In March, I had the great pleasure and opportunity to photograph the amazing Brian Pastor in a super fun headshot and brand session designed to launch the next phase of Brian’s career.
Brian is one of those exceptional talents who’s proficient in every theatrical function. Over the last couple decades, Brian has created a staggering amount of theatre—as a director, a writer, as a performer, as an artistic director, and many other roles besides. Brian has worn many hats in their time as a theatre maker in Chicago, as Brian’s bio from the Promethean Theatre Ensemble site implies:
Brian is the Founding Executive Director of Promethean Theatre Ensemble and served as the Artistic Director for six years. At Promethean, they directed The Lion in Winter, The Winter’s Tale, and Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (all Broadway World Award Nominated – Best Director), as well as Henry V and The Dark Side of the Bard. At City Lit Theater, they directed George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man, as well as the all-female version of Archibald MacLeish’s J.B. Brian’s writing credits include co-adaptations of Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson and Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow for City Lit, as well as an adaptation of Robert F. Kennedy’s memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis Thirteen Days. A portion of their adaptation of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone was presented at the Chicago Cultural Center. Brian’s short play, Capacity for Curiosity, based on an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, won Best of Festival at City Lit’s 2018 Art of Adaptation Festival, and their short play Inhuman Nature has been produced on three continents. Brian is the former Executive Director of Sideshow Theatre, the former Executive Director of Raven Theatre, and the former Managing Director of City Lit Theater, where they are currently resident director. Brian’s acting credits include Hauptmannwith City Lit, Future Echoes with WildClaw, and The Lark and A Study in Scarlet with Promethean. They are also a former board and company member of The Mime Company and a founding company member of Chicago dell’Arte. (They/Them)
It should come as no surprise then that the Distant Era photography session Brian did was just as surprisingly varied and diverse, as though each look showed a different person, or indeed a different aspect of the enigmatic and prolific Brian Pastor!
But first, some backstory.
Small Worlds, Backstories, and Exposition
I came to know Brian in 2015 when we met at an event lamenting the passing of the late great Jon Walski, a well-loved Chicago-Milwaukee actor and street performer of immense talent and compassion. Jon was working with Brian’s company Promethean around that time, and Brian spoke words of consolation to everyone at the gathering. Such gatherings serve as an important step in finding cloture, and Brian’s words at the gathering helped bring people together to share in Jon’s memory. They made an impact on me for certain. The Chicago theatre community is like a big extended family: everyone’s related by one or two degrees—a big world at once both big and small—and though we’d both been in the community for some time, this was the first time we crossed paths.
Since then, we’ve been in playwriting festivals together, we’ve been wedding guests, and in the winter of 2021, I photographed a show Brian directed (The Black Knight, from Lifeboat Productions).
And thus when Brian reached out for a Distant Era session this year, I was thrilled to make it happen and to do whatever I could to make Brian’s vision real.
Planning the Session
In our initial discussions about the project, we talked about the kinds of looks we’d like to capture. For one of them, we knew we’d be doing a traditional headshot, evenly lit, and retouched. But one of my very favorite aspects of a Distant Era session comes from discussing the subject’s work, their dreams, the way they seem themselves, and the way they want the world to see them. “You are what you dream,” reads the Distant Era tagline. And professionally there are few things that bring me greater satisfaction than collaborating to manifest a dream and make it real. This was true when I was working in role-playing games. In acting too, I suppose. Now, I suppose I feel like I have more agency in the process.
Brian and I discussed a few such dreams and the images we might make of them—photographs that might evoke who Brian is, and what Brian loves. The ideas percolated in Brian’s imagination, and a few days later, it was settled when Brian spoke of an abiding love for the look of film noir. With our objectives in focus, we planned for our shoot date.
Photography
Here’s a breakdown of the three looks we created for Brian Pastor’s session.
Noir
On the day of our session, we began with the noir look. This was to be the most specific of our looks, so we wanted to do it first.
We set up the shot on a neutral gray background and lit from camera left with a single light equipped with an evolving sequence of hard light modifiers. For some shots, we used a Zoom Reflector; for others, we narrowed our light with a grid; for others, we used the bare bulb of our light, which we blocked with flags and flats. All of this was in the interest of making distinct noir shadows on Brian’s face and form.
To lend the shot even more of a noir feel, we shot all of these through a Black Pro Mist 1/4 filter, which gave the highlights something of a hazy glow, a bit like old film. Speaking of haze, Brian thought it might be cool to have some fog, so we also added actual haze in some of the images, generated by a haze machine. To polish off the look, we added some silver-rich grain to the images. It’s a subtle texture, but like those soft highlights it recalls a film style of a bygone age.
The noir shots were a ton of fun to do, and we got a lot of variety in what we did, not only thanks to our evolving setup but especially Brian’s masterful performance and the range of poses and expressions Brian created.
Headshot
Once we’d finished our noir look, we pulled back the hard noir lighting and replaced it with some big, soft light—a giant, diffused umbrella and large reflector, along with some V-flats to knock out harsh shadows and make for a nice, flattering light—angled so as to eliminate reflection in the glasses, which can sometimes be tricky.
Brian did a great job giving warm, natural expression to these images and in the end chose a pleasant, welcoming look expressing the Brian we know today.
Grunge
For our third sequence, Brian changed again, this time to a cozy and comfortable long-haired, grunge-inspired look. It struck me then what a chameleon Brian is, adapting naturally between vastly different looks, each one presenting a different energy and character. This was another personal look for Brian, who appeared completely in their element during this section of the session. In the final selection, Brian’s favorite of the grunge looks was the one where I was testing the backlight, which made for a warm gradient against the background (left).
And so…
We took our time through the session, experimenting with each look until we were happy. With our looks wrapped up, we called it a day and then began the selection process, combing through the images in search of the ones Brian loved most.
It was great fun experimenting with my friend Brian through this session and trying out different looks. I wish them much success in the many exciting opportunities ahead!
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