Thursday, 11 March 2010

Preview: On Adventures Botanical and Oriental


Spring is supposed to be here and weather has been distinctly improving. Despite having said that circumstances have been conspiring against photos of the kit from happening, the Designer and the Mercenary managed to find time today. As always, here are a few preview photos and the rest will be up when I've sorted through the two hundred odd photos that were taken.

We were at Durham University's Botanic Garden, mostly in the bamboo grove (the bamboo I'm peering from, for example,  is Yushiana anceps, commonly known as Pitt White). I was actually rather disappointed in what I had considered rather wimpy bamboo after seeing it grow in huge thickets by the road near where I used to live in Hong Kong. The Designer's memory of the place proved to be somewhat flawed as he forgot about all the little educational red signs that littered the place. Trying to keep them out of shot was quite a feat and lots of strategic posing had to be undertaken.

Accusations of spring are perhaps unjustified as the sakura blossoms weren't in existence yet. It is, perhaps, just as well since the costumes are wuxia in nature which is Chinese rather than Japanese, and though cherry blossoms are still important to Chinese culture it certainly doesn't dominate it the way it does the Japanese. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, attempting to look serene is very difficult. We didn't manage to borrow any of Character Kit's swords in time for these photos and trying to look murderously serene without a sword is even more difficult.

The other problem was trying to find a setting for the "Carthaginian" outfit that we had thrown together for Odyssey (incidentally, bearing very little resemblance to the fashions of the historical Carthage). We had attempted a range of places, including the Alpine Garden, which the Designer remembered to resemble "a quarry in Wales" (it is somewhat less impressive than that description may suggest) and the South African section of the hothouse. Both he and I are rather dissatisfied with how those photos turned out, by more on that when I post them properly.


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