“Rendezvous by Moonlight” is an exciting post for me, as it’s a combination of working with good friends and a mentorship with one of my very favorite photographers, the unparalleled Chris Koeppen, aka An Ethereal Fire.
In November 2022, my friend Shelly reached out to ask about a surprise Distant Era birthday shoot for her husband Kein. Several years ago, I had the honor of photographing Kein and Shelly’s engagement pictures. Shelly and Kein are such warm and wonderful people. I wanted the images from this birthday session to be something special.
Because it was a surprise session for Kein’s birthday, Shelly did all the background work, subtly asking Kein about his favorite character from fantasy and then secretly doing research and gathering costume supplies so that when they showed up, they could get right down to the session.
Kein told Shelly that his favorite character was the bard Kvothe from Patrick Rothfus’s Kingkiller Chronicle series. Distant Era MVP Elizabeth and I know the character well; we read the books years ago and first met Pat at a conference in Madison in 2008. Kein hadn’t know he and Shelly were going to a photography session for his birthday, but he’s a pro. In a few moments, he was in wig and costume and ready to go.
Photography
In our discussions about the session, I asked Shelly whether she thought Kein would want a fine art style portrait or a scene where we put Kein into a detailed environment. I needed to know this so that I could prepare the right lights and background when they arrived. Shelly thought a detailed environment would be cool, so I set up a neutral gray background and a fairly broad light from an umbrella with diffusion camera left, with a V-flat for fill on the right. Very simple. We rolled through various poses: Kein holding a sword, Kein wielding a sword; Kein playing a guitar… We discussed ideas for where we might place the character and what he might be doing. This was easy since we knew the books. Eventually, Shelly put on a costume to play the fey character Felurian and joined in the session.
At the end of the session, we photographed portraits of Kein on a textured background. Although I’d spent the last year taking compositing classes and implementing these skills into The People of Light and Shadow in usually subtle ways, the new skills I’d learned in 2022 were relatively untested, and I wanted to be sure I had results from the session I was confident I could make into something Kein would love. For those portraits I used soft light and even a little bit of orange to layer in a fire glow effect.
In the selection process, Kein and Shelly chose a picture of Kein standing with his guitar, a contemplative expression on his face. They also expressed interest in a picture of both of them once I’d finished the initial selection.
Goals
So Kein and Shelly had chosen images on a gray background to be composited into a larger scene, a challenge I only began to vaguely grasp at the tail end of 2019. Over the last few years, I’ve learned about compositing from classes I’ve bought, taught by Brooke Shaden, Pratik Naik and Bella Kotak, Gemmy Woud-Binnendijk, Clinton Lofthouse, and Renee Robyn. Each of these classes came closer and closer to that dream.
And then, at Christmas 2021, when we were all still in the clutches of the pandemic, I happened upon the work of Chris Koeppen, aka An Ethereal Fire, which was the closest I’d ever seen to the direction I had always wanted to go. Words don’t do it justice—you have to see it to believe it. I started following Chris’s work and listening to his advice, and when he mentioned the possibility of taking a mentorship in 2022, I was keenly interested. I was in the midst of The People of Light and Shadow at the time, and client work, and creating Gen Con workshops, but I resolved to follow up when I had finished my chores and taken a breath. Just as I had finished all my projects and was about to take a breath, Kein’s surprise birthday photo session happened.
It presented an opportunity to try my hand at compositing in this style and put into practice what I’d learned over the past couple years. I thought if I could familiarize myself with some of the challenges, I would know what to pay attention to and what kinds of questions to ask when I did a mentorship with Chris. And thus began work on Kein’s river scene.
The River
I showed Kein several different paintings—some inside taverns, others outdoors. I created some quick mockups for these to give him a general sense of what we’d start with. On the right, you can see a tavern version I proposed. The idea with these mockups is that this would serve as a base upon which I’d build a bigger scene.
Ultimately, Kein selected a painting by a beautiful river. He thought a contemplative scene would be appropriate, with the character looking up, perhaps at butterflies, and textured with some beautiful craquelure from Laura Sheridan. We discussed adding in more fantastical elements and effects, but Kein was happy with the simple, peaceful aesthetic of the scene, so we let it be.
Rendezvous by Moonlight
Time passed. Kein and Shelly mentioned that they might like one of the images with them together.
I took the mentorship with Chris in February, and it was everything I could have hoped and more. Even with all the preparation I had done, it blew my mind. I learned more in my mentorship with Chris than I’ve learned in years, and I’ll be learning from it as I continue to attempt these composites. Chris was an exceptional teacher with a breadth and depth of knowledge only exceeded by his generosity and authenticity as a human being, and it was incredible to learn from him.
So. With a little time before what looks to be a busy summer, I reached out to Kein and Shelly to see whether they wanted to proceed with that image. They did. Two weeks, countless hours, and 13 gigabytes later, we had the most detailed image I’d ever done, composited from old paintings, ai butterflies, photographs, and texture, depicting a certain red-haired bard and his fey love meeting by her pavilion beneath the stars.
I am beyond grateful to Kein and Shelly for hiring me to do this work and to Chris Koeppen for showing me a whole new world of possibility.
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