Photo Credit: © Morand & Zwirner

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This brooding image was created in November 2007 for an 18-page fashion editorial in Prestige Hong Kong—a luxury lifestyle and society magazine.

"The editorial was loosely based on the concept of two lovers who are separated and reconnected," recalls Zwirner. "The fashion editor approached us with the idea of doing the shoot with a giant bird cage that he had seen as a prop. The idea was to suspend the cage over water, so we found this location on a man-made lake at Sable Ranch, a big movie ranch outside of Los Angeles that is rented out for motion pictures and other productions."

Accustomed to lighting large outdoor sets from his career as a film gaffer, Zwirner quickly mapped out what he'd need to create the set and give the image its atmospheric, moonlit quality —including steel decking to support the cage, a 1,000-amp generator to power the strobes, an all-terrain forklift, a 45-foot electric boom-lift and more than 16,000 watt-seconds of strobe power.

Nonetheless, the shot was a logistic-ally challenging one. It was done at night, when the desert temperatures at the ranch plummeted to 40 degrees. The models gamely braved the chilly night air, but Morand and Zwirner still had to make special accommodations for the other star of the shoot—a $100,000 couture gown that had been flown in from Europe at the fashion director's behest.

Information Graphic by Frank Webster

"We'd originally planned to place the cage on top of submerged steel decking so that the bottom of the cage would be just below the surface of the water," explains Morand. "But the fashion editor was in panic mode because he was afraid the dress would get wet, so we had to add a wooden platform on top of the decking to raise the cage three inches above the surface of the pond. I had to do a lot of work in post to retouch out the platform and recreate the reflection of the birdcage in the water."

Once the set had been modified to protect the dress, Zwirner swung into action to create the lighting."Our objective with the lighting was to create a feeling of fantasy—of a soft, romantic, surrealistic environment," he explains.

Zwirner lit the models with small Chimera Pancake Lantern softboxes with skirts. The softboxes were fitted with Profoto Pro-6 heads and modified with an additional layer of light grid diffusion sandwiched with a layer of Lee #129 heavy frost. Each softbox was powered by a separate 2400 watt-second pack.

"I really like the quality of the light that comes out of these lantern softboxes," he says. "It gives a very soft, even illumination that's extremely flattering, especially for women. It has a good fall-off with the added diffusion, and the built-in skirting makes the light much more controllable. The top half of the skirt is silver, which is mostly diffused by the lantern, and the bottom half is matte black."

To light the female model, Zwirner attached a lantern softbox to one of the forks on the all-terrain forklift that had been used to place the cage on top of the platform. He positioned the lantern about 4 feet above the model's head and slightly to the left, with the skirts rolled up about halfway on three sides and the skirt on the side of the softbox facing the model rolled up about another 4 inches.

"I didn't need to use any fill on the opposite side of the model's face," he notes, "because the light was high enough that I was getting a good wrap around her face."

He then boomed the second Chimera lantern softbox out over the water to toplight the male model in the boat.

To simulate moonlight, create a toplight that illuminated the foliage on the trees and washed across the surface of the water and also throw a subtle back edge light on the models, Zwirner mounted a Profoto bi-tube head with a Pro-Big umbrella on the basket of a 45-foot electric boom lift positioned on the far back edge of the lake on set left. He powered this source with two 2400 watt-second packs.

He then mounted a Profoto Pro-6 head with a Magnum reflector on the opposite corner of the boom lift basket to create some separation between the sky and the foliage in the center of the frame. After mounting both light sources to the boom-lift basket, he raised the basket to a height of about 25 feet.

"The illumination on those trees was very subtle, just enough to make it read," Zwirner points out. "In hindsight, I wish I'd had another bi-tube head on hand to create even more separation in the center of the frame."

Although the Pro-Big umbrella created a suitably broad source of illumination, it did not, alas, survive the shoot.

"At one point while we were shooting," says Zwirner, "the winds really picked up and folded that umbrella right back on itself."

Finally, he positioned two Profoto Pro-6 heads with Magnum reflectors and a full layer of CTB gel sandwiched with a half layer of CTB to illuminate the smoke that was coming from a smoke machine positioned at the side of the lake on set left.

With all of the strobe sources in place, Zwirner then strung five Chinese lanterns that he'd fitted with household sockets and 100-watt bulbs over the boat. Just before the shot was exposed, a prop stylist floated paper lotuses fitted with LED lights on the surface of the water behind the boat. The illumination from the household bulbs and the floating lotuses was pumped up in post.

Morand and Zwirner then exposed the shot at 125th of a second at ISO 250 using a Hassedblad H1 camera with a 50-110 zoom lens set at 5.6 1/2 and a Phase One P30 digital back.