BJØRN CHRISTIANSEN | Photographer

A double exposure beauty portrait of Kristin Folstad from Trend Models. The portraits in this series of Kristin was taken during the photo marathon we had at school for a competition in creating a poster for Trondheim Jazzfest. Maybe I should have gone with this photo instead of the one I delivered for the contest.

Making this photo

The technical aspect of making this photo is quite easy. Set up the lighting you want. For this type of image you’ll need a flash, either a studio strobe or a speedlight. Place your model and instruct her what to do when the flash fires. Find the focus point. Set the aperture to whatever you have metered the the light setup. Shutter speed is crucial for this type of images, instead of freezing the image with a shutter of 1/125 or 1/250 or what ever you normally use in studio photography, turn the shutter speed to about two or three seconds to give the model time to do what you have instructed her or him to do. Keep the ambient light low or if you can control it, switch all existing light off to have a pitch black studio. Press down the shutter button, trigger the flash manually as many times as you want. The more exposures you have, the lighter and abstract the images get. I tend to stick with two or three exposures.

Here are some more double exposures I’ve done of Karina Kruksve

Part four of the beauty portrait series with Kristin Folstad. This picture stands out from the rest of the series because of the models mood. She is a bit sweeter and more happy, other than that the lighting and makeup is the same.

This weeks courses

This week and the two next weeks we are going to photograph magazine portraits of a production line companies. Like the ones we shot for Prima AS last spring. I am thinking about going back to Orkdal to see if any Orkel would be interested in a having me photographing for them.

Before I start post production of my architecture photos I decided to publish yet another beauty portrait of Kristin Folstad. Makeup artist is still Hong-My Thi Nguyen, a first grader at Norsk Fotofagskole. Fun fact: Kristins sister was modelling for Jon Danielsen yesterday as he was shooting his fashion assignment. You can see the photos he took at his blog. Both Marie and Kristin Folstad are models at Trend Models

Dating i Mørket

I also had my five seconds of fame tonight. If anybody was wondering if they saw me and hear me speak this following sentence;

Man kan si sitt om glamourmodella, men de e jo persona de òg

You heard and saw perfectly right, no worries I just committed a social suicide. Next Wednesday at 21:40, NRK3, Dating i Mørket. Have fun :)

This is the second picture in my series I shot with Kristin Folstad yesterday. The shot was taken for a poster-competition and the photo marathon that is ongoing these three weeks in January. This is a more cute, melancholic and sweet portrait of Kristin, no hard facial expression as the first one were. Makeup and hair is done by Hong-My Thi Nguyen supervised by me.

Lighting technique

This portrait is a high-key photo which is a technique where most part of the information in the picture is on the right side of the histogram, instead of a mid-key photo which has all information spread evenly throughout the histogram, the opposite of high-key is low-key, which has all its information in the left side of the histogram. A high-key photo is fairly light and the shadow areas, which in most photos define the shape. This particular series is shot with four light sources, two Elinchrom BX Ri 600 with strip-light softbox from each side and behind the model as a kicker-light defining the models edge and one beauty dish about 45 degrees above the model and almost straight on. Since the boom wasn’t available I had to use a regular tripod. To avoid having the tripod in the models face, the beauty dish is positioned slightly to the left of the model. Also I have modified the beauty dish with a grid to give more contrast to the image. The last light is also a flash head with a softbox behind and right of the model shooting at a slight angel at the background give it a nice, even light.
The last thing in this rig is three polystyrene boards painted black, two on each side and one as a ceiling or roof above the model. This gives the image more contrast instead of having all the white walls in the studio casting reflection and killing the nice shadow the beauty dish makes.

Next assignment

We had evaluation of the Jazzfest-posters we shot today, but we couldn’t publish since it was sort of a contest. Next assignment is shooting a commercial picture of glasses. I booked two models I haven’t shot before, so I will gain a bit new experience this time as well. I am going for a classical beauty-shot with strict styling, not very different from the series I did with Kristin yesterday. I went to Brilleland in Kongensgate and got to borrow four pairs of glasses, some from the new collection from Moods of Norway. Hoping styling, models, makeup and glasses will fit well together. Studio time is from 5 p.m. until 8 p.m. Wish me good luck!

Today I had a photo shoot with Kristin Folstad (Trend Models) at school for this Trondheim Jazzfest-assignment. Since I still don’t have a very good idea what I am going to do with this assignment, I shot just a beauty portrait of Kristin figuring I could try to do something more graphical in post production with her. Makeup artist at the shoot were the first grader Hong-My Thi Nguyen.
Tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. I am going to have the evaluation of my picture, so I should be doing post production on the photos I took today instead of blogging.

Here are, I believe to be, the last two pictures from my editorial fashion series from Bårdshaug Herregård in Orkdal. The two models are Maren Elise Aasen and Unni Lund Olsen, both from Trend Models which is the local model agency here in Trondheim. The makeup artist is Tina Larsen from fstyle.blogg.no.
These two pictures is outtakes that didn’t make it to the final editorial fashion series that I shot for Kvit Magazine, an assignment at school in November / December 2010. The reason that these to pictures didn’t make it was because they were different in lighting style. I originally went for a natural lit picture with a lot of flare and since this is lit with a flash it didn’t give the series that romantic, natural and Norwegian feel that I was going for.
Dresses are borrowed from BikBok where the one that Unni is wearing is from the Jenny Skavlan for BikBok – collection. Shoes are borrowed from Bianco Footwear and the other accessories are bought at H&M.

Lighting the scene

In these two photos I’ve only used one flash, an Elinchrom RX600 with a octabank with just one filter in front to give harden the shadows.

Todays tasks

We are still having this photo marathon at school and this weekends assignment was making a poster for Trondheim Jazzfest which is a jazz festival in May. I don’t feel this assignment is going that well. Lack of inspiration and ideas for any photo as well as trouble finding studio time gives me headache. I have a model, a makeup artist and the smallest studio at school doing a beauty portrait this afternoon, but I’m not sure if it will make it as a poster on this springs festival.

Also Trondheim Kickboxing Klubb is starting up their classes for this spring today. It’s only rookies and experienced fighters that have their class today, the beginners course doesn’t start until next Monday, the 17th of January.