Ashes and Artifice

One brings the fire. The other brings the flask. Ashes and Artifice captures a fleeting stillness between battles—two adventurers caught in the sepia glow of a world running on brass, grit, and barely-contained chaos. With clockwork wreckage always in their wake, these two leave behind fixed injustices, shattered gears, and the lingering scent of ozone and gunpowder.

Shot on a Sony A7R V, this portrait features cosplayers @roll4dmg and @gothampd as an original steampunk pairing cut from the same cloth as Gabrielle and Xena. The image was lit for warmth and texture, casting shadows like old theater and pulling detail from layers of leather, lace, and fur. The composition honors both elegance and edge—Dani with sly mischief in her fox-pelt scarf, GothamPD with pistol in hand and justice in her jawline. Together, they are both myth and machine. The storm, and the smirk before it.