BJØRN CHRISTIANSEN | Photographer

Last Saturday I did a model test with Ann-Helen Johnsen in studio. It was a low budget shoot as most of the other series of this type with the speedlight attached to the camera with the model up against a white wall creating sharp shadows. I first shot some photos of Ann-Helen at a runway show at Solsiden last autumn and where she was showing clothes from H&M and I decided to do this test shoot with her.

Photos from the WHIITE show at Copenhagen Fashion Week A/W13.

Photos from the Vivienne Westwood showing, Anglomania, Copenhagen Fashion Week A/W13 at Børsen

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

Here is the fifth part of the hair show at Julecup 2012. Hair dressers from Oi Hår og Velvære and stylists from Norsk Fotofagskole did the hair, make-up and styling for this show. Lighting on the catwalk wasn’t very photographic friendly casting hard shadows and on the models faces and clothes, but I found a few spots that was even lit and tried to concentrate on shooting my photos when the models were in those specific areas.

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 pl