YUZU'LL BE BACK= Note from Nagakubo Yukata
Purchase the photobook here
Finally, tomorrow is the release day of “YUZU’LL BE BACK”. (It’s a long way from) the beginning of the wild dream of us 2 “salaryman” camera-man. It is thanks to Hanyu Yuzuru-senshu for helping us realizing it, as well as support and encouragement from fellow staff. Moreover, we would like to express gratitude to our rival photographers for giving us many pieces of advice, and it also goes without saying that (the photobook) is brought about by people on twitter, who urged us “Please release a photobook”.
The concept of this photobook is “Photos that could express the “intention” of photographers”. As Kogaito Yoshiki, and I originally started from taking press photos, we will incline towards taking “event-recording” photos. Beyond that, we decided on a layout that would manage to present photos that characterize Hanyu Yuzuru-senshu greatness as an athlete and those that express his beauty. The layback Ina Bauer at CoR is the kind of beauty that must be passed on to the next generations, and generations after that. I made a layout that consists of 37 perfect positions of that Ina Bauer, but the main photo I wanted to draw focus on unfortunately was placed quite close to the center creak of the book, so in terms of arrangement, it would create a sense of incongruity somehow. I apologize. And then, Makuhari. I don’t want to admit that it was too urgent/rushed, but it turned out that way. The organizers (of FAOI) and printing department allowed me to include the photos too, although it was excessive. (Masquerade was too sugoii, and I felt compelled to include the 4Lz take-off).
I still remember screaming into my mobile phone from Nice that “This kid will certainly win the Gold medal in the future”, and still remember the reply from the editing department, rushing for deadlines, on a different level of enthusiasm to mine, “Hanyu?”. 7 years have passed since then. It was a lonely fight, and I was able to rely on only Kogaito, who is a company subordinate, a rival, and a god in a nutshell. I am thinking about fighting on together with him again next season too, and we only have 1 mutual thought.
“What great fun it is, to take photos of Hanyu Yuzuru, and to take photos of figure skating”.
(It seems like this is changed to be the afterword of YUZU’LL BE BACK)
Supotsu Nippon Press company, Photography department,
Nagakubo Yukata.
PS: It’s a secret that we forgot to include the name of our company on detachable cover (outer cover) of the book.