This week, we continue to look at portraits from The Gala of Everlasting Change live action role-play event held in early September, 2022. The session was shot onsite at the event in a small bunkhouse on a campground. The details of the event and the photography setup are summed up in part one, but here’s a brief refresher:
The Gala of Everlasting Change was a live action role-playing game event created by Nathan Pease that occurred in Yorkville, Illinois on September 10–11, 2022. In this event, the fey/faerie courts of autumn, winter, spring, and summer met to engage in politics and tricks and decide who will rule their various courts. The participants play various members of these faerie courts over the course of an afternoon and into the evening, interacting with one another and engaging in meaningful moments of role-play as these characters.
Distant Era photographed portraits for the gala in fifteen-minute mini sessions. Anyone who wished could be photographed and could purchase their portraits after the gala if they wished. These portraits were commissioned by the subjects as their selections from the session.
In our first post, we saw the Harrowhawk the leshy and Eirwin Mirafiel, fey from the courts of autumn and winter respectively. In our second post, we showed a second portrait commission of Brie’s character Eirwin, as well as Gwanwyn, a fey of the spring court created by Coco, and Cladhaire, a shining summer fey created by Meredith.
This week we feature the latest in client work from The Gala of Everlasting Change, though perhaps surprisingly this time there no fey to be seen!
Raedrial played a mortal called Oriens, who had infiltrated the faerie gala where the fey were deciding upon their rulership. With the first portrait, a classical “Renaissancy” look seemed to fit the mood of the character. For the second, showing this character’s subtler side, we contrasted this with a cooler look. Both portraits have a textured, painterly aesthetic, as though they’re portraits from the distant past. I really like how they turned out, as well as the contrast in tone between the two.
Adjusting Mood in Post
With one exception (Coco’s character Gwanwyn from our second post on this event), each of the portraits in The Gala of Everlasting Change was photographed in a fifteen-minute session with the subject in which I learned about the character, gave some posing notes, shot, made adjustments, shot some more, and moved on to the next subject.
In these necessarily brief sessions, we didn’t have the time or equipment to make huge changes in lighting. We could change the side of the subject the light was on or feather the light one way or another. Thus, adjustments to the mood or feel of each gala portrait tend to happen in post-processing.
When editing a gala portrait, after the initial cleanup where I remove blemishes and stray hairs, I tend to start by thinking back on what the subject told me about their character and head in that direction. For example, I knew Brie was playing a winter fey, so I moved toward a gray or blue palette and added snow and ice; Meredith was a summer fey, so I edited with a mind for light, brightness, glitter, and saturated colors in her makeup and crown; Drew was an autumn fey with a Halloween aesthetic, so I moved toward a look reminiscent of a faded horror film. And so on. Raedrial’s photograph brought to mind a painting I remember seeing of a medieval minstrel when I was a child, so that was the inspiration I went toward when editing. Sometimes it takes a some time to find the mood.
The hardest part can be figuring out what the portrait is going to be. But this is true of most things, in my experience—I first learned it while attempting to paint fleets of miniature spaceships in 2014. Before you know the shape of it, it’s hard to proceed with any confidence. And you can’t know the shape of it without taking a few semi-blind efforts, always a little humbling. You fall on your face a few times, and inevitably break through if you stick with it long enough. This has proven true for narrative writing, painting, photography, game design, taking on a character role… everything.
After another four portraits, I’ll have completed (the current orders for) The Gala of Everlasting Change and may just have a chance to put up some spooky work from years past before October ends.
Thanks a million to Raedrial for commissioning these portraits of Oriens from the gala!
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