In the first week of August, immediately on the heels of Gen Con 2026, Distant Era photographed actor Matt Keeley for fitness and personal brand shoot in celebration of Matt’s fitness journey and thirty-fifth birthday. With the assistance of makeup artist and actor Khaki Pixley, we did a big, five-hour session of looks upon looks upon looks, which I’m happy to finally share in October.
How It Happened
Matt and I met a few years ago at an outdoor party hosted by our friends Gaby and James Martineau, often featured here in The All Worlds Traveller, and have typically hung out in those gatherings. Last June, Distant Era photographed Midsommer Flight’s As You Like It, in which Matt served as an understudy. We caught up a bit before the show, and Matt pitched the idea of this fitness shoot he wanted to do for his birthday at the end of August. The following week, we talked in detail about the project, and Matt began plans and preparation.
Matt had recently had his headshots made by Tyler Core, and Khaki Pixley had been his makeup artist. I reached out to Tyler, and Khaki replied with interest. Suddenly, we had a team!
If there is any secret to how any of this works or happens, the secret is “magic,” as the reason I was at the Midsommer Flight shoot in the first place was because the show was rained out the previous day, and I was available as a backup.
Photographing Athletes
I had photographed athletes before, specifically soccer star Yuki Nagasato, fighter Kai Young, and also Jacob Bates. Those had been headshot sessions for athletes that emphasized their musculature and also marketed them for commercial work.
This shoot, on the other hand, was to focus on the body work itself while also giving Matt some images he could use commercially and some for his enjoyment.
Matt had worked with personal trainer Atlie Gilbert to sculpt his form into the best shape he’d been in his life. This shoot was to be a testament to the hard work Matt had put in—something he could always look back on and be proud of.
Matt also hoped to get a “flowery edit,” as he put it, in the Distant Era style. I said we could do that.
Planning the Session
As usual, we discussed the kinds of options Matt was interested in doing for his shoot. While I’m comfortable improvising, the best results are typically the ones I prepare for. This way, I can think about how the light will hit the subject, what modifiers I will use, whether the light will be hard or soft, depending on the vibe we’re going for, how I’m flagging or feathering the light, what colors of light I might use, what background or location… If I have enough of a plan, I can sequence a session so that we flow from look to look without too much time moving lights in between, which allows us to do a greater variety of looks in the session.
Matt put together a galley of images on Instagram, which he shared with me and Khaki. Together, we planned for the various looks Matt would do and discussed how we might achieve them.
On the day of our shoot, we sequenced the looks Matt had selected so that we could do some fitness looks in the early part of our session, move to an outdoor series by the beach around golden hour, and finish with a fantasy look. So, without further ado, let’s look at those looks!
The Athlete
We wanted to emphasize Matt’s musculature from the top of the shoot. To do this, we set up long, narrow, gridded soft boxes on either side of Matt. If I recall correctly, I left the diffusion material off so that I would have the directional quality of the modifier throwing light through a focused grid onto matt’s muscles, but the silver interior of the modifier would enhance the contrasting highlights, shadows, and texture of Matt’s physique, whereas the diffusion I typically use would have softened and smoothed the light, placing less emphasis on Matt’s form. We also had a hair light. This lighting setup sculpted Matt in the light and cut him out of the scene. We photographed this look on a gray background, but since all our lights were focused on Matt, the gray faded to darkness.
It was a carefully planned lighting setup designed to do what it did. During the shoot, I’m usually so focused on lighting people or engaging with them that I forget to take BTS shots of my setup.
The Street Fighter
Matt’s second fitness look is about the training he did with Atlie Gilbert to get here. The training gloves were an important part of this look. For this one, I moved the strip boxes to either side of Matt and a hair light so that we would have decent rim lighting. More shadow. It was a similar setup our first look, with different light positioning. Even more focused and restrained light.
The Underwear Model-Vampire-Pirate
Our third look was the shirtless one. There is softer light here overall. I believe I brought in the large gridded softbox but maintained the use of rim and hair lights. Raking soft light across the body brought out the muscles and the shadows in a pleasing way.
These looks fully showed the work Matt had done with his trainer Atlie Gilbert. Eventually, we started moving toward our next look (the rocker), and we had had this hybrid series of images where Matt wore his rocker pants and then put on a sword (provided by Distant Era MVP Elizabeth). We started calling this the vampire look, or alternately, the pirate look. We played with shadow quite a bit in these, and we were all very pleased with the areas of light and darkness in the results.
The Rocker
Matt is a musician, so he brought his guitar along to do a series of shots featuring his musical persona. When he put on his vest and sunglasses, I decided to lean into the rockstar idea. I brought in some haze and focused a light behind him to cut through the haze like a stage light. These were all relatively hard lights reminiscent of stage lighting. I wanted it to look like Matt was in a much larger space. These were super fun. We had Matt do some jump shots near the end of the sequence.
The Beach Boy
Matt’s Instagram inspirations encompassed a pretty broad array of different looks. Some of these were outdoor shots, in the city or on the beach. I wanted to do my best to accommodate all of Matt’s requests, so we planned our shoot around when golden hour would occur on the day of our session. At that point, we’d go on location to the beach and shoot those looks in the light of day. Golden hour would give us a nice warm, directional light before the sun began to set.
On the day of our shoot, conditions were a little overcast, which put us in the shade. We had beautiful, diffuse light, if a bit cooler than expected. Once again, we focused on showing off Matt’s body work, and we strolled the beach, taking opportunities to shoot in various places—on the rocks, on the pier, by the prairie grass, in the water. Near the end of our beach time, I brought out my flash and took a few fun, dramatic outdoor shots with motivated light.
The Viking
Finally, we went back in studio to try one last fun look.
Matt wanted to do something that had the Distant Era aesthetic, and he’d bought some costume pieces to do a Viking look. Khaki created a cool makeup look for him and also applied oil that gave Matt’s skin a lustrous quality that looked amazing in the distinct, focused light we set up. Once again, I shot against a dark background because I planned on creating a composite for Matt from one of these.
We had a great time making the Viking looks. They were a fun way to end our session. Then we looked back at all other looks we’d done throughout our time, and as usual the earliest ones seemed like ancient history by the time we were making Vikings.
Editing
Once I had cleared my plate of Gen Con work, I focused on getting Matt’s images done before his birthday, culling and editing one look at a time, turning them over to Matt in the week before his special day.
After I turned over Matt’s images, I had one final surprise for him, which I turned over on his birthday. That was an image from the Viking part of his session that I called “The Dream of Ragnarok.” That image deserves its own feature on The All Worlds Traveller. Click the thumbnail image to navigate to that feature and the short story of its making.
The End
If that seems like a long day, it was! We did so much. Matt was a model model, and I was overjoyed to participate in this celebration of him. Khaki Pixley was a dream to work with, and I am grateful to her for her skill and patience. All in all, it was a dream team, creating a fun project on a fun day at the end of summer 2026. Thanks a million to Matt and Khaki for making it happen!
For additional images from our session, check out Matt Keeley’s website.
