WENDY HURST PORTRAIT

2025 - Mona, Utah  |   Bringing a photo studio to the Utah Renaissance Festival felt a little like smuggling a spaceship into the Middle Ages. My backdrop went up between fairy wings and falconers, and my lights hummed next to a booth selling turkey legs the size of a toddler. No one seemed confused. The studio worked like a magnet. People in velvet gowns, plastic armor, and fairy wings wandered over, curious why a fashion shoot was happening in the middle of jousts and kettle corn. One by one, they stepped in. It was fast, chaotic, and a little theatrical — corsets and capes catching the light like it was a red-carpet event, except the carpet was hay and the soundtrack was bagpipes. Some came for dramatic portraits. Others just wanted to see what fairy wings looked like under studio lighting (spoiler: excellent). Everyone left with the same surprise: they looked like they’d been photographed for a magazine, even if their prop of choice was a foam sword. It's fun drag...

Orem, Utah | Portraits from the Colonial Heritage Festival 2025. It’s not cosplay. It’s commitment. I brought my portrait studio to a place where no one owns a phone—but somehow they all know how to churn butter. Or at least, where the demonstration tent is located. No one broke character. Not even when I Vogue’d them. I didn’t mean to make it look like a 1776 fashion editorial.  Well, just a little. I tracked them down from camp to camp and asked for a photograph in the shade.  One reenactor offered me their “smoldering ye olde stare.” Another adjusted their bonnet like they were being interviewed for the cover of “Wool Weekly.” (I’d read it.) Their colonial confidence gave me colonial confidence. And don’t we all need more of that in our lives?  Dressed as Colonial British officer's wife. The Studio My “studio” is portable, in a wagon—yep—with a backdrop stand held up by a bag of cornmeal. (JK, it's just playground-grade sand.) I carried around one light that many calle...