Liz Falstreau is a vocalist, actress, producer, playwright, and songwriter, as well as a certified contact tracer. With a new album of her original songs nearing release, Liz wanted to hire Distant Era for a photography session to give her brand a new spin. She also wanted to get some new headshots and business shots that she could use for her many talents. So we masked up and got together with makeup artist Michelle Rose Nobs to make it happen.
The looks evolved throughout the day, beginning with nineties flannel grunge and proceeding into fitness fashion involving a yoga mat before turning to elegant dresses for headshots, musical performance, and fun. In this piece, we’ll take a look at the different looks for the session while interviewing Liz about her work.
Distant Era: You seem to take on many roles—vocalist, actor, producer, playwright, songwriter… Which of these is your favorite, and which are you focusing on right now?
Liz Falstreau: I love to sing and I have been singing since I was eight years old. Music seems to be a part of every aspect of my life and remains my true love as the years pass. So I always feel I am a singer-songwriter first. During this year of isolation from performing and hustling, I’ve focused on connecting with the parts of my art that are closest to the heart. So, songwriting, singing, and music in general is where I have spent my time.
Nineties Grunge
Nineties grunge suggested the kinds of stark shadows that can achieved with a single light and a couple reflectors to temper those shadows a touch. With the subject a few feet away, the background faded from bright white to a soft gray.
Distant Era: When you booked your session, I believe you said you were reinventing yourself, or rebranding? Is that right? What is this new direction?
Liz Falstreau: I have spent the majority of my twenties figuring out who I am. The reality is I am ever changing. Very muscular inspired by Bowie here. One day I feel masculine and raw, the next polished and pretty, and some days I wanna be a moon princess!
Health and Fitness
After our dramatic one-light series of nineties-grunge-inspired images, we captured a quick series of fun, jumping shots (one of which is shown in the featured gallery for this post). Then we moved on to a clean, minimal, high key look for a series of yoga poses. We put lights everywhere for a nice, bright image.
Headshots
In the headshot part of our session, we softened up our lights and experimented with some extreme apertures just for fun. For the lens junkies out there, all the images from this session were shot at 85 mm with a max aperture of f/1.4. While most of the images are shot at f/8 or higher, we tried a few headshots at f/1.4 in order to get some shots with sharp eyes and a nice, creamy blur beyond the face. It can be a challenge to shoot with such a limited depth of field, but the ones that turn out have an interesting look.
Distant Era: In our session, we shot several different looks: grunge, yoga, blue dress, guitar, and a pink dress covered with strawberries that we shot amongst dozens of floating bubbles. What was your inspiration for each of these looks? Did you have a plan for how you wanted to use each of them?
Liz Falstreau: Truly, some were for business—having a couple good athletic or business looks can get you some work in the acting world—but the grunge, the dress, and the strawberries were all very intentional expressions of self for my music.
Behind the Music
In the midst of the headshot session, we rolled out the blue background we’d hand painted over the summer, also featured in Erin Gallagher’s session, where it was shifted to green in post-processing. But the initial inspiration behind the blue background was Liz Falstreau’s inquiry about a Distant Era session back in 2019. When she described the kind of session she wanted to do based around her music, a blue background seemed ideal. A year later, the session became a reality, blue background and all.
For the guitar session, it seemed like fun to put a single light behind Liz to act as a stage light. Easy backstage/concert look in minutes. It was around that time that the bubbles entered the scene.
Distant Era: You released a beautiful album of new songs in February. What can you tell us about the album and the songs you composed for it?
Liz Falstreau: In spring of 2020 I tried to record the songs I had written as a side project and realized that most of them were deeply personal and about loss. So I asked myself, What music inspires me? And I challenged myself to write a wide range of songs based on the different personas I felt came out in me at my extremes. The aggressive, the resilient, the optimistic, the romantic. Overall, I felt authentic when it all came together. I think the songs feel honest and real. Like me.
Strawberry Bubbles
Sometimes you arrive at a place in the session and wonder, How did we get here? Thanks to the improvisational nature of our sessions and the various avenues we explore, we sometimes end up in unexpected places, and for me this was one of them. Liz had brought the bubble machine along with her, and I loved the atmosphere it added to the guitar images. But the combination of the strawberry dress, the bubbles, and Michelle Rose Nobs’s beautiful makeup created an enchanted atmosphere of pure joy. It raised all our spirits and was a lovely way to end the session.
Distant Era: On the Soundcloud page, there’s an image from our session for each track. How did you decide which image to use for which track?
Liz Falstreau: Each image tries to match the feeling of the song. Past me: grunge; present me: blue dress; and all my future potential: strawberry. We all want to transform into the best version of ourselves. Mine includes bubbles and space buns.
Distant Era: Really, tell us more about Strawberry Bubbles and how that look came about.
Liz Falstreau: I grew up loving Sailor Moon. She was incredibly flawed as a character and yet eternally forgiving. I think my best self is both things—imperfect, and yet still warm and understanding to others. Able to overcome the hardships in life and find the beauty.
Reflections
As one of the three sessions we did in 2020 during the pandemic, we took more time and made more images with more looks. We had two certified contact tracers onsite for this one, ensuring safety protocols were followed. It felt good to make new images in October 2020 after months away. Now it’s April 2021, and this is still the last one we shot.
Liz Falstreau’s beautiful album, Full Transformation, was released on February 22, 2021, with pictures from the session accompanying the tracks. Please check it out at the link above.
This photo shoot was the first time in all of the pandemic I felt human again. Connected to myself and others. And even without the purpose of business or my album, I am glad I took the time to do it. It was joy. Simply joy.
Liz Falstreau
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