BJØRN CHRISTIANSEN | Photographer

The last part of this series at Oi’s hair how at Royal Garden.

This is a fairly newer shot from a job I did for Runway Passport at Oslo Fashion Week 2012. After a week of shooting documentary and catwalk in Oslo this winter I covered the backstage and catwalk at the final show, Moods of Norway. It was fairly cold that day, I meet my two journalists from OurStyle down town Oslo before taking a taxi with a fellow colleague to Mathallen – Vulcan five hours before the show started to get the best behind the scenes / documentary shots. The backstage area was dim lit with a lot of different models from different agencies getting their hair and make-up done. I had spoken with the model manager of Trend Models, Gry Sæther, asking her if she had some models in this show. After walking around the backstage for a while I spotted Julie H in a chair surrounded by a bunch of stylists.

I shot this image with a Nikon D700 and a 35mm f/2.0 lens. Documentary photo is capturing a moment in time telling the viewer a story of what this moment is all about, not only showing what is exactly what is in the image but also giving the viewer a sense of what the subjects in the photo is feeling. These shots can only be composed with your camera. Concentrating on what details are in the frame and also what is not. Reading out of this picture I see the crew-cards with a logo on two of the hair stylists telling me this is has something to do with Moods of Norway, seeing all the other people in this photo is telling me that this might be something more than this is not just an ordinary photo shoot, but something more. A stressful mime on all three stylists might indicate that they are on a tight schedule. What is the model thinking?

To capture these details you have to know your tools. This is shot with a 35mm wide angle lens at a shutter speed of 1/13 of a second at f/5.0 and ISO2500. Tearing down this specifications into pieces you might get an idea of what I am thinking while capturing this frame. First of all, I start out with my camera. It is a full frame Nikon D700 able to capture shots on the calibrated ISO range from ISO200 to ISO6400. This means that I can work in very low light situations and get quite decent exposures. The 35mm gives me a fairly wide, but also narrow angle on a setting to show as much of the situation and also restraining it to be what is important not having to move in to close, but not to far away at the same time. I didn’t want the face of the male models up on the left side to show, nor the model sitting next to Julie. Setting up my camera to shoot in aperture priority at f/5.0 gave me the the depth in the frame that I wanted not showing all the background in full focus, but blurring it a bit out. I had also set my ISO to automatically adjust in the range from ISO800 to ISO2500 if the shutter speed fell below 1/10th of a second. I know the D700 can produce fairly detailed shots at ISO6400 so I didn’t bother having to much grain in this shot.
Since this is a wide angle motion in the camera wouldn’t show up as much as if I had shot this with a normal / zoom lens. I know I can hold tight to the camera at 1/10th of a second. I mainly recommend to use the shooting no slower shutter than the denominator of matching the focal length. The thumb rule: having a focal length of 20mm, you should never have a slower shutter than 1/20 of a second, at 35mm, 1/30th, 50mm 1/50th, 200mm 1/200th of a second. Having good or fast glass meaning having a lens that is able to have a wide aperture. The standard aperture scale (F-stops); f/0.7, f/1.0, f/1.4, f/2.0, f/2.8, f/4.0 f/5.6, f/8.0, f/11.0, f/16.0, f/22.0, f/32, f/45, f/64, f/90, f/128, f/180, f/256. Lenses are divided into primes and zoom. The prime lenses has a fixed focal length while the zoom lenses can vary from ie. 18mm to 55mm, 24mm to 70mm, 70mm to 200. The numbers you should concentrate about is what the widest aperture these lenses has, a smaller f-number, the larger the aperture, the more light the lens is able to send through to the camera sensor or the film roll you are shooting. Lenses with a larger aperture at the widest focal length is more expensive. The old 35mm f/2.0 I bought used for 2000NOK (around ), but the newer 35mm f/1.4 a F-stop larger costs around 14500NOK () because there is more glass inside.

A quick summary of my thoughts shooting this kind of documentary style shots, I don’t want the shots to be un-sharp because of camera movement, having some movement in the subjects gave me the feel of intensity in the situation, I didn’t want to much hassle doing light metering knowing my camera could handle the conditions quite well at different exposure compensation-settings I set my camera to aperture priority (A on Nikon and Av on Canon), knowing that f/5.0 was the sharpness all over that I wanted.
Having much time to look for situations is one of the key ingredients to get great shots, be nice to the people back stage, if they are not to busy ask them what they are doing, show them photos of what you have shot and you’ll get great shots back.

Today some of the photos I shot at a catwalk show at Solsiden in October, was published in Adresseavisen as an advertising insert.

New shots from the catwalk during Oi Hår og Velvære’s hair show at Royal Garden, Trondheim and Julecup 2012.

Third part of the photo documentary I shot backstage at Oi Hår og Velvære’s hair show at Royal Garden.
I got some questions yesterday about equipment I used when I worked. It’s not a big secret and most of the gear I use is listed on the left hand side on my blog. For pure documentary I use mainly the Nikon D800 + MB-D12 (battery grip), a Nikon Nikkor 35mm f/1.4G. In my camera strap I have three 32Gb Sandisk CF cards, I believe they are of the version Extreme 60MB/s, and an Eye-Fi 8GB Pro X2, which is of today, officially supported using the D800 in direct mode by Eye-Fi and with the firmware version 5.0018 and above. As an backup in my camera bag I also have one Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D and a Nikon Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D. Both lenses are light weight an is of the prime type, no zoom. If I know I have to shoot some fast action, like a catwalk or sports (God forbid), I also bring my Nikon D700 and the 70-200mm f/2.8G VRII. The D700 with the MB-D10 battery pack and an EN-EL4 battery the shutter rate is greatly improved to around 9-10 fps. Even though there is only 12.2Mpx on the D700 the files have been usable for the four years I had the camera and should still work for those kinds of photos I am shooting with it now.

I have also recently bought a DSLR Video rig from Gini Rig Extreme 17 for shooting more videos. It’s currently being tested for small projects such as the backstage where I used just the follow focus, a 15mm, 12 inch rod, the base plate and a Zacuto Z-Finder 3.2″ view finder. Even with stripped setup, the rig felt kind of heavy. Also another con with this rig is that it is quite difficult to balance without weighting it down to much. In addition to the counterweight that was included in the set, I bought another 1,6kg counter weight, but still not heavy enough. The fully assembled rig will be put to the test next week when i am shooting a music video. Oliviatech and Cheesycam has published a review of the Gini Rigs a year ago. The rig has since been improved, but worth a visit if you are interested in such. Stay tuned, mean while, enjoy the backstage video from the hair show.

Here’s a little backstage video I shot while I was photographing for Oi Hår & velvære at their hair show at Julecup 2012 at Royal Garden in Trondheim. The soundtrack is Rej3ctz – Cat Daddy (starring Chris Brown).

Some of the shots from the catwalk at Julecup 2012 by Oi Hår og Velvære at Royal Garden, Trondheim.

After judging a graduation at Trondheim Kickboxing Klubb (TKBK) I headed off to Royal Garden to shoot backstage and catwalk for Oi Hår & Velvære and their show there. Around thirty models were styled according to the hair styles from the 1920 until today.

Having a few hours by myself I managed to do post production on a few more photos from the fashion shoot I had with Linda Fjølstad (Trend Models) late this summer. Styling was done by Marthe Engdal and hair and makeup was done by Tina Larsen.

Much has been going on and I haven’t got to shoot that much fashion as I had hoped to do, but considering that I got published Thursday with a lot of photos from an editorial documentary series, two interior shots and a bunch of business portraits I am quite satisfied. Looking forward to shoot both backstage and catwalk today for OI Hår og velværesenter.

I do have a lot of different ongoing projects, from photographing crying kids in kinder garden, high fashion in Denmark, magazine portraits more or less known people in Norway and stone bricks in private gardens. This weekend I shot a fashion show, “Dans oppå bordet”, at one of Trondheims many malls, Solsiden Senter where the mall showed of clothes and accessories from their various stores and some inspirational hair cuts that was done by the two hairdressers, OK Frisører A/S and Sjakk Matt Frisør. I can’t remember all the stores that were represented, but after some searching on the web I found the following; Namasté, BikBok, Dressmann, Vila, Høyer Solsiden, Chantal, Ilse Jackobsen and Match Man/Woman.
It was said that it was sixty models from both Trend Models and DP Models in addition to co-workers at the different stores walking down the catwalk that afternoon. Solsiden Senter had also asked Pia Haraldsen, a woman famous for …, to host their show. Guest artist Mugi Nhozi from Dropout Musical with dancers from Let’s Dance performed a rap / song from a musical soon to be played in Trondheim. As a grand finale Tore Johansen also sang a tune for us. For me he is best known as Gjertrud form The Julekalender.

Liked the Dropout Musical-tune? Found it on Vimeo

Photographing the backstage

Some technical stuff
Rumors has it that hair dressers, make-up artists and models started working at six o’clock Saturday morning, a bit to early even for me to start photographing. Showing up at half past nine there was still quite a lot of action in the make-up room with hair dressers doing some amazing big hair-styles. Both female and male models had their faces painted with make-up. The make-up- and hair-room had dark, brown walls, lit with dim, fluorescent light and had some big windows with daylight shining through on one side. Not the optimized conditions for a photographer wanting to work with available / natural lighting considering the two different color temperatures. In these conditions one should consider what is the main light falling on the subjects faces and adjust for that. If you have better time you can neutralize the either one of the two temperatures, but with the time aspect and amount of files the costumer wanted, I didn’t have time for that.
In the lounge area, the canteen for employees at Solsiden Senter, I found the most interesting situations where my subjects (models), were in the beginning a bit skeptical towards me running around with two fairly big cameras taking photos, but after a few hours got a bit more relaxed.
Speaking of equipment, I brought both my Nikon D700 and Nikon D800, the Nikkor 35mm f/1.4 and the Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 VRII. The D700 I brought mainly because with a BL-4 battery I can have a decent FPS at the catwalk, the D800 in combination with the 35mm is what I mainly use whenever photographing whatever. The 35mm has a fairly big aperture in combination with decent quality at high ISO on the D800 I can shoot in low / poor light conditions but still preserving the details. It might be that I should have opened the aperture a third to a half of a stop more and shot at ISO640. Knowing my equipment colors in the higher range of ISO has a tendency to become quite strange. The telephoto is also great for shooting documentary, at a distance, if you don’t want your subjects knowing they are being photographed. And as I typed that last sentence I felt that I was leaning towards becoming a sleezy paparazzi photographer with dirty intentions. That’s not the fact, but if you want to photograph something happening without having to stage everything, a telephoto is a nice tool. You are also as a photographer quite far out of anyones comfort zone and they can carry on with whatever they do.

Photographinc the catwalk

I’ve been shooting fashion shows / catwalk for quite a while now. The first experience was for Runway Passport at Oslo Fashion Week where I learned that FPS combined with a decent wide aperture, fast auto focus, a telephoto lens with a stable platform was the best combination for getting the shots decent shots of the models. When it came to lighting that day, Solsiden Senter has huge rooftop windows letting daylight inside the shopping mall providing a lot of light in the open areas. This catwalk was built with the end of below the second floor giving the photographers some problems adjusting the exposure when the models were just at the end of the catwalk. I decided to have most of my shots taken in the open area and fire of some bursts with my D800 in the low light, overbuilt end of the catwalk. If you are for some reason shooting catwalk, a tip is to find out where the models stops and turns are. They are different from each show. If you are so lucky to get to talk to the choreographer he or she can tell you, but a main rule is to look at the first one or two models and figure out what their routines are.
Another tip is to figure out the exposure and white balance. You might consider being on the faster side of 1/125 seconds to get the sharpest images and an aperture around f/3.5 to f4 to isolate each models. If you trust your auto focus system you can always shoot at the widest aperture keeping in mind what unwanted effects in the photos that will give you, such as vignetting and not that sharp subjects. White balance is quite easy now days. A great tip is to set your camera in LiveView Mode, hit the WB-button and run through the temperature from 2500K to the highest kelvin using the LiveView screen to match the ambient light. If you are shooting runways that are lit by tungsten lighting you might also ask the light rigger, but mainly those lights are around 2750K.

Luckily the same show was set up two times that day, one at one show o’clock and one show at three o’clock. That gave me the opportunity to shoot the catwalk from two different angles getting the shots I didn’t get at the end of the catwalk. Getting some close ups of Pia Haraldsen, Mugi Nhozi and Tore Johansen.

The following gallery consists of all the shots I did this weekend from the fashion show.