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.

Frequency in blogging have gone down by 100 percent, I am very sorry. From my Google Analytics-statistics I can see that I have lost a lot of followers the past three months because of this. I am not sure if I am capable to continue the frequency of new posts as I did before Christmas. Why? Well, I’ve got a job at an advertising agency, Centerteam Reklamebyrå A/S as a photographer assistant and I haven’t really found time to write about ongoing private projects, but fear not, I am doing a lot of fashion photography in addition to products and editorial stuff I do at work.

In February I covered Oslo Fashion Week (A/W 2012) for Runway Passport doing both runway / catwalk and backstage documentary. My campaign for Dronning Mauds Minne Høgskole have been running at both cinemas in Trondheim and billboards around town.

So, what is this youtube/vimeo-video about? Since it was Easter and I had some time off to do private projects, Charite Viken, who I did a music video for in January, and I brought some camera equipment on location and did this little piece mainly just for fun and experimentation shooting moving pictures with a DSLR.
Roomer has it that moving pictures are the thing of the future and I will not be stuck in the past. I like working with new technology and I will not be left behind. I am trying to find my style and find out how the technology works and how I will get the best results that I am looking for. I have received a lot of criticism that both this and my last video with Charite lacked of storytelling and I must agree. There is this third dimension, time, that is more prominent in motion photography than in still pictures and each clip as a in pictures need to tell a story. The discussion for me is more about me to take my criticism and do something with it, or continue as a mere photograph and film pretty and interesting clips based more on composition and detail. My trend is pointing in the direction that I want to do just that, planning the small clips instead of putting together a coherent story and instead let the sound and finish the connecting link.
Regarding the soundtracks for the movies I produce, I can see that there is a violation of copyright law to pick pieces of music artists and bands to use in my videos. I’m just as unhappy when someone tampers with the images I shoot. I can only apologize to all those I have stolen music from and going to steal music, but the reason is that you make so damn good music and it that helps me to set the mood for my moving photos . I have done and will always put the band and artist that plays the sound and the song is taken from.
Enjoy my little moving picture with Charite Viken as main actress and model. If you like the tune, listen to the full length at Spotify.

Past video projects

Charite – In My Head (Official Promo)

Behind the Scenes with Ane Aspén

Carina Velva (Trend Models) – Huldra

Moesgård & Bellevue – A Fashion Story

The last show on Oslo Fashion Week A/W 2012 the Danish designers from Samsøe Samsøe. Photographed for Runway Passport.

The most expensive show during Oslo Fashion Week 2012 was the one Runway Passport.

Shoes from Helene Westbye at Oslo Fashion Week, shot for Runway Passport.

Line of Oslo at Oslo Fashion Week A/W 2012. Photographing for Runway Passport.

The Norwegian designer Kristine Vikse at Oslo Fashion Week. Photos are shot for Runway Passport

The Cool Project 2012 at Oslo Fashion Week, shot for Runway Passport.

The designer Kristine Vikse showing off her MeMini Collection on Oslo Fashion Week A/W 2012. Photos are shot for Runway Passport