Rae Piper is the creator of Piper Peculiar Productions (“P3” for short), a live action role-playing game company that produces small, intimate game experiences focused on emotional safety and freedom of choice. An organizer of people and projects, Rae is at the center of a vast community of passionate live action role-players I’ve had the fortune to meet (and photograph) over the last few years. It was Rae who brought both Jesse Coder (the knight) and Tea Booth (the lady of the grail) to the Portraits from a Distant Era session, a splendid entourage that made up one third of our portraits for this project.
Rae and I had done sessions previously, but for this series I was aiming for a particular style and asked the subjects to bring a distinct prop or costume piece, something to add a little mystery to their characters. Rae brought a storybook (which we captured in other images), but I was most intrigued with the ring her character wore on a chain around her neck. What did it mean? To whom did it belong? Did it represent a lover’s promise? An heirloom? An unsolved mystery or puzzle? She seemed like a person on a journey, and I loved the wise and knowing expression she gave, evidence perhaps of the insights gained on a long and winding road.
The worldly expression of the character in the photograph hints that she has seen much. When I posted the original edit of this image in 2019, I interpreted Rae’s character through the ring when I wrote, “The Lady of the Promise, her ring like a garland wound sound around a chain.” But a simpler title, “The Storyteller,” seems more fitting today. Not only does this character look as though she’s prepared to recount all the adventures the world has conjured for her, Rae herself is an adventure game creator and storyteller whose job it is to make such adventures for others.
Revising the Image
My original 2019 edit of this image seems a bit dark. In revising this image for print, I began lifting the shadows and pushing down the highlights, and I took care to bring up most of the shadow information that was completely black. Fortunately, there wasn’t too much of this. I pulled down the saturation values slightly and made sure the background of the image survived my tinkering. As with the others in this series that I’ve revised, I don’t want to do too much; ideally, the images will look more or less the same, just a little more detailed, a little lighter, less shadowy. (This is what comes of learning color management and regularly calibrating one’s monitor for accuracy). Here’s a comparison of the darker, original edit vs. the subtle changes in the revision.
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