Today on The All Worlds Traveller, we’re going back in time one million years—or at least to last July, which already feels like one million years—to the headshot session of Jules Rose Wolnak.
Jules and I have known one another since 2018 when we had a conversation at a theatre bar about how great American Player’s Theatre is, and she’s been on my shortlist of people I’ve wanted to work with since then. Our working together got delayed by a global pandemic and Jules moving to Japan for a couple of years. Nevertheless, Jules returned to Chicago and reached out about getting some headshots done, and in July 2025 we finally made it happen!
Spunky, Colorful, Vibrant, and Hard Edge
In our consultation, we discussed the roles Jules typically gets cast in and enjoys playing, as well as the roles she’d like to be considered for.
Jules said she tends to play opposite extremes. On the one hand, she’s good at playing spunky, colorful, and vibrant roles—though not necessarily ingenues. Jules has a dark, deadpan sense of humor, and she loves dramatic roles with depth, especially darker dramas and comedies.
With these extremes in mind, we went about planning Jules’s session. Jules very helpfully sent along a mood board that showed examples of the kinds of shots that inspired her.
The Session
Following the guidelines Jules provided, we set out to make a session that included both vibrant colors and neutral tones as primary background elements. Though we photographed some of Jules’s headshots on neutral white and gray, the session truly felt like it worked best once we switched to a purple background and Jules wore a green that contrasted with her red hair, as well as the background. That purple remained our best friend during the session, as everything we shot on it looked great. Near the end of our headshots, we swapped the purple out for a light blue color that we also really liked. For those images, Jules wore a leather dress, which brought out that hard-edge look we had hoped to capture. Our headshot session concluded with that black leather dress on a robin’s egg blue background, which helped Jules’s red hair pop out of the image.
We photographed most of the images from the session with a large softbox and reflector, with V-flats for bounce/fill. We finished out the session with some restricted light from a gridded beauty dish before moving on to the Golden Age of the Silver Screen portion of Jules’s shoot, which we’ll save for another day.
Makeup
Jacque Bischoff did Jules’s makeup for the session and provided assistance and support throughout. As Distant Era’s primary makeup artist, Jacque does a stellar job creating a natural look for headshot clients, helping them to look and feel their best on set.
Editing and Results
Over the past year, we’ve strived to make each headshot session better than the last. There are no real tales to tell about the editing of this session. From wardrobe and background choice to makeup and quality of light, we did our best to get things right in camera as best we could. Our edits were therefore relatively light-handed.
It was a great pleasure working with my friend Jules Wolnak, who killed it in both her headshot session and the Golden Age of the Silver Screen portion that followed it. After seven years, we finally started working together, and not a moment too soon. In the coming weeks, we’ll show Jules’s killer Silver Screen session, but in the meantime, here’s a hint.
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