening a friend of mine said yes.
The day after we meet up at a shopping mall, bought a colorful bikini and drove off to Korsvika, a beach in Trondheim. Having planned the angle, mood and feel for the shot and having only one picture to be concerned about we spent around 20 minutes setting up and shooting before the rain came pouring down.
After some retouching work this was the final result. Enjoy and check out the single in May!
Meanwhile check out their music video Deilig and a promo-video for a concert tour they did last Christmas:
When I was in Denmark covering the Copenhagen Fashion Week 2013, I also did some model tests, here are some more shots of Kim van Tuijl, a Dutch model currently living in Denmark and represented by CPHWolves”>. Styling at this shoot was Ryanne Sambros.
Bilde fra brannen på Svartlamoen / Lademoen i Trondheim natt til 14. april 2013.
Bilde fra brannen på Svartlamoen / Lademoen i Trondheim natt til 14. april 2013.
Jeg våknet for godt og vel en times tid siden av sirener og luktet røyk. Hell i uhell var det ikke hos meg det brant, men på andre siden av jernbanen i Brodalsgate, ved Verkstedhallen og Frihetsparken på Svartlamoen i Trondheim. I skrivende stund holder brannvesenet på å slukke brannen enda.
Here are some photos of Katarina Fossum from a model test I did with her recently. With her cool tattoos and funky hair her style is rock-chic-ish. These shots are from the first out of three outfits we tested with.
This Easter, instead of doing the traditionally Norwegian stuff, head into the mountains for on a hut or a cabbin and do cross country skiing for a whole week, eating candy, eggs and lamb. Instead I had two photo shoots, one with Kofi Gyimah and another one with Camilla Devik, both models from Trend Models. These two first shots I’m presenting are from the shoot with Kofi.
I got some questions about the expressions of my models, why do they always look miserable, unhappy, angry and so on, and are never smiling and inviting. Since I have a background from school photography, both shooting portraits and group-pictures for Fovea AS and Iris Skolefoto for a few years I have grown a bit tired of the always-happy-portrait. You can always make someone smile by doing stupid things, telling jokes or just ask the models to be a bit happy getting a little grin on their face. It is fairly easy, you just need to know the technique which you might learn from experience. It is easy, but getting a model to express other feelings than just happiness you need to communicate that in a right way so that he or she gets what you are thinking of. There are a lot of techniques in getting the right expression and how you get there is something you’ll need to figure out for yourself. A tip can be to show the models the expressions, either by photo or video or doing them yourself.
Here are the rest of the photos I shot of Elise S from Trend Models at Øysand earlier this winter. Dress-designer and stylist was Malin Wannebo Varslott, make-up was done by Ann Karin Williams Aastø from www.ourstyle.org.
During the student games 2013 (Studentlekene 2013) I was hired to do a promotional clip of around ten minutes showing of what the student games was all about. Personally I don’t really do cross country skiing and doesn’t even watch it when it is world cup and such on TV either, but my costumer was satisfied and I kind of liked the final product my self.
Equipment
For this video clip I used two types of rigs, the Glidecam HD4000 and a modified GiniRig Extreme 17. The Glidecam was used with a wide angle lens and gave some smooth shots running along side the skiers. The GiniRig was modified with a V-mount battery and a D-Tap dummy battery for both the Zacuto EVF Pro and the Nikon D800 giving me power to shoot for the whole day. Some of the telephoto footage was a bit unstable and I should have used a tripod, even though the VRII on the 70-200 helped me neutralize the worst of the camera shaking.
Hi and welcome to my blog / portfolio. My name is Bjørn Christiansen I am a 29 year old and live in Trondheim where I currently I work as a freelance photographer shooting fashion, commercial, documentary and portraits. Enjoy my site!
