Mini Session with Deana Vazquez

My friend Deana (previously featured in the Portraits from a Distant Era series) hired Distant Era to photograph her thirtieth birthday event, a costumed fantasy role-play in the woods. Nearly every session I’ve done in the past few months—from theatre to portraiture—has been rescheduled for COVID, and this one was too. However, Deana herself hadn’t been exposed, and since I was doing a theatre shoot last weekend, I offered to keep my lights up and do a private mini session just for her, not in place of her event but in addition to it, as consolation for the reschedule.

These images were a part of that mini session, which we shot in less than an hour. They portray her character Samauria, which Deana had intended to play that day. Here are a few words from Deana about her character.

I’m especially grateful for the chance to do these portraits. I’ve worked with Steven before on portraits capturing my first and most beloved LARP character, and I think this portrait filled the missing piece to her story.
I had a girl who was caught between two paths she had to choose from, and ultimately created a path herself that blended her options. She was born Princess Samara, she grew up as Auria, and by the end of her story she decided she would move forward as Samauria. Yet neither of us knew what that meant, who that was, and unfortunately that wasn’t something we could decide on at the time. I feel like these portraits ended up capturing that. The wise, mournful but hopeful soul, the eyes that gripped to the light in spite of the pain behind it, the confidence in the way she moves her magic hands, the mannerisms reminiscent of her mother yet feel like her own.
This is Samauria, and I’m so happy I finally got to see her.
Deana Vazquez

Samauria composite from *Portraits from a Distant Era*, 2019.

For this mini session we shot with a beauty dish camera right and a V-flat on the opposite side of the subject and a large soft white umbrella behind the camera for fill. The brown fine art background seemed an appropriate choice for this one, complementing the green of Deana’s dress. The green and brown tones give the portrait an earthy look that tie the composition together.

I deviated from the settings used for The People of Light and Shadow with Deana’s portraits, turning up the ISO to let in more ambient light and give my studio lights a break. I opened up the aperture slightly as well. The camera settings for the featured portrait above were f/8, ISO 400, 1/125, at 85 mm. The portraits in the gallery below are at f/5.6.

I was able to let more light in partly because (at long last) I’ve installed room darkening shades over the skylights.

A Thing About Skylights

You can skip this part. But I can’t. See you back at “A Gallery,” below.

Skylights can pleasantly brighten a room throughout the year, but the energy loss in summer and winter is pretty rough. Additionally, while shooting in the studio in 2019 I discovered that light from the skylights was brightening portions of my subjects unevenly. At the time I thought that if I adjusted my shutter speed and aperture to allow for no ambient light whatsoever (i.e., if I turn off my flash and take a picture, the image is completely black), then I wouldn’t have to worry about light from the skylights. This proved untrue, as portions of a subject brightened by the skylights were brighter when I added flash. To complicate matters further, as the sun traveled across the sky in the morning, light streaked across the background, brightening it too in various places. I first tried blocking the light with V-flats (to limited success, as the skylights are high), then with black Cinefoil, which I taped to the ceiling, and which hung down for months. Finally, I learned of and installed these room darkening shades on top of the skylights and no longer have to worry about bright light patterns appearing unexpectedly in the portraits.

A Gallery

Deana is a great model who channels her character in her posing. She flowed from pose to pose fluidly, and as a result we came out with a wealth of images for our small session. This is a small selection of the portraits I gave Deana as an addition to her (still upcoming) birthday session.