Chicago. November 2019. The old flooded subway tunnels, the abandoned skyscrapers, the canals flowing over the pathways of the drowned streets with their prosaic names—Wells, Clark, Grand, Chicago—a runner never knows where a runaway skin job might hole up in the guts of this cold city, beyond the blur of acid rain and neon haze.
Formidable fighter Kai Young featured in this portrait from Distant Era’s Blade-Runner-inspired cyberpunk Chicago: November 2019 series, photographed in that same month and year.
Our first (and latest) science-fiction series, Chicago: November 2019 was an experiment in using small portable flash units with colored gels. The series comprised three single portraits, two composited scenes, and two photographed (non-composited) scenes. In winter 2023, we’ll revisit this series on The All Worlds Traveller while we build new work.
Photography and Effects
For this portrait, we placed the flash behind a glass door with an interesting line pattern. We placed a blue gel over the flash. When we were happy with that effect, we lit Kai from the front with a very small, specific light. (As I recall, we used a flash equipped with a grid to focus the light.)
For the effects, I used some digital overlays and lens flares and boosted the color vibrance in the image. I boosted the highlights a bit for this 2023 reposting.
At the time, we borrowed our color inspirations from films like Blade Runner and its sequel. We wanted bright, vibrant colors, especially blues, pinks, cyan, and magenta.
The subject, actor Kai Young, is an incredible fighter whose name we’ve been pleased to see lately attached to excellent shows like Paper Girls and The Bear. He’s also a motion capture actor for video games like Mortal Kombat. More than that, he’s an excellent subject, a good friend, and one of my very favorite people to photograph. It was an honor to shoot this series with him!
Follow Me