Gen Con Cosplay Portraiture with Laura Kiernan and Deana Vazquez

In addition to the workshops we ran and the Dimension 20 Cosplay Meetup event we shot on the last day of the convention, Distant Era photographed eight miniature portrait sessions at Gen Con 2025. My friend Laura Kiernan commissioned one of these sessions, along with Deana Vazquez—one of my most photographed subjects, who may be familiar to longtime followers of The All Worlds Traveller for her incredible birthday sessions.

This Gen Con, Laura and Deana attended as Agatha Harkness and Rio Vidal/Death, the characters played by Kathryn Hahn and Aubrey Plaza in Marvel’s Agatha All Along. For these characters, I used spooky, restrictive light with lots of shadow to make moody portraits.

This last portrait of the two characters grabbed me, and the light brought Caravaggio to mind. More on that in a moment.

Experiment and Play

As I began my edits, I explored Boris FX to see what kinds of special effects I could add to these witchy pictures. These were all wildly experimental, and I had fun trying different filters and color grades. As you can see, Laura and Deana had numerous ideas for how to express their characters. I particularly loved the way Laura’s outstretched arm and upward gaze made a perfect place to add a glowing pentacle.

The Final Piece

But I kept coming back to that Caravaggio light, and I figured that as long as I was experimenting, I might as well lean into the painterly aesthetic.

Using techniques and tools taught by photo artist Chris Koeppen, I transferred the pentacle idea from Laura’s previous edit into my favorite of Laura and Deana’s pictures in the Caravaggio light. Inspired by the idea of the pentacle as a binding symbol, I formed the pentacle around their embrace—magically inseparable. I took some extra time to do this in thanks for Laura’s and Deana’s personal friendship, as well as Deana’s support of Distant Era over many years and photographs.

Many, many thanks to Laura Kiernan and Deana Vazquez for commissioning a Distant Era portrait session at Gen Con 2025.

My extreme gratitude to Chris Koeppen for his mentorship, inspiration, and friendship.

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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.