Golden Age of the Silver Screen: Jared and Heather

In this first week of February, Distant Era celebrates the birthdays of Jared and Heather Dennis with their Golden Age of the Silver Screen session.

A few weeks back, on The All Worlds Traveller, we showed off Jared Dennis’s portrait and headshot session to serve his new role as artistic director of Promethean Theatre Ensemble, as well as his career as an actor and a writer.

In the latter part of that session, we did a Golden Age of the Silver Screen look with Jared and his wife Heather (last featured here in Promethean’s production of Richard III).

At this point in our session, Jared had had lights flashing at him for quite some time while Heather assisted in his shoot and prepared for the Silver Screen portion. Fully energized, Heather stepped on set ready to go.

The Lovers: Jared and Heather

Each of the Golden Age of the Silver Screen sessions has its own Old Hollywood aesthetic. Sometimes these are carefully planned, but more often they’re spontaneous, inspired by a costume piece or a mood. This Silver Screen session was one of the latter kind. As we played with various compositions, a story about two characters began to suggest itself. When I shared these images with Heather and Jared in fall 2025, I liked the “Distant Era” text as a graphic element and decided to leave it on for the Traveller post, as it reminds me of a title for the film these characters inhabit.

All That Jazz

Heather brought a few different looks to the session, which took a Fosse turn at one point, upping the tempo and transforming the dreamy, romantic aesthetic into a high energy shoot sharp lines and bold angles.

Makeup for the session was by Jacque Biscoff, who kept Jared and Heather looking great throughout.

We ended our session with a few shots that looked like they might have come from an old fashioned dance number, and we went down swingin’.

Jared and Heather were the second couple to do a Silver Screen look after the Johnsons (one of our original sequences that established the series). Making their Silver Screen images was an honor and a pleasure. We wish them both the happiest of birthdays this week, and I hope they relish these Silver Screen memories for all the years to come.

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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.