Stephanie and I have been planning this shoot for a while, but this weekend we finally got to this shoot, though it was a bit impulsive. Saturday evening I asked Stephanie if she was keen to do the gipsy / bohem-inspired fashion shoot in near future and she answered that Natalia, her older sister was doing a stylist assignment at school (Norsk Fotofagskole) with just the theme we had been planning for. Though the shoot had to be on Sunday because the assignment was due this week. Natalia was glad to hear that I could do the shoot for her.
The first location Natalia had planned was around the rural area of Moholt, but I didn’t feel that it add the right atmosphere for the shots I had in mind. Instead thought back to the first years when I first moved to town. I lived at Voll Studentby a student village, not far from the model and regularly went for walks in the area. and remebered one of the trails in the area with some vacancy, but was still open enough for the right mood I had pictured. They both agreed that we should try my location. After 45 minutes of shooting, the clouds drifting in and changed the light we worked with and we were kind of done with four costumes.
Below are some of my shots with a Minolta Dynax 7 (analogue camera) from 2004. At that time I mostly shot film and the cheapest way to get the shot digitalized was with a DIY contraption consisting of a black tube with home made film dias. The first photo is of Kjetil Høiby scanned with his film scanner, and the two following was shot with my DIY contraption.
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, Kjetil Høiby at Voll Studentby
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, Voll Studentby
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, My Dog, a Cocker Spaniel
Having been on a lecture at the Norsk Fotofagskole by one of Norway’s top photographers, Pål Laukli yesterday, I went to Kultursenteret Isak and filmed a little dance event for youth doing a photo- / video-something. Having not scratched the surface of dance I was introduced to the style Ragga, which I have learned originated from a Jamaican dance style from the 18th century. The instructor, Ida Skaret Fjøseide, has danced for twenty years and had lessons in dance in eighteen, worked both nationally and internationally. The event was arranged by Isak and MUD (Midtnorsk Urban Dans) with the host Tomas Vikeland.
It is Christmas eve, snow outside and the earth is still functioning as before the planned apocalypse the 21st of December 2012. I have been through 24 of my shots the past five or six years. It might not be the best work I’ve done, but I hope it might give you an idea of how much work you must go through in making a shot that stands out from the rest. I hope you also have learned some basic techniques and picked up some tips on how to do a photo shoot in form of planning location, selecting models, giving your shots a story with the light setup and the camera techniques you use.
This is the last photo I will review in my advent calendar of 2012. It is a shot that might be a bit cliché with a cliché story behind, but I like it very much and it gives me a feeling that I did what I was suppose to as a human being. Having reviewed another shot from my trip down to Morocco, this was shoot in Marrakesh. Pre story; in the winter 2011 I went on a field trip with my class from school to Morocco, staying in Marrakesh for four or five days to do a photo documentary of life inside of the Medina, old town. Then continuing to Essaouira for a few days just relaxing.
This was the last day before leaving Marrakesh, I had almost a complete series with both group portraits, action documentary shots of people traveling, intimate portraits, street photography and overview of everyday life, but was missing “the one” portrait everybody shoots in this documentary class; a portrait of an old, sad, poor man with prune skin and no teeth. I’ve been wandering around town for some days looking for the perfect motive, but didn’t really find what I was looking for until this last day. In a corner of a small square he sat leaned against a wall not doing anything, but watching as people passed by doing their everyday things. I made eye contact and lifted the camera and looked at him, he nodded and I approached him. As a norm here you pay your subjects a little fee to have their photo taken, this man had hoped to get some money for having his portrait taken. Another man shouted at me as I approached the beggar. In poor English he made clear that I needed to pay him in order to have a shot of the poor man. I payed and as I was preparing my camera, two younger boys took position on each side of me, I didn’t bother with them at first. When I was done photographing the beggar, one of the boys told me in a strict tone; You need to pay the beggar, twice the amount I payed the other man watching over him. Since it wasn’t such a big deal for me I gladly payed up and left the whole situation. Just before turning the corner walking towards the hotel I turned around to see if the beggar was okay. It was then I noticed the two boys hitting him and grabbing the money I just gave him and ran of. I got a bit angry and was about to run after the two boys, but in the back of my head many scenarios played quickly through my head; one ended with me in a pool of blood in an ally.
I decided to take a stroll around the block and come back sneaking up to the beggar to see if he was all right. I sat down next to him. He was crying. I felt bad to have put him in this situation. I looked around and in secret gave him the last of my change I had with, not much, but I believe twice the amount the boys ran of with. He smiled briefly and I shot this portrait of him. Leaving in a quick manner I crossed the square and sat down on a bench opposite of where the beggar sat. I watched him for a while in case the boys or other bullies came back. They didn’t.
Photographing portraits is what I have been doing most my time as a professional photographer. I started working in Fovea Skolefoto as a school portrait photographer also photographing kids in kinder garden all across the country. For two seasons I have been doing the same type of photography for a Trondheim based business called Iris Skolefoto. All this time I’ve doing portraits haven’t helped me gained technical experience, but rather experience communicating with the people I have been photographing. Learning different persuasion techniques for getting the facial expressions that I wanted to get, mostly smiling. You meet a lot of different people on the road, from the ones who are so shy wishing for a lightning to strike to those who can’t wait till it is their turn in front of the camera.
As you might have figured out, this is also a photo, a portrait, I shot during my years at Norsk Fotofagskole. This time the assignment was to make a CD-cover for a real or fictional band. And realistic enough, that is some of the projects I am working on today. The band I shot is called Hell Is Repetition. What my plan was was to photograph both portraits and some shots of the band together, the usual stuff you see.
A huge inspiration source for me and this particular shot was Richard Avedon, who you can read more about on his web page www.richardavedon.com. One of his techniques on photographing portraits was to have a big white sheet hung up in the shade and photograph them as they were right in front of it. This gave you plain, white backdrop which gave the subject the entire focus. Much like you see in family portraits and such today. I decided to go for this technique, bought a huge bed sheet and stretched it between two light stands and shot six portraits, two of each band member.
Inspiration is a good source for great ideas. Find some favorite photographers, try to make out what appeals to you in their work and try to replicate. Don’t do a blueprint of what they are doing but add some personal touches. My Richard Avedon-setup was quite cheap, you don’t really need light stands, but you can always tape the bed sheet to the wall.
At the moment my second most viewed photo on my Flickr-account is a product photo of a hammer from IKEA. On the hammerhead there is a bit of hair and some blood. The note next to it says File.no: 1969-09-29, Date: September 29th, 1969, Case: Abbey Road Murders, suspect: Maxwell Edison.
The story behind this shot was that in December 2009 we had this product photography class at Norsk Fotofagskole where we had this final assignment shooting a product free of choice with the most delicate lighting we could manage using what tips and tricks we had learned during the course. Being a bit tired of shooting cutlery and glass for four weeks straight I had to do something that wasn’t that aesthetically appealing and pretty. I decided that I wanted to do some kind of a police-evidence-report-murder-weapon photo like the ones you see in crime movies. Challenging my self I decided I had to do a photo with something I could relate to. Combining a murder weapon from a quite funny and morbid song I grew up with and the evidence-report, I had set my theme for my picture. The Beatles’ Maxwell’s Silver Hammer is a song about the naughty boy Maxwell Edison who is hitting everyone he comes across, girlfriend, teacher and finally the judge, in the head with a hammer. This tune has been with me since child hood, not understanding the words in early age I found the chorus to the be the most funny part because of the clang-sound, easy melody and rhythm. When I grew older I figured out the lyrics and found this song to be more morbid and funnier than just the clanging refrain.
Some might argue that the hammer looks a bit too new to be from 1969, but frankly this is just a fictional photo. If you are going to kill someone hitting them in the head, any hammer will do. Not that I encourage violence, killing or just hitting someone in the head with any object.
After getting the idea I had to get a hammer, some blood, brains and hair. The hammer was quite easy, I had one at home. The brain- and blood-part I figured I could get from a slaughter and the hair from a hairdresser. Slaughters around town didn’t want to give me any brains or blood and I figured I didn’t give it more effort and pay for a pack of ground meat, I went with just fake blood that I had lying around and the hair from the hairdresser.
The setup was quite easy, white background, my camera mounted on my tripod a sheet of aluminum giving the right reflections and some softbox-modified studio lights on each side lighting the hammer evenly.
There might be some more posts in my advent calendar about product photography, this was just a little intro on how you might build your ideas and combining elements to get a storytelling image. This can also be applied to most other projects you might be planning. Have a great weekend! And again, don’t hit anyone in the head.
People can be made invisible with a slow shutter speed. This photo is of a Sinar F2, an large format camera which uses film of the sizes 4×5 inches or even larger. These types of photographic media can record amazing high detail, but since digital sensor has to be as large as the analog film, there is no digital equal to this camera. The Sinar F2 and other large format cameras are usually used for photographing architecture and that is one of the reasons and the history behind this image.
As a task at Norsk Fotofagskole we were asked to do a commission project where the best photo were to be printed and hung at one of the display walls at the school. My idea was to photograph something that hailed the photography, something that in general could realize the common idea of what photography was and at the same time be appealing to both laymen and professionals. As inspiration I had watched a short, aesthetic movie by Alex Roman, The Third & The Seventh made completely by CGI. I decided to photograph the Sinar F2 in an architectural aesthetic environment with the same feel and mood as my inspiration video. I also wanted the Sinar to be as live like as possible, almost like this curious Wall-E character from Disney.
My first goal was to find a suited location. Since I’ve been studying at NTNU Gløshaugen for six years, and had photographed the Realfagsbygget as an earlier assignment at school, it didn’t take me long to decide upon using that location as my backdrop again. I had called NTNU and made a deal with them it was okay for me to do photography there the same day upon they made it clear that no students were allowed to be photographed
With some help from my assistant Sascha Njaa we dragged the big camera to the location started shooting. The Sinar F2 is made up by four basic parts, a front end where the lens, shutter and aperture is attached, a back end where the film holder and film and focus screen is mounted, in between them a bellow and everything sits on a rod clamped to a tripod. This bellow is easily bent into different angles making the camera look like it had a neck and a face.
One of the challenges I meet was the rule that NTNU made, no students in any photo, since it was in the after noon and people walked in between classes I had to make them disappear in my shoots. One technique is to shoot the same frame several times and later clone the people out of the frame. But since I didn’t want the scene to be completely vacant I decided to go for another solution, slow shutter.
By reducing the shutter speed, stepping down the ISO speed and closing the aperture, I was able to have a decent exposure. The camera that was on an tripod and the surroundings that didn’t move was frozen in the shot, people moving around was turning up transparent silhouettes. Experimenting with different shutter speeds you can achieve the same effect. A helpful gadget if you don’t have a lens with a small enough aperture is to buy a ND-filter which works as sun glasses for your lens and gives you a slower shutter without overexposing the frame on bright days.
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, Eileen K. Røst – Fashion Editorial
Cheating photography! It might be that I shoot my self in the leg this time, but photographing many kinds of pictures involves cheating a bit. This might be one of the more simpler way to cheat making something impossible look very natural. First I am going to tell the story behind this picture, then I’ll continue with the technical stuff.
This is a shot I did for my final exam at Norsk Fotofagskole in the spring of 2011 at Øysand in Melhus. The task was to photograph a fashion editorial that had a travel theme. I am a bit of a film geek so I arranged a series based on the story about Bonnie & Clyde doing bank robberies. Though my series was focused a bit more of the fashion-telling.
First of all I needed to find a good location for the shoot. I needed something flat and anonymous with no clear references. Øysand in Melhus is a spot I’ve been doing a lot of my work lately and it kind of fit my idea, with some basic tweaking quite well. Next up was casting models for this shoot. In my whole series I used Kofi G from Trend Models and Eileen Røst who is mainly a hair dresser.
And finally the requisites for the shoot, a gun and a briefcase full of money. It might be that you’ve heard that you shouldn’t counterfeit money, and it’s true. Don’t do it, unless it is just for photo- or video making or other theatrical relations. First of all, I went online and downloaded high resolution images of 1$ bills, made an A4 template with six or eight copies of the dollar-bill image on and printed just one a bunch of copies, cut them out and made bundles of money.
The Second part I did was getting a briefcase that I cold store the fake money and have the model dragging around in my shots. Clas Ohlson had some cheap, but great looking briefcases that fit great. At last I bought two used airsoft guns off an user at Finn.no. All in all the requisites cost around 350NOK (around ). I also had a friend lend me a Porsche completing the idea of having my models traveling.
The day came for my shoot, the sunny weather with harsh shadows I had hoped for never came. Instead it started raining and the set was quite the opposite of what I had planned. When nothing seems to work out as it should go for your second plan. If you don’t have a second plan, make the best out of the main plan.
The last scene in my series I had planned that my female model was escaping from the police and that the briefcase opened and all the money flew off into the air. Since I couldn’t afford renting extras dressed up as police officers I framed my shot as they were about to come into the picture. In real life we didn’t have much wind to play with, my counterfeit money was soaked because of the rain and the two tests we did before this final shot. It was then my assistant Sascha Njaa came into play suggesting that I should take a bunch of shots of the model dropping the case without the money flying, and afterwards shooting some photos of him throwing the money up in the air doing some cutting and pasting in post production. And that is what we finally did.
Shooting double exposures is one way to merging two photos together, another one is to shoot two different shoots and merging them together in post productions. An important thing you need to remember doing these shots is to not move your camera between the shots. The perspective could change and make the second image look weird when combined to the first one.
A little summary of what you should do if you plan a photo shoot is make a plan, make a mood board, find out what you need, what location, what mood, who should be the model and the extras, bring an assistant, bring food, have a plan B, make the best out of it if everything else fails. Cheat. It is a planned scene, it is not documentary showing the real world. If it adds value to your shot, it is worth it. Keep it real or way out there.
photo Bjorn Christiansen – Maria Ishoel Frelsøy and Karoline Dilling Broks
Having written a bit about shooting documentary style photos I want to give you some tips on how to do basic lighting in a studio for portrait, fashion and commercial purposes. This is a shot from one of my assignments at Norsk Fotofagskole. It was a part of the photo marathon we had the last semester in second grade. The task was to shoot a commercial for glasses. We got the assignment early Tuesday morning at it was due to the day after. Having quite a few friends in Trondheim I started making calls finding models suited for these types of photos. I got two yes-es and had hoped for just one, but since I had the opportunity and it didn’t do much to have two models I booked both models. The next step in completing this task was to get the main accessories and getting an idea of what the final result should look like. I went straight to a shop that sold spectacles and asked them to lend me some glasses. Making a deal with them sending them photos after the shoot I got to borrow quit a few spectacles. Next up I had to figure out what my models should wear. Since I had experience shooting school portraits and glasses is something many can relate to studying I wanted to have this kind of feel to the photo, but raising the idea of quality by having the models tie their hair back and wearing straight, light colored shirts.
With the help of my friend Sascha Njaa I rigged the studio and did the shoot in two hours. Here is what I wrote almost two years ago about the technical specifications:
Lighting diagram
Lighting the scene
This picture is lit by four Elinchrom BX Ri 500. There are two flash heads with strip-light softbox on each sides and behind the models pointing at an 45 degree angel at them, one flash head at a tripod with a beauty dish and grid almost straight on the models and one octabank shooting straight into the ceiling on the left side and about a two meters away from the model. I have also two polystyrene boards with the black side facing the models and another one with white side up in front and facing up reflecting into the models eyes.
So why do I use this lighting setup? Setting up a studio like this from back to front as I usually do I want a main light source to light my subjects. The ABC of lighting techniques you should always set up a flattering light, the types of lighting varies from model to model and from expression to expression on the models. Having two models some might say that I complicated the scene a bit, but having the right equipment and an idea before you start rigging the studio, it helps a lot. The main light source in a typical school portrait comes from a slight angle, the more know Rembrant-light comes from an angle of 45 degrees from either the left or the right side of the subject and the nose is casting a shadow across the face furthest away from the light source. It also creates a triangular light shape beneath the eye furthest away. This models the face quite drastic which was not in my plan. Another setup that I use quite often is the butterfly lighting that I used at this particular shot. The main light placed straight in front and above of the model pointing slightly down making the nose casting the shadow straight above the subjects over lip. To even out the shadow that can be a bit to sharp I placed a white board below the models angeling it upwards and evening out the shadow and also casting light into the iris. The second light I set up was what I call an ambient light to further lighten the faces but also the background in the scene. Modifying this light source with a large octabank / softbox this doesn’t do much to the shadows in the models faces but evens out harsh shadows created with the beauty dish (main light) even more than the white board below the models. It also helps me light my white background a bit so it does not turn totally dark, but gives it some tone to it. The two black boards on the left and right of the models adds some contrast to the subjects. Had it just been just white walls around the studio the colors would look a bit washed out. The two light sources on the left and right, positioned further back of the models gives highlights to both the shoulders and the sides of the models helping me sculpt out their faces. In straight on school portraits you just might use two light sources, one main light and one on the background. Shooting with a white background, depending on the setup, stray light might do the same job as the two light sources behind the models. The two light sources behind the models are modified with two strip light softboxes. This is because I don’t want any light spill on the background and I also want large light to hit the models faces not creating any harsh shadows.
Shooting portraits in studio you might consider having a plan for each shoot, bring some accessories in form of clothes or spectacles to give the model something to work with. Plan the lighting and the feel before starting rigging the studio. It also helps having an assistant to help you out both rigging and giving you creative feedback as you work towards a final photo.
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).
Photo: Bjørn Christiansen, Marrakech, Marocco
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
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, Julecup 2012 at Royal Garden - Trondheim
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, Julecup 2012 at Royal Garden - Trondheim
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, Julecup 2012 at Royal Garden - Trondheim
Here are some photos from the Trondheim Frisørlaugs Julecup 2012 at Hårshow at Royal Garden. Don’t know what the assignment was. I was at this hair show mainly because I was covering Oi Hår og Velvære’s catwalk show. Lotte Aalberg Kalvø from Oi Hår & Velvære and Norsk Fotofagskole,did the hair and styling on model #16.
Here are four pictures from the dirty house wife photo shoot I did with Ivalu Sørensen from Diva Models. We had some extra time after a photo shoot down at Moesgård Strand and decided to do something fairly unromantic. I might be wrong but, I believe her kitchen doesn’t look this way everyday. Styling this shoot was Anne Margrethe Rimmer Larsen. I don’t encourage anyone to smoke cigarettes, but the photos needed this final touch to give them the right feeling.
Some most of you guys who are a frequent reader might have experienced some problems with entering my Flickr-gallery at www.flickr.com. The reason was that I had published some nude content and hadn’t set the right content filters. You might experience such glitches still, but it will be fixed by the end of this week.
Last winter I did a nude photo shoot with a friend of mine in relations to an assignment we got at Norsk Fotofagskole. The task was to photograph a nude girl or woman. The photo I ended up delivering was a picture of my friend lying on the couch with her daughter standing beside her. It didn’t catch on very well for our principal running this course. Not because of the feel or the technical quality, but more the idea of this photo. I believe he had pictured a more clean and sexy photo rather than the breasts, the blurred head and the female genitals.
Anyway, I did not just photograph the one photo to this assignment, but rather quite a few with the mother and child theme. The first photo in this post is my friend and her daughter in front, together, a bit anonymous. And the second photo is just my friend looking straight into my lens. A year earlier, being pregnant I shot the same photo of her. Time has gone by and it is about a year and a half since I shot these pictures, but I think my plan was to give this series a Jock Sturges -feel to them with a personal touch.
This is the photo I delivered for my assignment.
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, Nude Portrait of Mom and Child
This is a video presentation from my nude photography-course. It is called black and white as an contrast on the two series I shot. Might be a bit cliché.
This past two and a half months I’ve been filming quite a few videos with a Nikon D7000 I got to borrow from Nikon Norge. This piece is one of the last films I shot before I returned it back to Camera & Videoteknikk AS and is a behind the scenes-thing for Ane Aspen’s last shoot at Norsk Fotofagskole. The photos she shot of Hedvig Kristine Sundland fromTrend Models are going on display at Fokus, our exhibition today.
Makeup artist is Anniken Tiset, designer of the jacket is Marianne Høst, second assistant is Leiv Aspén from Buranhus.
You can see the photos Ane shot of Hedvig at our exhibition Fokus at Fotofagskolen this weekend. Opening is at 20:00 tonight.
Fokus - Avgangsutstilling på Norsk Fotofagskole 2011
This is the third and last part from my fashion-roadtrip-shoot with Viktoria Konstanse Strand Kvalsvik from Trend Models. A few more days and I have completed two years at Norsk Fotofagskole. The clothes are mainly from MTWTFSS Weekday, Bianco Footwear and BikBok.
I have spent the evening at school printing and preparing three photos for Fokus, the final exhibition on Friday.
This is the second part of the fashion-series I did for my exam at Norsk Fotofagskole. Model is Viktoria Konstanse Strand Kvalsvik from Trend Models in Trondheim. Clothes are mainly borrowed from BikBok at Mercursenteret, but also MTWTFSS Weekday. Shoes are borrowed from Bianco Footwear in Nordre Gate.
FOKUS – Avgangsutstilling NFFS 2011
Fokus - Avgangsutstilling på Norsk Fotofagskole 2011. Ikke glem å kom!
Hi and welcome to my blog / portfolio. My name is Bjørn Christiansen I am a 29 year old and live in Trondheim where I currently I work as a freelance photographer shooting fashion, commercial, documentary and portraits. Enjoy my site!
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, Kjetil Høiby at Voll Studentby
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, Voll Studentby
photo: Bjørn Christiansen, My Dog, a Cocker Spaniel
