Northlight Gala 2024: A Starlit Soirée

October 7, 2024
1 min read

A little over a week ago, we photographed Northlight Theatre’s gala, titled “A Starlit Soirée,” at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, IL. Initially a referral from my fellow photographer, colleague, and bestie Greg Inda, this was my second time photographing the Northlight gala, an event that has become one of the cherished career highlights of my past two years.

I’ve had the good fortune to work many warm, kind people in this career, but Northlight is special.

I have the best time working with everyone at Northlight. I’m always taken aback by how kind and accommodating everyone is, and how easy our communication. The gala attendees are wonderful as well. Everyone’s having a good time, and it’s a joy to interact with them. This second time shooting the event, I’ve begun to recognize people from the previous year, which makes the job more rewarding, seeing the familiar faces, familiar smiles. I enjoyed the many interactions we had as I moved through the event during the course of the evening, and I even made a few friends this year.

I don’t have too many big stories to tell. I’m still getting used to the advanced focusing capabilities of my new camera and lens, even as I sort out differences between digital SLR and mirrorless. The main effect his had on the gala this year was far more usable candids, since anything I pointed my lens at came immediately into focus.

A Small Sample

Here is a very small sample from the hundreds of images I turned over from this year’s gala, hosted once again by Karen Jordan and Christian Farr. Alexis J Roston was the featured performer at the gala, and Stacey Simpson chaired the Starlit Soirée.

I’m grateful to the Northlight staff for inviting me once again to their lovely event. Extra thanks to those who I interacted with directly: artistic direct BJ Jones, executive director Tim Evans, director of advancement Laura Perlow, former special events manager and advancement administrator Athena Kopulos, marketing and communications director Mara Mihlfried, and marketing coordinator Annabelle Cuitino.

Northlight Theatre staff at the 2024 gala.

Meaningful Work

I’ll close this the way I closed The All Worlds Traveller entry last year, as it’s no less true today than it was then: Having begun my career as an actor in Chicago, theatre still remains closest to my heart. It’s one of the pillars of the work that Distant Era creates. Thanks once more to Northlight and to Greg for the opportunity. It was a wonderful evening, and I was honored to take part in it. I hope the evening was a great success for Northlight and wish them a very successful season!

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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.

  1. Practicing Patience with Personal Projects
  2. A Bright Room Called Day, with Blank Theatre Company
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  4. Alone at Last, with Laughing Stock

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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