PDN: What's it like to work with strobe after all these years of working with continuous sources?

Zwirner: I view strobe as a necessary evil. It's affordable and allows me to shoot with faster shutter speeds. But strobes do have this tendency to throw light everywhere, so you are spending most of your time trying to control that. Generally speaking, hot lights tend to be much more focused. I've converted all of my strobe reflectors to take barn doors. I use this Lowell DP barn door kit that fits perfectly over the Profoto zoom reflector. It just snaps right on and you are good to go.


PDN: How has your lighting evolved since you began shooting stills?

Zwirner: My lighting for still photography was different in the beginning because I came to it with this head full of film knowledge using a particular set of tools. Then, all of a sudden, I was using a different batch of tools, and I didn't really understand them. So I started looking at what other photographers were using, like beauty dishes or Octabanks. I tried them and the results were abysmal. So I began to question myself and wonder why these other guys were getting these amazing results using these tools but my results sucked. So, after a while, I began to abandon those tools and experiment with different things and apply my knowledge from the film world. Now I never light a subject with a beauty dish because it seems so unflattering when it hits the subject, even if you add extra diffusion. I have tried many different types of diffusion and I still find beauty dishes to be very harsh on the subject. I only use it to light the seamless behind the subject.


PDN: What do you use instead of a beauty dish if you're lighting a beauty shot?

Zwirner: I just use my Chimera Pancake Lantern with four or five different bounce cards to get a snap in the eyes, make sure there's not a harsh shadow underneath the chin and create a nice wrap around the cheeks.


PDN: You seem to have an affinity for the Profoto Magnum reflectors. What's the attraction?

Zwirner: The reflectors are a little wider and the light is slightly harder and more intense. They also seem to throw the light a little further.


PDN: You get very creative with your background lighting.

Zwirner: Yes, on backgrounds, I do like to step outside of the box. There is a fairly standard way that we light our subjects, with the Chimera Lantern Softbox and the bounce card combination that we use. There are subtle variations, but it becomes pretty standardized. Then, on the backgrounds, we can create a lot more emotion or make them surreal or dreamy. I feel like there's an opportunity to do a little more with lighting on the background than on the subject.


PDN: What kind of bounce materials do you prefer?

Zwirner: Instead of using white beadboard or white cards, I use Ultrabounce, which gives you a nicer quality of bounce. I will also use a Rosco soft silver textured material that you put over your regular bounce card. It's actually my preferred choice to use as a bounce because of the punch it gives. It does have a softness—it's nowhere near as harsh as regular silver—but you are still getting some punch. There is something about silver light that is very appealing to me.


PDN: How do you pull off some of these big productions on editorial budgets?

Morand: We are very crafty about cutting expenses when we need to be. I will do the digital capture myself and use my own computers instead of hiring a digital tech and renting the tech's computers and equipment. I do a lot of the retouching myself. When we get an editorial assignment, I prefer to spend whatever is in the budget on the location. We have to pay for permits and insurance, but we cut corners pretty much everywhere else. Chris owns a lot of lighting equipment, and he has longstanding relationships with a few of the local lighting houses. That has been very helpful because a lighting package can easily run from $4,000 to $8,000. Instead of renting a fully outfitted grip truck, we'll rent a regular truck with a lift-gate and load it ourselves. And, because our productions are often bigger than our budgets, we generally have five or six interns on set—usually Brooks Institute students who drive down from Santa Barbara to learn and lend a hand.


PDN: Tell us about some of your creative influences.

Zwirner: I grew up with a painter for a mother and then I went into the movie business, so I've been exposed to the visual arts for my whole life. My father was a career Army officer, and when we lived overseas, we would spend so much time going to museums. I remember being dragged to every major museum in Europe as a kid. I still remember standing in front of The Night Watch by Rembrandt. I was pretty short then because I was only seven years old, and that painting was so beautiful and so massive that it just burned into my consciousness. Edward Hopper was also a big influence. I've always loved the sense of loneliness and isolation in his paintings. There is something very cinematic about Hopper's work to me. So much of what has been done in cinema has borrowed from Hopper's vision.

In terms of film, I was influenced by John Bailey [Ordinary People, Continental Divide, Cat People, The Big Chill, Groundhog Day, As Good As It Gets] and Dante Spinotti [The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, L.A. Confidential]. Roger Deakins [the Academy Award-winning cinematographer who worked on Doubt, and House of Sand and Fog, and Coen brothers movies including No Country For Old Men and Barton Fink] has been a big influence. So much of what he did was unconventional. I really took note of the way he wrapped his key sources around his subjects.

Morand: I have always loved Helmut Newton. I love the fact that he was always pushing the boundaries. He was a master and everything that he did was fully embraced, even if it was very provocative. I also love Nigel Parry's black and whites; they are very evocative. They are beautifully shot and the level of detail is astonishing. And then there is Gregory Crewdson. His work is so cinematic. His sets are massive; sometimes they go on for blocks. If Chris and I had our way, we would shoot that way all the time.


PDN: So you're interested in moving in the direction of larger sets in the cinematic tradition?

Morand: We do quite a bit of studio work as well, but the more exciting shoots for me are definitely shoots like the one that we did on the lake at Sable Ranch. I've got a big love for big, big sets. That's what I admire so much about Crewdson's work.


PDN: What do you see for the future for your collaboration?

Morand: Although we both love shooting fashion, we are not in New York or Paris—and even the logistics of getting the clothing is difficult. Most of the clothing that we would need to shoot high-end fashion photography is simply not here: it's in New York or Paris. We've thought about going to New York, and I always dream about Paris, but this is not necessarily realistic because of our careers in the film industry.

Because we are based in Los Angeles, shooting celebrities makes a lot of sense. I had an appointment a while back at a big repping agency here in L.A. while Chris was out of town on a film shoot. They looked at our book and said, if you guys had celebrities in here instead of models, we could do a lot more for you. In this town, the magazines are very celebrity driven, so you need to have celebrities in your portfolio to be taken seriously. So I really see us moving more in that direction.

Zwirner: I feel that there's so much that can still be done. I would love to start shooting some really great advertising campaigns. I don't think we've done our best work yet. We've demonstrated some of what we're capable of and now it's a matter of finding the right opportunity to showcase that.


PDN: Chris, can you offer us any insights about lighting that you've gleaned from your years as a gaffer?

Zwirner: Don't be afraid of contrast, of mixing things up a little, of getting some shadow into the image. In other words, don't be afraid of the dark.