"Let's drive away to Malibu.."

Inspired by the retro car advertisements, I grabbed the most sassy model I know, Miss Kaz Angelo, and a 1973 s2 Mazda Rx2.
I asked Kaz to bring a Farrah Fawcette flare to her look, and she did not disappoint. The windswept blond locks and a Bright red bodysuit-swimsuit. Perfect.
To shoot this image requires several shots that layer on top of each other. I vary rarely use studio lights, and to get the subject lit up, I rely on lightpainting effect. Foirst I set the car up and lightpain each panel with a long exposure on my Canon 5d Markii. I used a 100mm 2.8 lens along with a remote shuuter release.
I than set Kaz up into the shoot, and continue to lightpaint her. This can be extremely difficult for some models as it requires them to hold the pose for 20sec without blinking or much breathing.
EDITING: I open the images up in Lightroom and do minor adjustments such as opening my shadows and bring down blown highlights. I also adjust my white balance and sharpness. I than export these into layers into CS. I mask each layer and edit in the parts of the lit up car panels and also Kaz into the image to get one perfect image.
For this shot to have a Malibu feel, I found a free stock image of palm trees shot at night and added them into the image.
I than remove any distracting elements before I continue on editing Kaz body-skin. I use frequency separation to beauty retouch. After that I start working on the images colors, using color balance and gamma to bring the most in the shadowed areas.
You can see behind the scenes of this shoot on my FB and Insta.
I hope you enjoy this image :)
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