Shooting a model in a wedding dress inside a Rolls Royce looks easy enough – and, truth is, it can be if you have to do it on the fly and without a lot of time like a lot of wedding photographers routinely do. But this shoot was for the premier issue of Siren, a New Orleans-based women’s fashion magazine and the flip-side kissing cousin of Seven Men’s Magazine, both published by CEO Christina Tears-DiLeo. Equally important, the client was a first-time limousine advertiser and that meant everything had to be as near-perfect as possible.

The limo was the star of the show, to be sure, but the model's $10,000 wedding dress couldn't end up looking like chopped liver. Lighting for both the car and dress would be tricky.

Because I knew I would be starting the session just before sunset and chasing down the diminishing light through twilight, I needed a lighting setup that would deliver flexible and powerful wattage that I could quickly and easily modify under changing conditions of illumination. So I rolled out a mini-Armada of gear: a gaggle of off-camera Speedlights; 82-inch parabolic reflector umbrella; 36”-by-36” softbox; 42” Interfit reflector panel; shoot-thru umbrellas; and assorted snoots and grids. I also used a pair of Polaroid 256-light LED panels inside the Rolls for the interior shot of the model.

Here’s how the scene looked from behind the limousine before the model came on the set. FYI: the Speedlight behind the fountain was to illuminate the water since my camera position was just to the right (see tripod).

(To view the double-truck advertisement as it appeared in Siren, click here: http://bit.ly/1cXyQ3C. To read the entire premier issue of Siren click here: http://bit.ly/19idj74)

Lens-wise shooting the model in the backseat of the Rolls Royce required my Nikon 18-35mm 2.8 – a versatile wide-angle troubadour that sucks in lots of space without the kind of annoying aspherical distortion I typically deal with when using my Tokina 12-24mm (and correcting later in Photoshop). The Polaroid LED panels I used inside the car helped me bathe the bride in a heavenly light. I used a single strobe positioned behind the limo, aimed through the back window, to provide needed depth beyond the car so that the eye didn’t “crash” into a flat, black back window directly behind the model’s head.

While most wedding photographers rightfully argue that the best bridal shots include as much of the bride's face and her dress possible, I had no such pressure or creative constraints. In fact, since the following image is for my own personal use, I employed the kind of half-face tight cropping I use on occasion. To me it accentuates the half-eclipsed model's beautiful face and bone structure. 

Credits: Dress by Yvonne LeFleur; model, Izabella Urbina; hair stylist, Erica Muhs; makeup, Jessica Masters.