BJØRN CHRISTIANSEN | Photographer

A few weeks ago I did a model test with actress Elise Strømberg Mærlie for Trend Models. Here are some mixed shots from the test, both natural lighting and a on camera speedlight flash unit. The model test was just a warm up for the shoot we had the day after, to see how Elise did in front of the camera. For a first-timer doing this type of work in front of a camera, I was quite satisfied. Gry Saether at Trend Models have already decided to represent Elise and is now listed under new faces on their web-page. She’ll probably to reach far with a little hard work.

This week I have had a few photo shoots portraying a wide aspect of different people, doing a business editorial / documentary for Orega and Norservice. The shots will be published in a advertising supplement in the local newspaper Adresseavisen later this month and is of kind of the same work I did last autumn, Editorial for Norservice. These type of jobs are quite different from the fashion work I do for i.e. RunwayPassport, in style, preparations and expression, but the similarities are much the same, meeting people and making them look as good as possible.

Another project I am currently working on is a short presentation for NTNUi-Langrenn, the university sports club for cross country skiing and their SL2013-competition in the town center last Saturday.

Second part from my photo shoot with Eva-Marie Frisnes (Trend Models). I am still working with the direct flash styled photos. It is easy and concentrates more of what is in the photo, the subject, rather than setting a mood with a location.
The settings I usually use in these types of shots are a 50mm lens at a f-stop around 4, an ISO-speed at 100ISO and a shutter above 1/125. The most important part of setting the shutter speed is to block the ambient light leaving just the flash gun to freeze the photo. You can the built-in pop-up flash on your camera, or a speedlight. In my case I used a SB-900 mounted on a flash bracket adjusting it to be as close to the lens as possible. This gives you almost no shadow behind the model both in portrait and landscape mode. Using the pop-up flash the light source stands a bit off-set from the lens giving a slightly larger shadow. To get the most out of the flash I varied the speedlight to fire at 1/8 to 1/16 of full power, and also used the i-TTL-funciton. Shooting the documentary for Tempo and their release concert, I used just the pop-up flash on my camera to light the scenes. As with the shots of Eva-Marie, this gives the images a bit more raw feel than if I had lit every scene with a flash head or just used the ambient light.

Lately I’ve been working with a rather huge project, something that I am not that familiar with, producing a music video for the band Tempo and releasing their new single last friday, Deilig.

We had three days of filming, starting at the end of November using the local concert scene Blæst as location. The band had invited a hand full of extras who were to play in the “main scene” of the video which was a party scene where the band played among the audience. Ove Aunan helped out rigging light, Marthe Røkke Lund helped out as assistant producer / photographer and Hilde Sveli did hair and make-up for these scenes. The second day of filming we used the guitarists apartment shooting mood-shots of the main character Tonje Pettersen and the cover poster. Last and third day of filming was spent at Ladehammeren where we shot running scenes.
Working together with May Lill Morseth Løhre editing the music video we finally did the finishing touches the night before release.
Equipment I used shooting this video a Nikon D800, 35mm and 24mm and a 70-200mm, mountend on a rig from Gini Rigs (Extreme 17), which is an aluminum, light weight off-set rig for the “static shots” and close ups. I also used a a Glidecam HD4000 for the dynamic shots, running scenes and panning around the audience. Since this was the first time using this type of equipment on a professional job, I had to teach my self in a couple of weeks how to operate the different rigs and balancing the Gldiecam correctly. It has been a steep learning curve, but I am quite satisfied with the result.

Tempo – Deilig from Bjørn Christiansen on Vimeo.

Last Friday Tempo had invited a lot of friends to Orklapøbben for their release concert and the premiere of the music video (above), around 100 people showed up to the event. I helped the guys out shooting a little documentary following them through the evening until early morning.

Right be fore I shut the door I grab my camera bag, almost always. I feel a bit naked without having a camera hanging around my neck. Why? “You never know when the right moment is the right moment.”. I usually do planned photography, I book models, makeup artists, does moodboards and scout locations. When I don’t, I have my day off, but as a photographer my work is always still with me in some way. People around me tend to ask me why I care to bring such a heavy camera around all the time? I don’t really mind. Having almost always shot with cameras having the option of removing the battery grip, it hasn’t been a real big issue for me. Sometimes I leave the grip on as well for balance, but replacing the Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 zoom lens to a smaller Nikon 35mm f/1.4 has helped a lot on my friends being intimidated by a huge camera always pointing in their faces. Shooting at a wider angle I need to get closer to my subjects and sometimes cross the social accepted border and of distance and comfort zone. It might be intrusive, but if you have a good chemistry with the model or the subject, it would not be a big issue.

The photo in todays calendar is shot in Essaouira in Morocco. It was a field trip organized by Norsk Fotofagskole where we first had some days in Marrakesh where we did a photo documentary and then some days off in this coastal town. The waves that day was a result of a Atlantic storm a few days earlier stirring up the sea quite roughly. The waves that hit the shore that day was a sight quite unfamiliar to both tourists and residents in Essaouira. Having unpacked at the hotel and meeting the class on the dock, we all were a bit eager to see the 40 feet waves. That day I had just brought my 70-200 lens to really just snap some photos of the local life at an distance The waves came even taller as we stood in our group listening to the teacher, being a bit impatient to see what was happening on the other side of the protective the walls. It was then I spotted the two kids and what might have been their father. The two young ones cheering as the water hit the shallow rocks making huge splashes. Having the telephoto lens that day helped me compress the scenery into one frame, cutting out what was not, in my opinion, important to give the photo a story and a meaning.

Having the camera ready at all time knowing the exposure at what location you are at is a great way to prepare for an unplanned shot. Doing street-, landscape- or wildlife photography this is quite essential. If you fiddle with the exposure, the moment in time is over. As the famous photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, talks a lot about in his photos is the decisive moment, meaning simply to predict a situation and being able to shoot at the right moment to give your photo a meaning and interestingness. In this shot I don’t know if it had had the same impact without the waves there, or the kids and their father standing next to them. The story could be different giving my shot a whole different meaning.
When I do this type of documentary photography, I almost always set my camera to be in aperture mode, underexposing a third of a stop to two thirds with center weight light metering. You might find this quite idiotic because you learn that the highlights in a digital photo contains the most detail. My argument is that by doing a center weight or even a smaller spot metering, I have exposed what I think is the most interesting part of my images correctly and not have the surroundings blown out. I also avoid having the shutter to drop down too much giving me blur. Also an easy tool for getting the exposure correctly to look at the histogram and enable the highlight warning.

In addition to reviewing my photo today, I would like to congratulate Sascha Njaa on his birthday! Good luck on your exam!

Yesterday Foto.no published a photo I shot in Marrakesh, Morocco in February 2011. The article is about my old school having an exhibition in Essaouira with previous work of students at Norsk Fotofagskole has shot during their study trip to Morocco, called Ansikter (faces).

The two boys on the bicycle was on their way home from school. Even though traffic is unsafe and they both knew the hazardous of cycling this way, I believe the boy hanging around his friend or brother is very confident in him.

Want to see more of my documentary project in Morocco, follow this link: Morocco

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

A few weeks ago I was working with Orega shooting an editorial for an advertising supplement in the local newspaper, Adresseavisen. Today it was published with eight of my photos spread out in all sizes from small inserts to two-page spreads. Continues below the photos.

This first portrait series is of Kjell Ovesen at Asveco, he works as an metalworker making pipe clamps for offshore industries. For 5-6 years ago he suffered a stroke and was consequently paralyzed left arm, despite this, he was a nice man with good spirits.

Maiken Solvang from Reinertsen and Anita Aarvik from Navigator at Brattøra doing an interview about the cooperation between Reinertsen, Navigator (Norservice) and NAV.

The last part is a portrait of Bernt A. Rasmussen, the director of Norservice at Oregas new facilities at Lade in Trondheim.

Today I photographed a portrait series of Charite Viken from DP Models, documentary style. The sun had just set and the weather was clear and cold. Great backdrop to avoid harsh shadows. Most shots are photographed with a Nikon Nikkor 35mm f/1.4G, might be a bit to shallow depth of field (DOF), but gear that is sharp enough to get usable photos even at ISO5000. Enjoy your Sunday!

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.

I am trying out the Nikon D800 + 35mm f/1.4G and an Eye-Fi Pro X2 on my road trip in Norway.

So I decided to test the tethering capabilities of the Nikon D800 combined with an Eye-Fi PRO X2 (the 8GB version), using my HTC Sensation with Android as a publishing device and Instagram as an platform. To make this a bit more interesting I am doing this while I am on a business-road-trip photographing for Iris Skolefoto A/S in the eastern part of Norway. The trip started in Trondheim, traveling by bus to the airport (TRD), then by plane to Gardermoen (OSL), then with a rental car to Raufoss and the hotell I just arrived at.

Preperations for this project was making the D800 talking to my Android-phone through the Eye-Fi PRO X2. After reading the manual (RTF) several times and googeling for answers, I finally managed to get the Direct Mode up and running talking to my cell phone. I registered at Instagram a few month ago and the Eye-Fi app for Android talks perfectly with Instagram. Just choose the photo and share to Instagram. I had also set the upload-settings for my Eye-Fi-card to only upload locked JPG-images so no RAW-file claimed the wireless bandwidth.
As for the optics on my camera I use a Nikon Nikkor 35mm f/1.4G, I am used to shooting with the older version f/2.0D, but found it lacking in quality on both the bookeh and the sharpness in the corners. 35mm is perfect for an all round use, shooting intimate portraits, documentary and high fashion. It draws nice lines and has the capabilities of a larger aperture, which again makes it possible to shoot in darker situations. Also the ISO on my D800 helps quite a lot.

How was the feel about the first day? Quite acceptable. I thought I had some problems connecting the card to the phone, but I simply was to much in a hurry to wait for the card to cycle through its priority list of connections. Those are Ad-Hoc, Wireless LAN, then Direct Mode, and finally Hot Spot. It took about thirty seconds to figure out it needed to use the Direct Mode to upload the files. But after I figured that out I just left my wireless network on on my Android device.
As a rule I had set for my self I wanted to show you guys how the photos were straight off the camera, but rules are made to be broken, I applied some adjustments-filters in Instagram before I published them. I also discovered the power of the adjustment tools in camera, cropping, straightening and color balancing to make the best out of what I have.
Uploading to Instagram was quite straight forward, just adjust the photo, add some text (and location) and upload through the data network.

If you want to follow my project with the Nikon D800 tethering to an Android phone through an Eye-Fi PRO X2, just continue reading this blog or if you just want to look at my photos you can follow me on Instagram, my username is bj0rn_net

Last night I photographed the Smorgasbord of Kreativt Forum in Trondheim where they had hired an artist group that played a mix of children’s songs and techno. I did not quite grasp what it did, but it was good entertainment and they were very photogenic on stage wearing their headdresses.

Here are all the portraits I shot of the models after they had been styled by hairdressers from OI Hår og Velvære before their show at Radisson Blu Royal Garden Hotel in November.

Orbis Ring Flash

On this particular part of the job I did for OI I used a flash modifier called a ring flash from OrbisFlash.com. It is suppose to make a soft light with a soft shadow behind the subject. It did work on some of the photos I shot, but not everything. I had the flash set to TTL 0 – -0,3 and sometimes -0,7. As with regular auto-flash-settings you will get some difference in exposures depending on what people wear and the ambient lighting. The camera was set to a shutter of 1/125 sec, the aparture at f/3.5 and the ISO at 400. I am going to experiment a bit more with this flash upgrade to find out how much power is needed to get a decent exposure on a 35mm lens. If somebody knows some manual sweet-spot-setting, please let me know.

Here are some images I photographed the backstage of “OI Hår og Velvære” last Saturday. The series, I hope, describes the mood and what happened the hours before show start. Some of the models and stylists had been at work since eight in the morning, but based on what I did not observe anything beyond the mood of some of those. All guaranteed so excited about what would happen that they did not have time to be tired.

These photos are from the first part of the fashion / hair-trend show at Radisson Blu Royal Garden Hotel in Trondheim. The first show was held by hair dressers and stylists from Heads Up Hårstudio in Trondheim. Models are both represented by Trend Models and DP Models. Also on the runway was some of the band members from Irresistible who is competing in the Norwegian Grand Prix this spring. Tina Larsen had put together a great show for us.

Saturday OI Hår og Velvære and Heads Up Hårstudio arranged a fashion show showing off hair trends and styles. These pictures are from “Julecupen” a competition where the contestants style a model from top to toe, hair, make-up and clothes. Lotte Aalberg Kalvø (OI Hår og Velvære), with her model Stian Marius Sivertsen, won the category Male Fashion. Congratulations!