Magician-Musician John Sturk

February 20, 2023
3 mins read

In January, we photographed magician-musician John Sturk, president-elect of the Society for American Magicians, for the cover of their M-U-M Magazine. For this session, we were thrilled to return to one of the most beautiful theaters in Rogers Park for a lively and fun afternoon with the talented Mr. Sturk.

The Rhapsody Theater

We photographed the first part of our session at The Rhapsody Theater in Rogers Park. This was my first time back into this beautiful space in many years. Under managing partner and artistic director Ricardo Rosenkrantz, the new Rhapsody Theater that inhabits the former Mayne Stage, former Act One space has emerged as an exciting venue for magic, music, and live events in the neighborhood.

The Hammond Organ

Magician-musician John Sturk is not only the president-elect of the Society for American Magicians but a skilled Hammond organist. I hadn’t seen a Hammond organ since childhood. My grandfather used to own a small one, and as kids we delighted in playing with the double rows of keys and the various switches on the organ. Seeing John with the organ brought back old memories. I can’t accurately explain what a Hammond organ is. Suffice it to say that it’s an old, rare, and specialized instrument with double rows of keys that John Sturk plays artfully!

Photographing the Rhapsody

Our objective in the Rhapsody Theater session was to capture an image of John for the cover of the Society of American Magicians’ magazine, M-U-M, announcing the official beginning of his presidency this year. For this photograph, John would appear in his element, onstage at the Rhapsody Theater. He’d be in professional dress with the house behind him, as if he were preparing for a show, with the house just about to open. The Hammond organ was to be in the shot, as well as various accoutrements—wand, hat, props, and so on.

To get the right exposure for the theater, we photographed the house without flash, dancing the dance of aperture, ISO, and f-stop and making the usual decisions about the settings to use with the available light. Once we had properly exposed for the background, we added a single large umbrella to illuminate John and the Hammond organ. I always bring a bit too much for any given session. In this case, the large umbrella was ideal. We tried a small, hard modifier for a short sequence, but that wasn’t right for this look.

Lighting Effects

In the midst of our session, the Rhapsody’s managing partner and artistic director Ricardo Rosencrantz entered. He gave us a number of other ambient lighting options for the session. His team even offered to illuminate the votives on each of the tables in the audience. They also offered to light up the back of the theater with any color we liked. We were only too grateful to accept their kind assistance!

Behind-the-scenes photo courtesy of Elizabeth MacDougald.

The votives added a kind of magic to the photograph. Rather than a dim house in the background, dozens of little bright lights appeared. These added some extra class to the image, and in my opinion changed the character of the pre-show audience. When Ricardo’s team brought up the purple lights in the background, those lights, which spanned two pillars, added some lovely atmosphere to the scene as well. 

We photographed several different looks and arrangements in the Rhapsody space in order to give John as many options as he needed. We photographed the images directly into the computer so that John could see them on the monitor and we could leave the theater knowing that we’d achieved the look we were going for. Then we headed to the studio.

John Sturk and his Hammond organ at the Rhapsody Theater.
A casual photograph from our session featuring the Rhapsody’s adjustable background lights.

The Studio Session

After the Rhapsody session, we created some individual portraits for John that he could use for his business and brand. In studio, we photographed John against a gray background with the keyboard he plays in shows. We photographed several variations of these, until we decided we were happy. Then, as an afterthought, we changed the light and took some dramatic photographs on a brown painterly background. I love how different the brown background photos turned out. Both backgrounds and lighting setups show different aspects of John.

In conclusion, we had a wonderful time photographing John and getting to know him. I’m enormously grateful to John for bringing Distant Era on to for this project. And I’m honored. At one point in our session, president-elect John Sturk told us that the longest-serving president of the Society for American Magicians was none other than Harry Houdini, who held office from 1918 until his death in 1926. John is now part of a storied tradition with a direct connection to an American legend. It was wonderful to glimpse that world for an afternoon.

Finally, I’m grateful to magician Edd Fairman and Erin Gallagher for referring John to me. As ever, endless thanks to Distant Era Elizabeth MacDougald for her invaluable assistance.

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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.

The All Worlds Traveller

Welcome to The All Worlds Traveller, an eclectic collection of thoughts, pictures, and stories from a Distant Era. Illustrated with Distant Era art and photographs, these pages explore the stories and worlds of people beyond the here and now, and the people and creative processes behind such stories. This is a blog about photography and narrative; history and myth; fantasy, science-fiction, and the weird; creation and experience. This is a blog about stories.

Steven Townshend

I’m Steven Townshend—your guide, scribe, editor, and humble narrator. The All Worlds Traveller is my personal publication, an exploratory conversation about stories and how we interact with them, from photographs to narratives to games—a kind of variety show in print. It is a conversation with other artists who explore the past, the future, and the fantastical in their work. Not one world—but all worlds. Where Distant Era shows stories in images, The All Worlds Traveller is all about the words.

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About a Distant Era

Distant Era creates fine art and portrait photographs of people and places from imagined pasts, possible futures, and magical realities. In collaboration with other artists, we evoke these distant eras with theatrical costume and makeup, evocative scenery, and deliberate lighting, and we enhance them with contemporary tools to cast these captured moments in the light of long ago or far away. We long to walk the lion-decorated streets of Babylon, to visit alien worlds aboard an interstellar vessel, and to observe the native dances of elves. Our images are windows to speculative realities and postcards from the past. They are consolation for fellow time travelers who long to look beyond the familiar scenery of the present and gaze upon the people and places of a distant era.

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