Photo Credit: © Morand & Zwirner

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This hard-edged image provides a stark counterpoint to the nostalgic romanticism of Morand and Zwirner's lake shot, showcasing the team's conceptual, stylistic and technical range. Part of a series created with a high-profile hair and makeup team as a test in spring 2008, the image was later picked up by Trendsetter, an Istanbul fashion magazine.

Despite the image's sleek and polished appearance, it was shot in a Los Angeles parking garage with translucent plastic sheeting as a backdrop.

"These were cheap plastic drop cloths like the ones you might buy in a hardware store," Zwirner notes. "We strung the sheeting up between the parking garage's concrete structural pillars behind the car and on set right."

To create the aqueous blue field behind the car, Zwirner backlit the plastic sheeting with two Profoto Pro-6 heads fitted with Magnum reflectors and Cyan #60 gels. The heads were backed off from the sheeting about 15 feet and set about 6 feet from the ground.

To backlight the plastic sheeting on set right, he positioned another Profoto Pro-6 head with a Magnum reflector and a Cyan #60 gel about 8 feet away from the plastic and 6 feet from the ground. All three of the background sources were powered by separate 2400 watt-second packs and exposed at a stop and half below the key source illuminating the model's face.

To create the luminous skin tones on the model's face, Zwirner used a small Chimera Pancake Lantern softbox with a skirt, boomed into the set with the bottom of the front edge of the lantern about 2 feet from the top of the model's head.

"This is a great source to fit into small spaces," he notes, "and the skirt keeps the light from spilling all over the place or hitting the camera lens."

Information Graphic by Frank Webster

Zwirner supplemented the Chimera lantern's standard diffusion with an additional layer of light grid sandwiched with a layer of Lee #129 heavy frost.

To create the whisper of blue light on the model's fingers, neck and shoulders—as well as the blue reflections in the driver's side mirror and the vertical window pillar—he positioned a Profoto Pro-6 head with a Magnum reflector and a Rosco Cyan #60 gel about 3 feet from the ground on camera left and tilted it toward the garage floor.

"I skip-bounced this source off of the floor to throw some subtle blue hits onto the model's skin and kick some blue into the foreground elements," he explains.

To light the car's interior and create some color contrast in the image, Zwirner then positioned two Profoto Pro-6 heads with standard reflectors and Lee Y1 (yellow) gels near the front of the car. The first source, placed near the front wheel of the car on the passenger side, was positioned 3 feet from the ground and angled to throw light through the front windshield and the front passenger window to create the yellow illumination on the interior car ceiling and the molding on the car's rear window. The other source, positioned in front of the driver's side headlight about 4 feet from the ground, lit the car's interior through the windshield and also raked the outside of the car, creating the yellow highlights in the chrome on the driver's side door. Both yellow-gelled sources were exposed at 3/4 stop under the key source. The interior dome light on the car ceiling was brightened in post.

"I wanted to create something very snappy and colorful with this lighting," says Zwirner. "I added the blue and yellow gels because the light on the model was very neutral and the tone of the image as a whole would have been too monochromatic and cold—mostly shades of black and gray—without some added color."

The image was exposed at 125th of a second at ISO 100 with a Canon 5D camera and an 85mm lens set at 5.6 1/2.