The concept unlocked the moment a designer friend posted a new piece to her feed: a sparkly gold jumpsuit with a 1970s silhouette, exactly the kind of piece that reads as both timeless and slightly dangerous. I contacted Joy Teiken of Joynoëlle immediately and she generously agreed to lend it for the shoot. The wardrobe was confirmed. Now I needed the right woman to inhabit it.
Casting the Right Subject
I reached out to Emerson Croasdale, who I had worked with once before on "Last Trip Home," an image that earned me Photographer of the Year in the Digitally Enhanced category at the International Photography Awards in 2024. Emmy, as she likes to be called, is the daughter of a woman I went to high school with and happens to be studying at Parsons School of Design, where I earned my BFA in photography. Small world, right cast.
Emmy was immediately on board and that gave me the green light to expand the concept into a full series. The Drama Queen universe started taking shape: an Oscar-winning actress navigating the drama of her own life with the same commitment she brings to every role. The river rescue was the opening act. From there came her much older husband, whispering the location of a buried gun as SWAT closes in. The phone call that changes everything. The ceremonial In-N-Out Burger and joint before the Oscars. A woman who treats every moment like a scene worth shooting.
Building the World
We had the wardrobe, the perfect subject, and a vintage telephone prop. Everything else would be CGI, another example of how the hybrid method compresses production without compromising the result. I also sourced a wig in advance so we could move between scenes without needing a hair stylist on set.
One of the questions I get most often is how long it takes to build a photorealistic CGI environment. The honest answer is that it depends entirely on what exists in your archive. Over years of production, I've built a library of 3D assets: furniture, vehicles, props, environmental elements, and characters, that can be imported, adapted, and repurposed across projects. Sometimes a scene comes together quickly because the right assets are already there. Sometimes the material or color needs to be changed to fit the story. And sometimes, something has to be built from the ground up. For Drama Queen, it was a combination of all three. To achieve the most realistic final results I used photogrammetry, custom modelling and photographic textures, rendered the scene in Blender 3D in Cycles Render Engine and final compositing with blue screen photography.
On Set
I came in prepared with references for how I wanted Emmy to approach each scene, with a clear intention for every shot and enough flexibility to let her make it her own. That's the standard: go in with a plan, nail the intended image, then leave room for something unexpected before moving on. With actors and strong subjects, the unexpected is often the best frame of the day.
Post-Production
After selecting finals, each image was siloed from its background and brought into 3D software as an image plane, with the CGI environment built and lit around it. I began with the river scene, since landscapes with water require the most time to build and render convincingly, even when the component assets are already in archive. The goal for that opening image was something dreamlike and painterly, closer to a movie poster than a photograph. The supporting images in the series were treated as film stills, grittier and more immediate, each one a frame from a movie that doesn't exist but absolutely should.
