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

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.

I god stil fortsetter jeg mine egne prosjekter i ved siden av prosjektene vi har på skolen. Dette er det andre opptaket med modellen Karina Kruksve. Denne gangen var det beautyportrett som stod på tapeten. Det er en sjanger jeg er veldig lite bevandret i, men jeg har fått med meg såpass at det er mye fokus på styling, hår og sminke. Tidligere på dagen i går gikk turen innom Panduro i Fjordgata for å se om de hadde noe jeg kunne pynte Karina med. Etter litt leting fant jeg to meter med sort dekorvev som kunne fungere. Dekorveven er sammenlimte fibre som lagde en luftig, men fin tekstur. Deretter gikk turen innom Make Up Store i Dronningensgate hvor jeg fikk tak i noen løsvipper og løsvippelim.
På skolen fikk jeg hjelp av Sascha Njaa til å rigge opp beautydishen min i et butterfly-lysoppsett. Dette oppsettet skal i teorien tegne en fin skygge under nesen og lyse opp ansiktet ganske greit. I tillegg til å kjøre litt standard oppsett satte jeg to sorte vegger inn mot modellen for å få litt mer kontrast i bildet. I tillegg til å skyte bare stillbilder har jeg også fått lånt Canon 5D Mark II av Jarand Boge for å skyte en liten bak-kulissene-vide for opptaket bare for å gi dere et lite inntrykk av hvordan jeg jobber.

Siste del av fashion-opptaket mitt med Lisa B. Holden for denne gang. Bildene er tatt i forbindelse med H2-Akademiets eksamensoppgave på frisørlinja. Hår, sminke og klær er ordnet av Susanne Amalie Nilsen. Ta gjerne en titt på bloggen hennes for mer inspirasjon rundt mote og fashion.

Ellers er tilbakemeldingen fra Trend Models, som bistår med de fleste modellene jeg bruker, veldig fin. De har brukt mange av bildene jeg har tatt av modellene deres. Det er verd å ta seg en tur innom sida deres, ikke bare for å se bildene mine, men også andre fotografers arbeid.
NÃ¥ blir det en kjapp middag før turen gÃ¥r til Rick’s Café i Trondheim for Ã¥ fotografere Start HiSTs semesterlige arrangement, Gründerlounge. PÃ¥ programmet stÃ¥r HÃ¥vard Utheim som konferansier, Entrepenørskolen fra NTNU skal i tillegg til Harald Kjeldstad fra Siva og Atmel fra Silicon Valley stÃ¥ for forelesningene og som litt ekstra underholdning er Orkdalsbandet Irresistible kjent fra X-Factor 2010 opptre.