Steampunk Portraits: Vyara Kayda Sudhara

June 26, 2023
2 mins read

We have nearly come to the end of our Auxientia steampunk fantasy daguerreotype series. In past weeks on The All Worlds Traveller, we’ve looked at daguerreotype-style portraits from the Auxientia steampunk fantasy role-playing game. (For those just joining, Auxientia is a live action role-playing game co-created by Nathan Pease, Hilary Dirks Norton, and Steve Townshend in 2019, with events in 2022 and 2023.) So far, our series has included Officer Prescott (Deana Vazquez), Robert Irons (John Kidd), and Maren Tinker (Meredith White). This week, we look at portraits of Simona Katsman as her character Vyara Kayda Sudhāra and the way the light tells a story. 

Vyara comes from the Bāhira faction of Auxientia. Once a mighty empire that ruled the skies from the backs of wyverns and built cities atop rock columns that towered into the sky, after the decline of their empire, the Bāhira people returned to a more pastoral lifestyle among the hills and rivers of the Mutu Valley. Bāhira still revere the wyverns that they once mastered, though they have mostly lost the connection with the beasts they once had. Protectors of the valley’s natural “lumenstone” resources, the Bāhira often act as the conscience of Auxientia’s people.

Storytellers and wanderers, Bāhira know all the roads and hidden places in the valley, and they can predict the wind and weather. The valley’s longest current residents (beside the wyverns), they have access to some of the ancient knowledge of their people such as may yet exist in the crumbling ruins of the old Bāhira rock column cities in the sky. Therefore, when a Bāhira speaks, Auxientia listens. 

Photography: Light and Shadow

Vyara 2022.

This year, Simona returned to Auxientia for a killer portrait session in which we had some great moody lighting that alternated between areas of highlight and shadow. Simona planned to present her character differently this year, removing the turban that was her character’s hallmark in the first story. Therefore, Simona presented two sides of Vyara in the portraits—one with the turban of her past life and one with the book and her long hair flowing behind her.

All of Simona’s portraits this year looked like classical paintings with chiaroscuro lighting. I wasn’t changing the light drastically from subject to subject, so some of this had to do with the position of the light and Simona’s pose relative to that light. For example, in the following image you can see that she’s turned slightly away from the light, which is illuminating one side of her and then gently raking over Simona’s opposite side, creating the Rembrandt triangle of light beneath her eye. In the other image, Simona faces the light directly, holding the book and looking directly up into a light that fully illuminates her face. 

…She’s really struggling with her identity and the two pictures represent that. There’s the hopeful and naive side fighting with her cynical and angry side.

Simona on Vyara

The light tells a story: in the first portrait, Vyara wears a turban and clutches a knife what she turns from the light, her body cloaked in shadow. In the second, her hair flows free as she opens a book and opens her face to the light. Thus, the images that Simona chose illustrate the journey of her character from the first story to the second. 

The first picture from last year [Vyara 2022] is her being extremely certain of who she is and what she’s about, but the last two are proof that she doesn’t know anything but what she feels and what she’s pulled towards. So the lighting reflects that. 

Simona on Vyara

The bottle she’s holding is her holding on to her faith that she’s on the right path, but she’s stubbornly clutching it because of her helplessness in the face of growing unrest and evil. Her life has been upended and she’s trying her best to keep faith with who she loves and what she loves. Her growing love and respect for the wyverns is keeping her stable. 

The two recent pictures reflect that struggle and hope.

Simona on Vyara

It was a great pleasure making portraits with Simona again. I have enjoyed watching her character change and grow from episode to episode, and I am grateful to Simona for the opportunity to help chronicle Vyara’s journey. (Daguerreotype textures come from Chris Spooner.)

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

Steampunk Portraits: Maren Tinker

Next Story

Steampunk Portraits: Zsa Zsa St. James

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