In winter 2025, Distant Era created Golden Age of the Silver Screen, a “hard light” black-and-white photography series referencing the big studio era of Hollywood in the first half of the twentieth century.
Our earlier entries into the series featured Gary Henderson, Elizabeth Quilter, Charissa and Russell Johnson, and Jacque Biscoff, with looks that recalled Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Walt Disney, Vincent Price, Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, Fred Astaire, and film noir.
Wrapping up our winter sessions, we take the series back to where it began, with Distant Era MVP Elizabeth MacDougald.
Elizabeth MacDougald
Anyone who’s followed The All Worlds Traveller for a while is familiar with Elizabeth MacDougald. A veteran actor and stage combatant, Elizabeth has a resume of credits that spans stages throughout Chicago. Since 2010, she has been a member of Idle Muse Theatre Company (where she is currently playing Crabtree in their production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1777 comedy of manners, The School for Scandal).
Whether she’s front and center in a photograph or assisting on set, she’s involved in most of what Distant Era does, which is why we’ve dubbed her MVP (most valuable person). In the case of Golden Age of the Silver Screen, Elizabeth channeled Rita Hayworth in a test session where we set up our lights for the series in the third week of January. These are the results of that test session, as well as one look we shot before we took down our lights when photography for the rest of the subjects had concluded. What started as a light test ended up as Elizabeth’s official Golden Age of the Silver Screen session when she liked the results!
The Session
Our first foray into the series, we wanted to set up a few different hard light scenarios to see what would work.
We began with an experiment using barn doors to project a pattern on the background while lighting Elizabeth with a large hard light reflector. This was a look straight from photographer Lindsay Adler, but we lacked the exact tools and space to make it work as well as we hoped.
Another thing we’d hoped to acquire for the series was a chaise, and though we found a friend willing to lend one, we had no means to transport it. We substituted a high-backed stool and photographed Elizabeth under our hard light reflector that was an approximate match for the Mole Richardson focusing scoop used during the period we wished to emulate.
The Hard Light Reflector
In my attempt to match the shape of a classic focusing scoop, I found a close imitation in an off-brand reflector sold by ProGear Rental in Orlando; the owner referred me to a location he had in Chicago that I’d never heard of. I drove down and talked to the staff, who were extremely helpful, and I picked up the reflector from them, as well as some seamless paper I’ll show off in a future post. My experience with ProGear in Chicago (and Doug in Orlando) was so good, I’ll definitely continue to buy or rent from them in the future, and I’m grateful to Doug for pointing me toward his Chicago store.
The reflector is both like and unlike other lighting modifiers I own. It’s a little bit like a beauty dish, but more reflective, and it’s a little like one of my Zoom Reflectors, but it’s bigger. The edge of the light is distinct, and I had fun playing with this in the portraits I made throughout the series. I tried to build most of my looks around it—the ones that weren’t using a spotlight, that is. In these pictures with the stool, you can see how this large, high contrast light modifier starkly defines Elizabeth’s features, as well as how it clearly delineates the extent to which it reaches on the background.
In the Spotlight
After playing with the barn doors and the hard light reflector, we tried the hardest of our hard lights—the spotlight. This is where we hit our stride in the session, the place we found our most interesting looks. Over the course of Golden Age of the Silver Screen, we learned to use the spot in a variety of ways. I really like the way the spot was positioned in this sequence, placing areas of bright light next to contrasting areas of darkness.
Recliner Redux
We wrapped our winter effort to make Golden Age of the Silver Screen with Elizabeth Quilter’s session in early February. Before we put the lights away, Elizabeth MacDougald wanted to give the chaise idea a try. We didn’t have a chaise, but we had a couch with an interesting arm. We draped the couch with fabric and projected a scale pattern on the background that I thought might pass for Art Deco. It seemed a little busy, so I changed it out for a different design. I think we landed somewhere between Katherine Hepburn and Norma Desmond. Someday I hope we get to try this shot with a chaise.
Naturally, Garrus the Cat made an appearance and then made himself comfortable.
I owe enormous thanks, as always, to Elizabeth MacDougald, for being awesome, and for going with me on all these crazy experiments.
Time Travel with Us
This marks the end of our 2025 winter sojourn through time to the Golden Age of the Silver Screen, but it’s quite not the end of the series. For many years, I’ve discussed making an evergreen series—one that continued indefinitely—and this might be the first.
I’m currently offering Silver Screen looks during portrait sessions that clients book with Distant Era. If you’d like to time travel with us back into the age of Hollywood glamor, don’t hesitate to reach out to book your session. The best way contact us right now is through the social media icons in the toolbar at the top of this page, though we’ll soon have a dedicated space for bookings on the main Distant Era website.
