Lighting Setup with the Glamor Cats

Sunday, setting up lights for Babes With Blades Theatre Company’s Richard III photos and a mini portrait session afterward, my assistants volunteered to help test the light levels so that I could adjust my settings in preparation for the shoot.

Assistant number one, Garrus the Cat—featured in a great many of our behind-the-scenes images—is a sucker for the spotlight. Attention, attention, attention is his drug of choice. Seeing an opportunity to have a session for himself, Garrus struck some poses and did his best to act casual and carefree.

A silver bengal, Garrus is the guest liaisons specialist at Distant Era. He greets guests and tries to help everyone feel at ease on set. He is the master of the photobomb.

Here is the silver prince in all of his glory, helping out with the light tests.

To everyone’s surprise, Garrus’s photo-averse older sister Willow, a brown bengal, Distant Era’s official subject sniff-down expert and baggage inspector, also took a turn on the modeling stool as well.

Thanks to our helpful studio assistants, lights were set up and tuned, and both photo sessions proceeded spectacularly. More on those coming up!

Addendum

Gary Henderson, aka “The Changeling,” aka portrait number one in The People of Light and Shadow, just provided this additional monologue for our subject portrait of Mr. Garrus:

The People of Light and Shadow: The Familiar

—by Gary Henderson

“I was a powerful spirit once,” the enthralled shapeshifter glowered. “Feared, worshipped, honored. Until that fateful day the sorcerous photographer came. I should have known better. I should have sensed there was more to this winsome family man toting a camera.

“There’s something about your shape, there’s something in your essence I’d love to capture,” he said, as he focused his dark instruments against me, “May I take it? …Your picture.”

A god’s vanity held me and I forgot myself. I conceded to this would-be supplicant and now within his dark box he holds my true power, my primal essence, my soul. He and his enchantress wife stymy me in this domestic shape. His friends ritually come to mock me with their show, pale visions of my true powers. And now he fixes me again upon this stool here to tease me as his assistant. So yes, go; congratulate this man you call “Steve” on all his incredible work. Just know that while you were here you may have brushed up against an actual star.

Farewell for now, Distant Travelers, the birds on the back porch require my… supervision.”

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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.