Last time, we took a look at Lottie á la West’s steampunk portraits from the Auxientia LARP. This week, we’re going back in time with Lottie to 2022’s Gala of Everlasting Change event and her live action role-play character, Gwanwyn, previously featured in The All Worlds Traveller in this post.
The Session
Our Gwanywyn session was a little different from the other Gala of Everlasting Change sessions, which were photographed onsite in five-to-ten-minute slots. Lottie wasn’t able to make those, but since we live in the same neighborhood, she arranged a private session after the event. In that session, outside the time constraints of the event, we had so much more time to play around and experiment to get some cool results.
I’ll start by briefly looking back at last year’s portrait, and then we’ll move forward to the two I recently edited (from the same session).
Portrait 1: The Definitive Gwanwyn (2022)
For Gwanwyn’s initial portrait, I wrote this in the October 10, 2022, edition of The All Worlds Traveller:
Gwanwyn (center in the gallery) was photographed with a different, harder light—the familiar, and very specific beauty dish I often find myself drawn to—which focused the light on her face and pushed the rest of the portrait into shadow. In those shadows, we layered in some subtle, painted flowers, like spring coming out of the darkness of winter. Coco crafted an intricate look for Gwanwyn, with color themes of pink, blue, and green—even her eyes are mismatched blue and green if you look close enough. These themes were emphasized in the color toning of the image so that the portrait balances on that (roughly analogous) color harmony.
For each of last year’s Gala of Everlasting Change portraits, I layered in some effects to emphasize the fey characters. For Gwanwyn, this meant blending some old painted flowers in with some new starry lights, and layering textures over top.
Portrait 2: The Lantern
Lottie brought a prop lantern to the session, which she considered using in some of her portraits, and which had me reflecting back on past attempts with a lantern prop.
Illuminating the Past: The Contract and the Lantern
I’ve been a bit lantern shy since The Contract miniseries in early 2020. Regardless how we happy we may be with our work, there are always those little details that bug us long after the fact. I suppose this is why we have the Star Wars Special Edition or multiple cuts of Blade Runner—creators longing to fix their work. Indeed, once I understood printing better, I tweaked all the images in my Portraits from a Distant Era series to get better results when printing them.
In The Contract miniseries, the subjects brought a prop lantern that had some light-up wire inside. It looked like a great prop for the scene, though the prop didn’t cast enough light to act as a source. Yet we used it for the session as part of the environment. It was only in the editing of the image that I noticed the location of my light and the lantern were on opposite sides of the frame. I didn’t like the idea that the lantern would be in the shot unlit, so I added the best light I understood how to make at the time. In the fiction of the piece, that light is definitely magical, but it isn’t (can’t be) the source of light in the scene. In any event, this is how we learn.
A Different Light
When Lottie showed me the lantern for her session, I thought about what we might do to use it as a convincing light source. This meant I had to consider how to light her during the session and/or how to adjust that lighting in post production.
I took a look at Lottie’s lantern and saw that I could just fit a small flash unit into the lantern. If I recall correctly, this wasn’t one of my standard-size Speedlite flashes but rather the very first flash unit I’d ever purchased, back in 2016: the smaller Canon Speedlite 430EX II.
A translucent green material formed the core of the lantern that looked as though it might act like a gel. I triggered the flash remotely so that the lantern itself became the light source for the portrait, casting an eerie green light over the scene. Lottie left the selection of the final lantern image at my discretion. I chose this one because I liked the way that, at f/5.6, my 85mm lens created a pleasing star pattern. I like the way the magical green light illuminates Lottie’s features, emphasizing face, faerie wing, headdress, elfin ear… while the rest of the image may still be seen in the shadows. As a fey of the spring court, it seemed appropriate that Gwanwyn should be led by green light.
Portrait 3: Editorial
For the third portrait, Lottie chose what she called her editorial faerie look, (or words to that effect). For this look, we photographed the whole costume and all Gwanwyn’s accoutrements on a gray seamless background, lit from above with a single large diffused umbrella.
I liked the idea of this simple magazine cover type look, and in post production I mostly boosted color and buffed out some obtrusive shadows while leaving shadows that made sense. When Lottie posted the image later, she mentioned it was her Amy Brown look. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I’ve since looked up Amy Brown’s work in illustrating faeries, which was a delightful surprise. Thank you, Lottie, for introducing me to her art!
Once again it was a pleasure making pictures with my friend Lottie á la West. And it’s soon to be a pleasure again. As I write this entry, I’m preparing to photograph an outdoor costumed fantasy birthday party (for the amazing Deana Vazquez!) at the beach, in which Lottie will be in attendance… so we’ll have more Lottie images coming the way of The All Worlds Traveller in another week or so.
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