Nowadays I find myself hesitate before writing the truth down ….. but I can’t change what this is. Like taking the photos… this is me, my soul, my heart, the things I want to remember… come what may. Tonight the highs of the magazine seem washed away by my loss of her yet again. Its raining… it hasn’t stopped for what feels like days, and my heart is drowning in this swirl of memories.
I had to come home from work early again …. some days there is no hope, I am still so weak at times. Wonderland has become so much more than a project… maybe its my alternative world, somehow it comforts me, these storybook lands… these characters. I sometimes just sit and look at the colours and the scenes, and wish myself there again… some of those were the happiest days I have had since her death. Tonight I walked home in the rain… hands in pockets, hood up ……headphones blocking out the real world. Grey shapes pass, slide, splash my shoes, cold air against my sore skin… antibiotics fill my system… music fills my ears. I dream of new pictures…. beautiful creatures, colours… magical woods and distant star lit snow. Where would I be without my camera? It used to be a therapy… now it is a doorway to an enchanted place, where I am me, truly me. At night I see everything so clearly, I dream in hyper reality… the forests are damp under my feet, I see paper mache moons, a pale girl trapped in a snow globe…. Katie in the velvet circus costume I’m making for her….. dancing. Its like the pictures are already made, just waiting to be set free with the click of a shutter. This is making no sense….. but I’m beyond caring, I will remember this, and why I needed to write it down. I don’t know where it will end…. any of it, the pictures, the stories… all I know is that there is a sea of it inside me right now… raging, raging, raging. I want to push harder… make things bigger, embrace it, step away from the conventional…. This is where I can lose my physical self, and be free of this broken shell…and she is there with me…. always… I can feel it……… I can feel it.
I'm exhausted... I literally stepped off the plane from China at 5am this morning and have been dragging myself around in my pyjamas all day. I'd switched my phone to silent so I could sleep, and forgot about it ...... until late this afternoon, when I saw 15 missed calls from Elbie. I switched on my laptop, and read the first line of her email.... 'WE ARE IN CLICHE MAGAZINE!'. I felt a bit sick and typed in the address, and there it was ........ 24 pages of 'Wonderland' in full colour.
For once i'm genuinely lost for words.... I suppose its because this whole project has been such an emotional journey for me.... and continuous to be, as we are still working on it. To think me and Elbie made everything out of nothing, and were just helped by friends and our partners, the pictures look 'real' and don't appear amateur amongst the other shoots. If someone had sat me down and asked what my dream end result for the photos would be..... I would have answered 'to see them as a full set, as full pages in a 'real' magazine - not an amateur photography one' ...... and its happened.... already...before I've even finished the project.
We still have more pictures and characters we want to do, and I have to finish off the pictures from the last of the summer shoots first (I probably have another 4 left now). But Im getting really excited about the winter pictures already because the woods are looking so menacing now the leaves have fallen, and the darker images are always where my heart is.
So that's it.... I just want to say that Elbie, if you are reading this..... I'm so, so, so glad I met you :) x
I've looked at it about a 1000 times now.... you can see the editorial for real here
What a day....what a day
(ps -i'll catch up about my far east trip soon)
I just landed in Tokyo, I'm staying 27 floors up in the city scape...... I have no time, I've had no sleep, I left my phone on the plane ......... but this is my view tonight, and somehow nothing else matters.........
I'll try and get some pictures, but I'm literally just passing through, I leave for Hong Kong in 2 days and then on to China. Its beautiful, it's quieter than I imagined I can't belive I'm here.
感無量！(ToT)
センセイに感謝!!
今年も『MORISAWA PASSPORT』アップグレードの季節がやってきました。
今回の目玉はやはり『ユニバーサルデザインフォント（以下UDフォント）』ではないでしょうか。
UDフォントを知らない人の為に説明しておくと
●文字の形がわかりやすい
●読みやすい
●読み間違えがない
以上の事が求められ、誰がどんな状況で見ても正しく機能する文字の事です。
私の職場では既にイワタのUDフォントを使用していました。
しかし、視認性を重視しすぎたために
文字の美しさが損なわれ不自然なバランスのフォントでした。
しかも視認性を重視してる割に大文字のI（アイ）と小文字のl（エル）の違いが分かりにくかったり
英数のデザインがFrutigerをパクッただけ（権利関係はどうなってんの？）と、お粗末な出来で不満だらけでした。
それでも当時イワタ以外にUDフォントを扱っているメーカーがなかったので
UDフォント市場一人勝ち状態が続いていました。
が、ここへ来てDTP業界トップシェアのモリサワがUDフォント参入です。
しかも明朝・角ゴシック・丸ゴシックの計21書体を発表しました。
いつもならウェイト展開を小出しにしてくるのに一気にウェイトを揃えての提供は
イワタからシェアを奪い取る意気込みが伺えます。
気になるデザインですが、さすがにモリサワらしい安定感があります。
大文字のI（アイ）と小文字のl（エル）の違いもしっかりと区別出来ますし
イワタとの違いを見せつけてくれます。
まぁさすがに通常のフォントと比べると多少美しさは損なわれてる気がしますが
そこは「UDフォントなんだから...」と割り切った方が良いでしょうか。
今回のアップグレード版にはUDフォント以外にもいくつか新書体が含まれています。
その中でも注目なのが『秀英明朝L』です。
まさか秀英明朝がデジタルフォントで使用できる時代が来るとは...ありがたい事です。
肝心の『秀英初号明朝』と他のウェイトは来年の提供までお預けですけどねw
『秀英初号明朝』は写研の見本帳で眺めるだけの書体でしたが来年ついに使う事が出来るのです！
それとオマケなんだけどモリサワもフォント管理ツールの『FontKeeper』を提供してきました。
以前のフォントワークスの件があるので無料提供されるユーティリティは信用出来ないんですよね。
説明を読む限りでは既にインストール済みのフォントを管理する事が出来るだけの様です。
結局フォントワークスと同じ事してるんじゃないの？
後々面倒なことになりそうなのでこのツールのインストールは見送ることにしました。
誰かの使った感想を聞いてからでも良いですね。
I'm afraid I fell apart....... mum died one year ago on November the 9th, and I just couldn't keep up with the blog. Luckily I have written about the more emotional stories behind the photos first, and as the shoots progressed I began to find things easier - confidence wise, although the amount of work was still really exhausting. So i'm catching up... mainly with the behind the scenes photos as they are the most important memories for me.
One of the most magical shoots of the whole series was when we went into the woods with Katie and she performed for us using her aerial hoop - she is a circus performer as well as many other things, and so this was just a dream come true for me. I made her entire outfit, and Elbie spent hours making a huge complicated plait that became the focus for her hair design. We started the day with Katie completely white, and as the day progressed we painted her eyes with black paint, added feather moth wings to her eyes, and finally I painted her white outfit with black paint to match the moth wings and metamorphosize her character into a darker creature. This character was an idea I have had of almost two years now, and has been in my head ever since I saw Massive Attack's video 'butterfly caught'. Katies naturally white eyelashes, and pale blue eyes made this whole look become so mysterious and unconventional, that for me it was really special to finally see it come to life and look so beautifully surreal.
The other behind the scenes pictures which I have been promising to show on flickr were for picture 12.... the girl with 4 legs :) I can't even describe how funny it was taking this photo, I'm amazed any of the shots were in focus as I was laughing so much. It was the end of a long cold days shooting, it was the worst weather I have ever taken pictures in - dull, drizzle, rain, cold.... miserable.... and typically it happened on a day when I had managed to get us into a very special location (which I will write about later). At first I had felt really disheartened about the weather, but actually, as with all the different weather we experienced during the project, it seemed to be just right for the character we had planned.
The main reason behind 4 legs - was simply that I wanted to throw in some really strange characters to balance out the more 'fashiony' / pretty characters - basically to remind people that this is still 'Wonderland' and nothing is as it seems :)
So... we dressed Katie and Jessica in matching outfits, and as Katie is extremely flexible, she ended up bending over the books whilst Jess sat on top of her! I couldn't believe it when the girls where in position, it just looked so real!! Everyone was squealing with laughter, and Jess was just fantastic, she starting ripping pages out the book and rolling her eyes in the back of her head... it was truly like standing in front of monster !! so here you go, as promised.... the funnies ........ :) !
Finally.....
Here are the first pictures of one of our hardest props - the hydrnagea wig. This character (the hydrangea fairy) was probably one of the most difficult characters to create, and came from a conversation down the pub between me and Elbie! It was taken really early on in the project and probably before we really started to get a grip on what we were doing. All we knew was that we wanted to create a fairy - a sort of flower fairy, with an enormous wig made of fresh flowers. I drew a few sketches and we agreed we wanted something on a huge scale, and in an unconventional shape. Once we had agreed on the rough design we were then faced with how on earth we could make such a thing....... and thats were ebay came in ! First of all we bought an old horse riding hat from ebay for £11, then Elbie bought 8 meters of chicken wire, and reel of garden wire and we made the rest up using old rubbish from my garage !
The main issue though was how on earth we were going to afford so many expensive flowers. i wrote to 3 florists, and to a neighbor who had a large hydrangea bush in their garden .... no one helped :(
Finally, after looking for fake flowers, contemplating stealing them from peoples gardens and then being wracked with gulit, out of desperation I placed an advert in 'freecycle' begging for hydrangeas. We half wrote the advert as a joke, but then a few days later to my amazement I got an email from a wonderful lady called Heidi George offering to let us come and cut down her entire hydrangea bush ! So I found myself turning up at a complete strangers house, and walked away with 4 enormous sacks of fresh flowers in the most incredible soft colours !! So here are the pictures, me and Elbie didn't have a clue what we were doing, and made things up as we went along. At one point the frame wasnt strong enough so we ended up stuffing half an old cushion and a paint roller inside for added structure !!!!! But we were thrilled with the results. I'll write more about this character and show further pictures of the set we made after i have edited the other full length shot.... the wig smelt amazing!!!!!
Oh and on a final note.......... something very exciting is happening regarding Wonderland.... It looks like we are going to be published. I'll write more when I know for sure what is going on... gulp :) !!!
革底圧着し、ただいまヒールの接着剤乾燥待ち中……
来週、ヒール接着→滑り止め接着→一気に整形(グラインダー)→ハトメ付け＆紐通し→革磨き
で、完成！
