BJØRN CHRISTIANSEN | Photographer

After the Copenhagen Fashion Week I had decided to stay for a few more days to do some model testings before I left for Trondheim. I had made a few plans with a few models from different agencies and freelancers to do some shots. The pictures from this fashion photo shoot was of model Michaela Theibel with the help of makeup artist Louise Musse Christensen. As most of the testings I did, the location were just the models apartment being creative to find angles and building a slight liable story to the series. Since this was an abroad job, I didn’t have much photo equipment with me, no fancy light kits, just my lenses and a Nikon SB-900 speedlight.

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

Runway pictures from the Kopenhagen Fur show at Rådhusplassen during Copenhagen Fashion Week

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

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.

This spring I shot an editorial for the Greenlandic designer Aviaaja Hammeken Schultz, currently living in Denmark. The location was Musikkhuset i Århus and helping me out doing hair and make-up was Lidia Bonaria Bassareo. The model was Ivalu Sørensen (Diva Models that I also had a second shoot with the day after (photos of Ivalu Sørensen). This shoot was to show off a jacket which was inspired by Chineese and Inuitt design and was suppose to show of different areas of use; the high class business woman, the more traditional Asian style and the inuitt style. This first post shows the first area of use.

This is the fifth and last part from the series I shot with Jennifer Hansen, Modelbureauet Modelbooking in Århus. These shots are photographed in the corner of the daylight studio I rented at Christina Lykke’s Skyderiet.dk. and is lit with one flash aimed towards the roof. To get some contrast in the photo I had a big, black blanket which I have span between two light stands and positioned right behind me. Stylist on this shoot was Malene Micha Juhl. Working with both these fantastic people was fun and exciting.

Rasmus Michelsen, model testing for Modelbureauet Modelbooking in Århus. Clothes and manbag are supplied by [ei`kon]. The color of the wall behind the model gives the full image a warm and nice touch in contrast to his blue eyes and jeans. The style is a bit lumberjack meets hipster. Enjoy the rest of the photos I’ve shoot of Rasmus as well.

Part four from the series I shot on top of Aros in the “Your Rainbow Panorama Installation” of Stephanie Bäckström, Modelbureauet Modelbooking. Stylist on the shoot was Maria Släger Jensen.

Here are some more photos of Stephanie:

Here are two portraits of Jennifer Hansen from Modelbureauet Modelbooking in Århus. Styling is done by Malene Micha Juhl and the portraits are shot at Skyderiet.dk run by photographer Christina Lykke.

Here are two pictures from the test shots I did of Rasmus Michelsen from Modelbureauet ModelBooking in Aarhus. The pictures are taken in the old town on a fairly busy street corner. The sun was going down and our lights were about to disappear, but I managed to get some pictures of the last outfit we had planned. Suppliers of clothes for this male fashion photo shoot was the clothing store [ei`con] situated right next to the cathedral in Århus. If you are in town, check out their store.

Maybe you have seen this first photo on my portfolio. Here is the story behind. Model is Stephanie Bäckström from Modelbureauet Modelbooking in Århus, styling, hair and make-up was done by Maria Scläger Jensen and the location was Your Rainbow Panorama by Olafur Eliasson, on the top of the art museum in Århus, Aros. Since we started off quite early we hadn’t been bothered by that many people visiting Aros, but suddenly a man appeared in my frame, I waited until he had the same posture as my model, Stephanie, who didn’t know why I waited so long before I shot the picture. A some kind of art by accident. This picture is shot in the green part of the panorama. My experience with shooting in these light conditions were that I had be really care full not to use my LCD-display on the back of my camera to review the exposure, first of all because the light in the room were colored by the windows, second it was impossible to see anything on the screen. To get the right exposure in color filtered lighting environment, trust your light meeter.

This is part three of model test I had with Jennifer Hansen, Modelbureauet ModelBooking. Stylist of the photo shoot was Malene Micha Juhl, who did a fabulous job of preparing Jennifer for the different pictures. This part of the photo shoot is inspired by fashion photographer Richard Avedon and his airy jump-images, which is perhaps inspired by Henri Cartier Bresson’s picture in which a man jumping over a puddle. A good illustration of the theory behind “the decisive moment”. My thought behind this was that I had my shots of Jennifer posing static and now I wanted some movement. Her skirt was kind of wavy and letting her hair down enhanced the movement.
The technique I did to get these images the most sharp, in spite of a great movement was to lower the ambient light in the studio. Since this was a daglysstudio was a little difficult to cover the windows, but all the lights were turned off and setting the light of the flash was turned off. The camera was set to continuous focus, or AI Servo on Canon, an aperture of f/14 and a shutter speed of 1/200 second at ISO200. The reason that the aperture is set so low is to eliminate most of the ambient light and only let the flash freeze the picture. All three images are captured with just a flash.

Third part of model testing with my Rasmus Michelsen Aarhus. Rasmus is represented by model agency Modelbureauet ModelBooking. Clothing and styling was done at [ei´kon], a fashion store for both men and women. Anonymous, black jeans, a white t-shirt, blazer, black, high boots and a murse is what gives this model a rocky touch.
What is a murse? Well, I just learned that that was the slang for male bags or purses. It is supposed to be a masculine way to carry around papers, laptops and other electronic devices, you’ll be the judge of that. A murse is also refereed to as a male nurse, fag bag or a man-bag.
The location of this shoot was over and under the bridge down town Århus, Åboulevarden and Skt. Clemens Bro. On the first picture where Rasmus is walking across the bridge, the light hit the surrounding building and helped out lighting the scene. The second and third picture is more film noir feel more than the classical commercial fashion. The second picture is shot on the walkway right beneath the first picture, and the third is shot in the staircase right next to Restaurant & Cocktail Bar Copenhagen. This part of the series should in theory give a little more sense of motion rather than the two previous sections.

The second part from the photo shoot with Stephanie Bäckström from Modelbureauet Model Booking in Aarhus. Location is still “Your Rainbow Panorama” by Olafur Eliasson on the roof of the art museum Aros. Styling, hair and make-up is done by Maria Schläger Jensen.