All I Want For Christmas Is New Year’s Day

“Everybody waits for Christmas;
For me it’s New Year’s Day
That’s gonna come and take my blues away.
I’m wishing on the stars for Christmas
And hoping for a better day
When it doesn’t hurt to feel this way.
And everywhere there’s joy around this festive time of year
And happiness has never felt so far away.

All of the bells ringing out for Christmas,
I’m singing goodbye to the year before:
I know that the next one will be different
So much more.
All of the bells ringing out for Christmas,
And I’m not supposed to feel this way,
But all that I want this year for Christmas
Is New Year’s Day.

It’s only seven days till Christmas,
Six more till New Year’s Day;
It’s not a good time to feel this way.
Everywhere the snow surrounds you
And melts your troubles away:
I can only hope to feel the same.
I know that there will be tidings of joy this time next year,
But happiness has never felt so far away.

All of the bells ringing out for Christmas,
I’m singing goodbye to the year before:
I know that the next one will be different
So much more.
All of the bells ringing out for Christmas,
And I’m not supposed to feel this way,
But all that I want this year for Christmas
Is New Year’s Day.

I remember how I used to feel at Christmas.”

[ All I Want For Christmas Is New Year’s Day – Hurts ]

This is a quite accurate portrayal of how I felt at Chrisrmas last year. It was not the easiest of periods for me, I didn’t really know who I was and what I wanted to do with my life anymore (with photography being my only exception to an otherwise bad moment) and I was totally out of the festive mood. As I always find relief in music, I was listening ot this song to exorcise my feelings when I got the idea for this exact image with that tiny tricot Chrismas Tree that I had at my mother’s place. Due to the whole ordeal I was going through I could not fly home and shoot it there and then, so I decided to wait. Despite the fact that fortunately things have changed and got better in the meantime, I still loved the idea, so I waited to get back home for Christmas to shoot it as soon as I could. As for Magic Is Coming, it is a self-portrait I set up myself and took with the assistance of my mother, DamaInNero, who made everything much easier.
This is the first photo of the Inspiration Hurts project I shot with my Canon EOS 5D and I’m amazed by how the bokeh came out and how I managed to handle the light. I really can’t wait to take more photos for this project, in particular now that Hurts set a release date for their new album. Let’s cross fingers.

Sunlight

“Sunlight failed, but only for a while.
In the moonlight pale someone made me smile.
The shining almost took me, but I made it through that night
And, in the morning, life it graced me and I ran for miles
Into sunlight, in a billion dreams that are lost and won,
And moonlight. In spite of all you’ve seen, there’s only one way out:
Say you will love me until I leave the world.

Say you will love me until I leave the world.
In a billion dreams that are lost and won.
Say you will love me until I leave the world.
In spite of all you’ve seen, there’s only one way out.”

[ Sunlight – Anathema ]

The first work for my Weather Systems project is Sunlight. I really do hope the photo speaks for itself, in particular if accompanied by the music and the lyrics, but I’d love to spend some words about it anyways.
There’s no particular reason why I chose it to open the project, except I got it ready first. As promised, it is a diptych with one photo portraying the weather phenomenon from the title and lyrics and the other the related mood. Sunlight is a happy song. Yet, I think its more about serenity and optimism than an outburst of joy: that’s why I had Riccardo look content and serene rather than overjoyed. There’s confidence in his pose that expresses trust in the future while I tried to give the photo a generally relaxed atmosphere. On the other hand, rather than banally just shooting the sun with some landscape I tried to take a peculiar photo of it, something that would subtly suggest the sunlight: that’s how I came up with the idea of trying to turn that branch into a candle of sort.
To be honest, the idea was rather sudden, I had it just the day before shooting: at first I wasn’t expecting snow and this photoshoot was supposed to be very grim, but when I checked the weather forecast I was overjoyed because I’d been looking forward to shooting in the snow for years literally. I thought snow would perfectly fit the song because it is luminous as it can be, and here is the finished work.

Weather Systems

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m glad to introduce to you my new long-term project: Weather Systems.

I know I already have a handful of half-finished ones on the go, but you know, ideas stuck at random and I just can’t help it.

Once again, it’s a project inspired by music: Anathema’s latest album (and namesake of the project), Weather System, was released earlier this year. 2012 has been blessed with so many amazing records that it’s really hard to pick a favourite one, but this album really gets close to the title. The amazing blend of beautiful music, essential arrangements, breath-taking lyrics and impressive emotional depth of each song makes Weather Systems a real masterpice and a highly inspiring piece of music. Indeed, once I got used to the songs enough to stop crying each time I’d listen to them (even on a train on my way to interviewing Vincent Cavanagh), I immediately started getting images and ideas for photos, and they were so consistent that I decided to develop them into a proper series.

Weather Systems is not strictly a concept album, yet it has a common theme that touches all the songs. Weather conditions and parts of the day used as metaphores to descrive the “internal landscapes” of people: their feelings, their reactions to particular situations they may go through, their fears, hopes, dreams, even near-death experiences. The emotional depth of each song is enough to inspire a photograph, but this general idea behind the album amplifies it all and inspired me with images that would give a double rendition of it.

The project will thus consist of ten diptychs – one for each song, except one song which will have two – and will feature an image of nature, sky or weather matched with a portrait to represent both the emotions and the metaphore of the song. This is the common ground on which the series will be built and will give it a stronger cohesion than ever.

Currently, I have two works done for the Weather Systems project: one will be released tomorrow, while the other will have to wait a bit (because it’s the second diptych for the song I decided to split). You will be able to see the progress by selecting the related tag on this blog, or by checking the related gallery on my deviantART. I really do hope you’ll enjoy this work, for I’ll be literally pouring my heart into it.