BJØRN CHRISTIANSEN | Photographer

This is a fairly newer shot from a job I did for Runway Passport at Oslo Fashion Week 2012. After a week of shooting documentary and catwalk in Oslo this winter I covered the backstage and catwalk at the final show, Moods of Norway. It was fairly cold that day, I meet my two journalists from OurStyle down town Oslo before taking a taxi with a fellow colleague to Mathallen – Vulcan five hours before the show started to get the best behind the scenes / documentary shots. The backstage area was dim lit with a lot of different models from different agencies getting their hair and make-up done. I had spoken with the model manager of Trend Models, Gry Sæther, asking her if she had some models in this show. After walking around the backstage for a while I spotted Julie H in a chair surrounded by a bunch of stylists.

I shot this image with a Nikon D700 and a 35mm f/2.0 lens. Documentary photo is capturing a moment in time telling the viewer a story of what this moment is all about, not only showing what is exactly what is in the image but also giving the viewer a sense of what the subjects in the photo is feeling. These shots can only be composed with your camera. Concentrating on what details are in the frame and also what is not. Reading out of this picture I see the crew-cards with a logo on two of the hair stylists telling me this is has something to do with Moods of Norway, seeing all the other people in this photo is telling me that this might be something more than this is not just an ordinary photo shoot, but something more. A stressful mime on all three stylists might indicate that they are on a tight schedule. What is the model thinking?

To capture these details you have to know your tools. This is shot with a 35mm wide angle lens at a shutter speed of 1/13 of a second at f/5.0 and ISO2500. Tearing down this specifications into pieces you might get an idea of what I am thinking while capturing this frame. First of all, I start out with my camera. It is a full frame Nikon D700 able to capture shots on the calibrated ISO range from ISO200 to ISO6400. This means that I can work in very low light situations and get quite decent exposures. The 35mm gives me a fairly wide, but also narrow angle on a setting to show as much of the situation and also restraining it to be what is important not having to move in to close, but not to far away at the same time. I didn’t want the face of the male models up on the left side to show, nor the model sitting next to Julie. Setting up my camera to shoot in aperture priority at f/5.0 gave me the the depth in the frame that I wanted not showing all the background in full focus, but blurring it a bit out. I had also set my ISO to automatically adjust in the range from ISO800 to ISO2500 if the shutter speed fell below 1/10th of a second. I know the D700 can produce fairly detailed shots at ISO6400 so I didn’t bother having to much grain in this shot.
Since this is a wide angle motion in the camera wouldn’t show up as much as if I had shot this with a normal / zoom lens. I know I can hold tight to the camera at 1/10th of a second. I mainly recommend to use the shooting no slower shutter than the denominator of matching the focal length. The thumb rule: having a focal length of 20mm, you should never have a slower shutter than 1/20 of a second, at 35mm, 1/30th, 50mm 1/50th, 200mm 1/200th of a second. Having good or fast glass meaning having a lens that is able to have a wide aperture. The standard aperture scale (F-stops); f/0.7, f/1.0, f/1.4, f/2.0, f/2.8, f/4.0 f/5.6, f/8.0, f/11.0, f/16.0, f/22.0, f/32, f/45, f/64, f/90, f/128, f/180, f/256. Lenses are divided into primes and zoom. The prime lenses has a fixed focal length while the zoom lenses can vary from ie. 18mm to 55mm, 24mm to 70mm, 70mm to 200. The numbers you should concentrate about is what the widest aperture these lenses has, a smaller f-number, the larger the aperture, the more light the lens is able to send through to the camera sensor or the film roll you are shooting. Lenses with a larger aperture at the widest focal length is more expensive. The old 35mm f/2.0 I bought used for 2000NOK (around ), but the newer 35mm f/1.4 a F-stop larger costs around 14500NOK () because there is more glass inside.

A quick summary of my thoughts shooting this kind of documentary style shots, I don’t want the shots to be un-sharp because of camera movement, having some movement in the subjects gave me the feel of intensity in the situation, I didn’t want to much hassle doing light metering knowing my camera could handle the conditions quite well at different exposure compensation-settings I set my camera to aperture priority (A on Nikon and Av on Canon), knowing that f/5.0 was the sharpness all over that I wanted.
Having much time to look for situations is one of the key ingredients to get great shots, be nice to the people back stage, if they are not to busy ask them what they are doing, show them photos of what you have shot and you’ll get great shots back.

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.

A few weeks ago I photographed these images of Norway’s hopes in the Miss Earth contest (2011), Marion Dyrvik Homlong. I actually had other plans in terms of style, but since we were a little late out of the makeup chair that evening we had lost most of the light. We ran a lap around to find alternative locations, improvisation might work sometimes, not this time. Most were shot at well over ISO 4000, hence the grainy images. I also photographed the handheld so it was the Nikon D700 is really on trial.

Today I had a photo shoot with Angelica Adrianna Steen down at the track by Nidarøhallen / Trondheim Spektrum. We had overcast weather, a few drops of rain and light air, perfect conditions to make some cool flash shots I haven’t done in a while. This is one of my favourites from the shoot.

The reason I haven’t updated my blog lately is because of a harddisk-crash three weeks ago. I thought I had lost seven years of digital photography, but after some tweaking around in Ubuntu I managed to save around 90% of my work. I have cancelled my subscription to my on-line backup provider, Carbonite, because they only managed to back up 14% of my total work. Reason; After 200GB of backup they would only allow 2GB per day to be uploaded. Silly.

I have a great amount of photo shoots running in post production and have quite a few upcoming. The class we are having at school, the final class before final exam, is catalogue fashion. The first task is to make a fashion video using a DSLR-camera with built in video functions. I am having my first video shoot tomorrow at the rooftop of Trondheim Torg. Nikon Pro was so kind to lend me a Nikon D7000, if it doesn’t show up tomorrow I will have to go with a backup camera, Canon 5D MKII.

It was all a lie, I didn’t screw things up yesterday, just testing if I could synchronize the Nikon D700 TTL pop-up flash with the Elinchrom studio-flash with TTL on the camera. I fired off a few shots but it didn’t work. If anyone have the slightest idea of how to fire a Elinchrom BX Ri 600 with built-in pop-up flash I’d be happy to know.

So here are my pack shots for the Gastromat-assignment, the “costumer” wanted a clean and modern feel in the picture. One of the challenges I meet was choosing the right pack. Gastromat has recently changed their packing from a flat, green label to a shiny one. I don’t believe that the course leader had that in mind when making this assignment. I went around town looking for both packs and found both the shiny, reflective and the flat, green at Rema 1000 in Olav Tryggvassons Gate in Trondheim.
The other challenge was finding the right bowl and the right soup to go with the box. I found two containers at Interia, not with the right color but a somewhat cool shape. I went for a thick, creamy cauliflower with a leaf of lemon balm leaf (melissa officinalis) to decorate it all.

Fredag hadde jeg hjelp av Martine Elvira Heitmann Størseth under opptaket med Lisa B. Holden. Her er ett par av bildenen Martine skøyt mens jeg holdt på å fotografere modellen. Makeup-artist og hår er gjort av Susanne Amalie Nilsen fra H2-Akademiet. Besøk gjerne bloggen til Martine for inspirasjon, flere bilder fra opptaket og mer eyecandy.

Etter å ha sovet to timer siden mandag ble jeg endelig ferdig med etterbehandling og redigering av video til CD-Cover-oppgaven min på fotofagskolen. Bandet er Trondheimsbasert og heter Hell is Repetition og kommer forhåpentligvis med plate i September en gang om alt går etter planen. Bandet består av Christopher Iversen på vokal, Håvard Felberg på gitar, Eirik Tiller på Trommer og Khalid Azam på bass. Sistnevnte ble desverre ikke med på opptaket jeg hadde på torsdag grunnet sykdom. Hell is Repetition gir ut på plateselskapet Trøndercore Records.

Bildet i dette innlegget er tatt i Nordre Gate i Trondheim, nordvendt. Det er lyssatt med tre Nikon SB-900 på full guff, en fra venstre, forran med 109cm paraply, og to fra hver side med sølv 88cm paraplyer, og en SB-800 bare bulb fra høyre på bakkenivå, også på full guff. Grunnen er at jeg skulle prøve å få bakgrunnen til å bli litt mørkere, men fikk ikke helt den effekten jeg ville ha på grunn av at det var litt for tidlig på kvelden til å senke ambienten (det naturlige lyset) såpass at det ga noen visuell effekt. Det ble også fotografert noen portretter og andre abligøyer som muligens blir publisert etter evalueringen i morgen.

Jeg vil takke Sascha Njaa for å stille opp som assistent, fotografere under opptaket og for lån av en Nikon SB-900 Speedlight og Nikon Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8, og så klart bandet; Hell is Repetition.

Håvard Felberg spiller gitar i bandet Hell is Repetition som skal slippe plate i September. Portrettet er tatt i forbindelse med det siste kurset vi har før sommeren, CD-Cover, på Fotofagskolen. Bildet er tatt i Richard Avedons stil, In the American West; Hvit bakgrunn (det største lakenet hos Princess til 170 kroner) og naturlig sollys. Oppgaven skal leveres til trykk i morgen og gjennomgås og fremføres på Torsdag.

Besøk bandet på MySpace

Det har kommet mange spørsmål om hvordan jeg kjører blits på location og hvilket utstyr jeg bruker, derfor har jeg bestemt meg for å lage en liten føljetong på utstyret jeg bruker og hvordan jeg bruker det når jeg fotograferer.

Innledning

Den første gangen jeg brukte blits en ekstern blits (speedlight) var på opptak med enten Ingunn Rognes eller Margrethe Galaaen i 2005. Den gangen brukte jeg en Minolta Dynax 7 til hovedopptak og Minolta DiMAGE A2 som en “forhåndsviser” slik at jeg fikk stilt blitsen, Minolta 3600HS, til riktig styrke, plassering og avstand fra modellen.
I 2006 annonserte forresten Minolta sin resignasjon fra kameramarkedet. De kunne ikke møte konkurrentenes varer og tekniske utvikling og bestemte seg for å leve videre igjennom Sony. Året etter annonseringen fikk jeg prøvd Sonys nyeste digitale speilrefleks Sony Alpha A200, men til stor skuffelse ble bildene kornete og blitsen, som denne føljetongen egentlig skulle basere seg på, fungerte sporadisk. Det var da jeg bestemte meg for å se etter alternativer, på tross av en ganske stor objektiv- og utstyrspark.

Samme høst fikk jeg nyss i en ledig stilling i Fovea AS som skolefotograf som førte til at jeg begynte å bruke Nikon D200. Jeg fikk også utdelt en Nikon SB-800 Speedlight og det er vel her vi kan spore oss litt inn på essensen i denne føljetongen.

Noen kjappe stikkord

i-TTL (intelligent through-the-lense)

Nikon SB-800 er en speedlight ble lansert som et tillegg til Nikon D2H, sommeren 2003, med andre ord en relativt gammel blits sett i forhold til teknologisk utvikling. Sammen med lanseringen av Nikon D700 og D3x kom også en ny blits fra Nikon, SB-900. Det som er mest interessant med disse blitsene er i-TTL- og CLS-systemet Nikon har utviklet. i-TTL står for intelligent through-the-lense og er et system som stiller blitsen til å gi riktigst mulig eksponering i forhold til hva kameraet ser av lys igjennom objektivet. Resultatet av i-TTL varierer i forhold til hvilket objektiv og kamerahus man bruker. Men det essensielle som skjer når man trykker av utløserknappen på kameraet med en blits stilt inn på i-TTL er at rett før bildet blir tatt sendes en serie blitsblink (pre-flash) ut fra blitsen, lyset fra disse blinkene oppfattes av lysmåleren i kameraet igjennom objektivet og styrken på blitsen regnes ut for å få en jevn eksponering i forhold til blendertallet, lukkerhastigheten og ISO-verdien stilt i kameraet. Et siste blitsblink fra kameraet sender informasjonen om styrke til blitsen.

Auto Aperture Flash

Auto Aperture Flash-modus eller AA betyr at blitsen selv bestemmer styrken på lyset den skal sende ut istedenfor at den mottar informasjonen om blender, lukkerhastighet, brennvidde og ISO fra kameraet.

Manuell blitsstyrke

Manuell blittstyrke er akkurat hva som står, man stiller inn styrken på blitsen man selv ønsker og eksponerer deretter. Både Nikon SB-900 og Nikon SB-800 kan kontrolleres i styrke fra 1/1 til 1/128 styrke.

CLS (Creative Lighting System)

Nikons CLS-system er i all hovedsak en måte å styre blitsene fra kameraet eller en master-blits. Jeg er kanskje litt politisk ukorrekt og har heller ikke noe fast grunn å stå på når jeg uttaler meg om at fotografer er notoriske late mennesker som helst ser at opptaket blir gjort lettest mulig med minst stress, men basert på egen erfaring, så er det nok sånt. CLS-systemet gir muligheten til å kontrollere en eller flere blitser i grupper direkte fra kameraet eller en master-blits, uten at man behøver å gå rundt til de forskjellige blitsene og stille de inn hver for seg. CLS baserer seg på at blitsene kan være organisert i fire forskjellige kanaler, for enkelhetsskyld kanal 1, kanal 2, kanal 3 og kanal 4. Dette er gjort for at flere fotografer kan jobbe på samme location, under en catwalk, pressekonferanse og lignende. Blitsene kontrolleres dernest under grupper, A, B og C. Den siste gruppen, C, er avhengig av om du bruker den innebygde blitsen i kameraet eller en egen SU-800 eller annen master-enhet.

Neste gang

Neste gang tar jeg for meg litt AutoFP-modus og hvordan man navigerer seg rundt i menyene på SB-800 og SB-900. Er jeg i slaget tar jeg også for meg SB-600.

Modeller: Bjørn Tore Økland og Jens Westbye

Her er enda en liten video tatt med Nikon D700. Videoen er satt sammen av ca 715 JPEG-bilder med 7 bilder i sekundet. I stedenfor å sette inn bilde for bilde i en video kan man bruke en JPEG to AVI-konverter som gjør akkurat det samme som helt automagisk.

Her er noen lenker til noen slike programmer:
PhotoLapse freeware. Det er denne jeg har brukt på de to siste filmene.
JPG to AVI er også et freewareprogram som også gjør sin nytte.

I vår lekte jeg meg litt med rask lukkerhastighet og liten blender. Hele bildesekvensen er satt sammen av ca. 170 bilder og varer i godt og vel 30 sekunder i virkeligheten. Filmen har fått økt hastigheten litt for å gi den et litt mer retropreg.

Jeg er kanskje litt små-fan av stop-motion med mennesker, for tidligere har jeg publisert en annen video på YouTube som heter “A 2 and a half hour wait in 2m29s” og ble publisert i posten fra april i år under tittelen En dag på jobben.

Den første videoen i denne posten er tatt med en Nikon D700 med en Nikon Nikkor 50mm 1.4D AF-S og den andre filmen er tatt med en Nikon D200 og en Sigma 17-70mm, 2.8-4.5. Nikon D700 takler 6 bilder i sekundet med ett EL-N3 batteri og 8 med ekstra batterigrep. Det som det kanskje skorter litt på er bufferen. Om du ønsker å prøve noe slikt selv kan det være en idé å skru ned kvaliteten, gå fra FX til DX-modus og lagre bare JPG-filer. Da vil filstørrelsen reduseres betraktelig og bufferet tømmes raskere.

Om jeg får god respons på disse videoene kommer jeg garantert til å legge ut flere!

På grunn av et utrolig hektisk halvår har jeg endelig fått litt tid til å se på portrettene jeg tok i forbindelse med søknaden min til Norsk Fotofagskole i vår. Her er portrettene jeg tok av Øystein Aas Pedersen, Synne Didrikke Kvam og Veronica Gaare.

Her er bildene jeg tok med mitt Nikon D700 digitale speilreflekskamera av Ane Tinmannsvik. Erfaringsmessig var fant jeg ut at det er veldig små endringer i ansiktsmimikk og justering på sminke gjør store utslag i såpass tette portretter som dette. Av erfaring er fra jobben min i Fovea er å få variert posering litt vanskelig om man låser seg i et fast spor. Om man har noen idéer fra før hjelper det veldig mye.

Akkurat nå sitter jeg på skolen og scanner bildene fra Bronicaen (mellomformat kamera, 6×4,5, 120mm fargefilm).

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