In March, I had the great opportunity and pleasure to photograph Birch House Immersive, one of my favorite theatre companies, for their website redesign and branding. I deeply respect and enjoy the immersive theatre work Birch House creates, and I commend their support of fellow creatives in their artist residencies (during the course of which the initial seeds of Distant Era were planted). The portraits that resulted from our session were in a moody, vintage style that shows off these fantastic artists.
In our early talks, we discussed the Birch House brand and aesthetic. I wanted to know how Birch House saw themselves and how they wanted others to see them. After an internal discussion, Birch House decided to go for a classy vintage look that ended up somewhere between a nineteenth-century daguerreotype and a 1930s black-and-white portrait.
Lauren Fields was my primary test subject for edits as we refined the look. Lauren and I have worked together extensively in the past—including as “The Merrow” in Distant Era’s current The People of Light and Shadow series—so this was an easy place to start. We began with a very textured daguerreotype look with starker color variance and contrast. We tried warmer and cooler variations, fine tuning the look as we went, pruning back the textures until we landed on our final concept.
Birch House’s Janie Killips designed their beautiful and stylish website where these portraits appear, as well as a host of others from productions I’ve been honored to capture.
Without further ado, here’s the gallery of the Birch House company portraits!
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