BJØRN CHRISTIANSEN | Photographer

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.

Pia Haraldsens omdiskuterte kleskolleksjon på Oslo Fashion Week høsten 2010. Kolleksjonen er designet for brudekleskjeden Agape og skal lanseres mot våren og sommeren 2011. På tross av litt merkelige etter personlig mening, 80-talls sirkusantrekk ryktes det at kolleksjonen allerede er utsolgt.

Her er noen bilder fra Pia Haraldsens modell-prøver på catwalken. For å være helt ærlig likte jeg klærne til modellene mye bedre enn de Haraldsen presenterte litt senere på kvelden. Lurer litt på om Agape faktisk kvalitetssikrer designene ;)

Da var dagens opptak ferdig på Oslo Fashion Week høsten 2010. De kjente navnene i dag var Björn Borg og deres undertøyskolleksjon. Pia Haraldsen med sin litt små tacky 80-talls sirkus / slut-stil og snowboarderen Daniel Franck på Sukkerbiten ved Operahuset med sin snowboard / streetwear-greie.
Björn Borg var som man hadde forventet seg, helt vanlig, Pia Haraldsen leverte som forventet i forhold til det jeg hadde lest av kritikker før lanseringen, og Daniel Franck hadde jeg ingen forventning eller forutsetning til å forestille meg hva han skulle finne på, men en regnvåt catwalk med litt for mye forsinkelser satte kanskje en liten demper på stemningen min. Jeg er sikker på at alle som ikke jobbet, men koste seg med diverse i teltet hadde det kjempefint :)

I morgen / i dag er det Calvin Klein klokka 1800 og Moods of Norway klokka 2200 på Kongsgården på Bygdøy som står på skyteplanen min. Det kan bli interessant.