Steampunk Portraits: Arthur Ignatius Worthfellow XXIII

September 11, 2023
4 mins read

In May, Distant Era created character portraits for the Auxientia live action steampunk role-playing event in Dixon, Illinois. So far, our 2023 series has included Officer Prescott (Deana Vazquez), Robert Irons (John Kidd),  Maren Tinker (Meredith White), Vyara Kayda Sudhāra (Simona Katsman), and Zsa Zsa St. James (Lottie à la West). I thought we’d finished our Auxientia series for the year, but as Yoda famously said, “There is another.”

On the final day—incidentally the day we needed to board a plane to Ireland—my dear friend CT requested a portrait session at the event with his sister Grace. As chance would have it, they’re in Ireland this month. I’m not saying Distant Era sessions will take you to Ireland, but I’m not not saying it! 

At the end of a busy summer, CT selected his favorite portraits of his character and a few favorites with Grace. 

Arthur Ignatius Worthfellow XXIII

For CT’s character concept, he chose a gentleman adventurer who’d traveled the world and come to the (typically) isolationist city of Auxientia with stories to tell of the lands beyond the valley. Full of pomp and bluster, his presence fills the room. Except… he’s actually an exile. Having been branded and banished many years ago, he’s returned to the city under an assumed name. There, he reconnects with his sister (played by his real sister Grace) and reclaims his true name, Hunter Hayes. This context is important for the photographs below, which show CT’s character in each of his aspects: Arthur Ignatius Worthfellow XXIII, his brand, avoiding paparazzi, and his true persona.  

Photography and Editing

There’s not much to say that I haven’t said before about the photography for the other Auxientia portraits except that I got to do more of them, for CT ordered a beautiful boxed set of his portraits.

Editing is a different story. I employed a few tricks to clean up or add emphasis to these images.

The Face Swap

In one of the siblings’ favorite selections, CT had left his glasses on over his monocle. Fortunately, we’d photographed another shot slightly later at the same angle, so I was able to take his face from one portrait and place it in the other. I believe he’s ever so slightly closer to the camera in the second shot, but the difference is negligible. A face swap is an editing technique often used by wedding photographers to fix those big group shots that would be perfect if not for that one person making a strange face.

LEFT: Edited image. RIGHT: Original image.
CT’s face in the edited image came from a different photograph.

Editing the Spotlight

The lighting was very specific in these portraits, so you’re either in the shot or out of it. In one sequence, Worthfellow is warning off the paparazzi, but by leaning back, CT was no longer in the light—yet the expression was a winner. So in the editing process we added a spotlight to the picture as though he’d been pinned down by the press at some big event. Also added in a shadow here in the direction opposite the spotlight.

The spotlight in the final image helps to motivate, or show the story of, the pose.

Light Editing, aka “Light Editing”

The scene where Arthur/Harper contemplates the brand upon his arm suggested a gentle, thoughtful, or sorrowful scene. I drew in some light beams to show the idea of that brand being revealed to the light at last and then filled in with some very light atmospheric haze. 

The gentle beams of light mingle with the haze and illuminate the brand—far more distinct here than in the daguerreotype version.

Generative Fill

We photographed these images with limited time, as the event needed to wrap up and we had to be out of the venue. Therefore, I didn’t always have time to swap out lenses and lights as I might in a regular studio session. When Grace entered the picture, I had to make room for two subjects in the frame, but I continued to shoot with my favorite 85mm portrait lens. As a result, there’s very little extra space between both subjects and the edge of the frame. This doesn’t matter so much in digital photographs, but printed versions are slightly cropped, and after that the mat needs to cover part of the printed surface. Thus, shoot with too little space surrounding the subject and the mat will overlap with the subject’s body.

This is something I’ve struggled with editing previous portraits, and it’s driven me nuts. I’ve used a number of tricks to fix the problem, stretching sides of the frame or using Adobe’s Content Aware Fill, which populates an area of a photo with pixels Adobe estimates are similar to the pixels around that area. That last solution has helped, but Adobe’s newest one, Generative Fill, is faster, easier, and more accurate. To extend the background, all I had to do was use the crop tool to extend the borders, click generative fill, and hit enter. Voila! The background extended seamlessly, granting me a larger area from which to crop so that my subjects remain within the frame (and removing the softbox!).

In addition to all the detailed skin cleanup, dodging and burning, and color toning I do on each Auxientia portrait, as well as making both color and daguerreotype versions using overlays from Chris Spooner, these extra edits helped to punch up CT’s selections.

The Original LARP Patrons

It is always the greatest pleasure to photograph my friends CT and Grace. They were among the very first patrons of my work, back in 2017 when I photographed my first live action role-play experience, and I am grateful for their friendship and patronage. We shot a tribute to that first photograph at the Auxientia event, and I’ll leave you with that!

Subscribe to
The All Worlds Traveller

Distant Era's weekly blog delivers every Monday.

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.

Follow Me

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.

Popular

Previous Story

The Gen Con Workshop Gallery and Improvements, 2022–2023

Next Story

Idle Muse Theatre Company presents JANE

Latest from Blog

Greetings from the UK

We’re traveling abroad this week in the UK, experiencing immersive theatre, Shakespeare, and life in London and Wales. I’ve included some travel shots of our adventures for this special All Worlds Traveller…
Go toTop