BJØRN CHRISTIANSEN | Photographer

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!

I morgen skal jeg ha to foto-opptak på skolen. Ett opptak der jeg skal løse en high-/ low-key klassisk portrettfoto oppgave og det andre med lys og skygge. I den første oppgaven skal det leveres to bilder på A3-print fotografert med 120mm mellomformat, noe som betyr at jeg har fått lånt meg en Hasselblad 501CM. Begrensningene i denne oppgaven er at man må levere to portrettbilder med to forskjellige modeller i sjangeren klassisk portrett.

Et high-key bilde er et bilde der alt i bildet er eksponert fra og med 18% grå og opp til hvitt. I de vite områdene skal det fremdeles være tegning. I et low-key bilde skal alt som er eksponert fra 18 grå og ned, men også her skal det være tegning i svarte partier.
Digitalt sett skal det ikke være noen topper på venstre side av midten i high-key-bilder eller på høyre side i low-key-bilder

I oppgave to har jeg noen hemmelige planer som innebærer mye hud. I den anledning har jeg vært innom Vita på Trondheim torg og kjøpt noen greier man kan smøre på huden. Illustrasjonsbildet over viser forskjellen på hendene mine.

Skygge og lys: Oppmøtetid 08:30, fotostart 09:00.
Pause i fem minutter før styling til klassisk portrett klokka 11:00: fotostart 12:00.

Forhåpentligvis er jeg ferdig rundt 14:00. Klar til å fremkalle film fra oppgavene og om jeg er skikkelig heldig er det helg rundt 17:00 i morgen.