With the New Year, we look forward to new goals by examining our the past with Distant Era’s cyberpunk-inspired series, Chicago, November 2019, photographed in that very month and year.
The last of the original Distant Era personal test series, Chicago, November 2019, was our first foray into (cyberpunk) science-fiction.
The decision to create and photograph this series was inspired by the date. The 1982 film Blade Runner opens with white text on a black screen: “Los Angeles, November 2019.”
I thought it would be fun to photograph a cyberpunk, Blade-Runner-inspired series in November 2019. This would be a cyberpunk setting using the Chicago skyline and the clothes and props we had on hand. (For instance, the Chicago android hunters appear to use futuristic Western revolvers and/or katanas.) My technical/educational goals in this series were to use colored gels with portable battery-powered flash units.
We shot the series in downtown Chicago with four subjects—Jacob Bates, Kai Young, Nathan Pease, and Elizabeth MacDougald. Nathan and Liz played the parts of androids, while Jacob and Kai played the parts of (possibly human) android hunters.
We photographed a mix of portraits and story scenes for this series and finished with a rooftop photograph featuring Jacob Bates and the cityscape at night. After extensive experimentation in editing, the resulting photograph became my favorite I’d ever captured at the time.
Compositing
To create the world around this image:
- I photographed a Hallmark Blade Runner Police Spinner Christmas ornament and added it to the background. I gave this the kind of glow it has in the movie and some flare from its lights.
- I added neon signs all over.
- I photographed Liz and learned (from this video by Nemanja Sekulic) how to make her into a hologram projected on the side of a building (inspired by similar elements in Blade Runner 2049).
- I added rain, raindrops on Jacob’s face, and blurry rain bouncing off the rail in the foreground.
- I changed color tone of the image, shifting it from warm to cool.
At the time I finished this image in December 2019, it was the most complex composite I’d ever done. I’m still fond of it. It has many flaws, but it was the best I knew how to do at the time, and I prefer to leave it be for now. The only flawless element of this image are the subjects, Jacob Bates and Elizabeth MacDougald, who are perfect as ever. Yet rather than endlessly tweak old work, I’ll learn more by making something new, and this is the theme of 2023.
New Frontiers
In 2021–22, for the first post-quarantine series, I wanted to return to portraiture, building on 2019’s Portraits from a Distant Era series, which were at the time Distant Era’s most identifiable work. The resulting series became The People of Light and Shadow. A goal for 2023 is to strengthen world-building skills the way The People of Light and Shadow built on portraiture skills. So that cyberpunk rooftop world from the Chicago, November 2019 series? I want to get better at that work by practicing in 2023.
In January, I’ll be posting the rest of the Chicago, November 2019 series on The All Worlds Traveller. Through the rest of the year, I aim to show more strange and fantastical landscapes. I hope to show a new series too, now that I’ve recovered from the last one. And of course more worlds created on Chicago’s theatrical stages and in costumed events.
To 2023 and the future!
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