Year Five

January 1, 2024
2 mins read

Happy New Year, one and all! I write this as Distant Era moves into its fifth year. Three years ago, on January 1, 2021, The All Worlds Traveller blog began with a portrait called “Lady Brimstone,” featuring Elizabeth MacDougald. Every week since, The All Worlds Traveller has shared pictures and stories of Distant Era’s work. To begin year five, we look back on what was and look forward to what will be. Finally, to commemorate our fifth year, we present an alternate “Lady Brimstone” portrait edit from the very first edition of The All Worlds Traveller.

Looking Back

Like many businesses starting out, Distant Era’s first year was one of prolific experimentation, tons of personal photo sessions, and a couple clients. Projects rolled out month after month:

July 2019: Urban Fantasy

September 2019: Portraits from a Distant Era

October 2019: Hauntings from a Distant Era

November 2019: Chicago, November 2019

February 2020: The Contract

In March 2020, when the pandemic put a halt to photography projects, we spent time building the Distant Era website and branding, acquiring studio lights, painting backgrounds, and learning.

In September 2021, we began The People of Light and Shadow project, the spiritual successor to Portraits from a Distant Era and the new model for the kind of fantastical portraiture Distant Era could make. Also in 2021, client work starting coming in again, and a greater portion of our time went into client work.

Looking Forward

In 2021, I began to conceive Distant Era’s next series and client offering. First, I had to finish The People of Light and Shadow. Then there was a lot of learning to do. In June 2023, however, I photographed the project, and as we cross into 2024 I’ve finally begun work on it. As The People of Light and Shadow was the spiritual successor to Portraits from a Distant Era, this next one is the spiritual successor to Hauntings from a Distant Era in terms of what we were trying to achieve in those series. When it’s finished, hopefully in the first half of 2024, we’ll have a new body of work and a new offering for clients.

So why do these projects take so long?

In the early days, Distant Era had a few clients, a little technique, and big dreams. Now we have more clients, more technique, and bigger dreams, and each of these takes time

And yet! In 2024 I’m excited to present what I hope to be Distant Era’s best work, alongside our finest offerings for fantastical, futuristic, and historical portraiture. A little while longer yet, but it’s coming.

Maybe excited isn’t the right word. Rather, the thing I’m looking forward to the most in 2024 is learning, working on, and building this next work and offering. More than anything else. It’s what’s mattered most to me these past couple years. The dream. I don’t know how successful I’ll be in the art of it or the business. But none of that matters right now because the desire to make it is everything. There will be plenty of wrong turns along the way, but that’s how the process goes with anything.

Happy New Year once again, and we’ll see you on down the road…

“Lady Brimstone,” 2020. Alternate take.

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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.

  1. Archival Photography for The Tempest with Idle Muse Theatre Company (Part 2): Costumes
  2. Greetings from the UK
  3. Archival Photography for The Tempest with Idle Muse Theatre Company (Part 1)
  4. Northern Lights on the Lakefront

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.

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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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