Wanderer Queen

Featuring the phenomenal Deana Vazquez, this image from our second series, Portraits from a Distant Era, portrays the subject in a character she role-played and, over the course of many adventures, “leveled up” in her journey from ranger to queen in the tradition of Strider/Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings.

Last week, I described how I’m revising this series to bring back detail in shadow areas that had formerly been completely black, and making other small changes along the way as well. The intent not to re-edit the image but fix bugs that would make for poor prints. Learning about color management and monitor calibration while reviewing prints over the last two years has proved enlightening to say the least.

After bringing up the darkest areas of this image, got rid of the yellow cast in the whites of the eyes and re-cropped the image to bring the subject closer, which brings her more in line with the other subjects in the series.

At the subject’s request, I composited the two versions of her character into a single image. On the left is the character at the end of her journey, confident and queenly, and on the right is her character from her earlier days as a wandering ranger.

It was a pleasure to make these images for Deana.

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Steven Townshend is a fine art/portrait photographer and writer with a background in theatre, written narrative, and award-winning game design. As a young artist, Steven toured the US and Canada performing in Shakespeare companies while journaling their moments on paper and film. In his transition from stage to page, Steven continued to work as a theatre photographer, capturing dramatic scenes while incorporating elements of costume, makeup, and theatrical lighting in his work. Drawn to stories set in other times and places, Steven creates works through which fellow dreamers and time travelers might examine their own humanity or find familiar comfort in the reflections of the people and places of a distant era.