One year later, Distant Era returns to the Gala of Everlasting Change, a live action role-playing game set among the fey, to create portraits of its enchanting creatures…
Continuing Distant Era's brand new series, THE PEOPLE OF LIGHT AND SHADOW, an exploration of fey creatures and the denizens of fairytales, with THE VILA…
Actor Sara Robinson brought cool, neutral tones to the Portraits from a Distant Era series with this mysterious powerful character of her own devising…
The goblin was among the most sinister characters that appeared in Portraits from a Distant Era. A subject in two Distant Era series thus far, the goblin returns again and again, offering…
The storyteller offers entertainment to those that would lend an ear to her tales, but her stories grant wisdom to the ones that would take the journey themselves…
Featuring the phenomenal Deana Vazquez, this image from our second series, Portraits from a Distant Era, portrays the subject in a character she role-played and, over the course of many adventures, "leveled…
Smaug is the final image to be presented from Erin Gallagher’s October 2020 photo session, which also included her costumes for Morla the Ancient One, Thor, and Loki…
In which we present designer Erin Gallagher in her costume interpretation of Morla the Ancient One, the giant turtle oracle from The Neverending Story, with makeup by Michelle Rose Nobs.…
This week, we speak with three creators and image makers of costumed fantasy photography sessions—Tabitha Burch, Mary-Kate Arnold, and Allen Castillo—to hear their stories, inspirations, practical tips, and advice for creating fantasy…
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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