Progress Report #7 (1/02/2012)

Happy Year of the Dragon! (Above is Dawnrazor, created by Julie Froelich the Year of the Dragon before last, in 1987.)

We weren't sorry to see 2011 end. From the disaster of March's 9.0 earthquake and the profound changes it wrought on life here in Japan, to the sad passing of family, friends, and pets throughout the year, 2011 was one of the most awful years of our lives.

But now 2012 is here at blessed last, and the dawn of this new year (not to mention the fantastic week off work that comes with it!) has rekindled our energy for this important project. It's time to see it through! July 2012, here we come!

In the next day or so, we'll be sending out an e-mail to everyone who has submitted photos, to see if any of the information included with those photos needs to be updated.

Scanning of the several hundred paper photos is continuing. The horse's name or the name of the person the horse was created for are known for the majority of them. There are 143 horses that haven't yet been identified, though. We're thinking about maybe featuring them one at a time in semi-weekly-or-so ads on MHSP to ask "Do You Know Me?"

Last year wasn't a complete loss: In October we did a test run of a relatively simple but oversized 32-page hardcover book called "A Hundred Horses," featuring 100 vintage customs from me and Corky's own collections (horses by Julie Froelich, Tom Bainbridge, John Bellucci, Liz Bouras, Paige Easley, Kay Holmes, Laurie Jo Jensen, Linda Leach, Kathy Maestas, Judy Pope, Lisa Rivera, Marie Spinella, Sue Sudekum, Kathleen Timmerman, Carol Williams, Bev Zimmer, and more), as an experiment to see how various layouts and photo caption styles look on the actual printed page, how large we could make the photos without loss of quality, how accurately the images' color reproduces, and whether such a coffee-table-type book should be a format to consider.

The result was helpful to see, but while the oversize format has a lot of merit, we're thinking it might not be the best for "RM for Riddermark" after all; with at least 200 pages, the book would be both seriously unwieldy and seriously expensive.

So, that's where "RM for Riddermark" stands at the start of 2012. While it's nice to have "A Hundred Horses" in our hands, we're envisioning what a great feeling it will be a year from now, being able to page through "RM for Riddermark" and remember it coming out in July!

Thanks for your patience, and best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year!

Coming in 2011...

Get an 82-head peek at what's to come! (These are some of our own Froelichs that will be in the book...these particular photos of them won't be used, but we didn't want 'em to go to waste! ;^) )

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Progress Report #6 (11/18/2010)

Talk about a tremen-dous time--my five-day visit with Julie at her paradise of a place in the Wisconsin north woods was wonderful! 

I really enjoyed hanging out with Julie and her Cairn companion Kaile, nightly suppers together with her mother next door (which is a good walk away!), and meeting Julie's horses Rhiannon, Pony, Ostara, Gabby, and Roxy. The woods all around were beautiful, the air was so fresh, and Julie even made green bean casserole from scratch for me, yom!

No trip there could ever be long enough, but even at five days there was nearly no time for sleep, what with several thousand photos and drifts of information to sift through for the book...most of it stashed away in the secret space revealed in the photo above, behind solid but swiveling bookcases!  

On another floor of the house, Julie's showstring of legends--possibly the largest gathering of Congress champions on the planet--was enjoying semi-retirement (earlier this year Julie and the gang competed for the first time in more than a decade, entering a local live show). 

Although their photo images have long been engraved on my

brain, it was the first time I'd seen any of them in person...and I

couldn't help going into groupie mode, grabbing the chance to shoot my very own photos of the stars!

On that week-long trip to the U.S.--first to Julie's house, and then down to the Ohio storage unit holding me and Corky's collections--I shot 1,970 digital photos of model horses. (Upping the number was the fact that I photoed every horse with two different cameras...just in case a memory card went bad, as happened last year.)

Then there were the paper ones. From her hobby hideaway

behind the bookcases came 853 (a hefty stack, but really just a

tiny percentage!) of Julie's halter and performance photos, reference photos of her work, and snapshots from live shows, which she's kindly loaned us to scan for the book.

In trying to shorten the stack, I sorted the halter photos into groups by horse color to try to make it easier to spot any duplicates. In the photo below, it doesn't look so hard when viewed from above. But as you can see in the shot below that, the actual height of some of those stacks (especially the stack of bays on the far left, and the even taller group of greys right behind it) was a little daunting! 

Which brings us to the logistics of actually getting all these horses into the book! Corky and I are rethinking the design now to try to fit them all in without having to go to a second volume. But, wow--we were hoping there would be a lot, but this is exponentially more than we'd imagined! (It's a nice problem to have, though!)

I still need to interview four hobbyists, after I finish up a different project this month. We're continuing to plan for publication in 2011. Thanks very much for your patience, and please stay tuned for more updates!

Progress Report #5 (9/12/2010)

Plans (and the plane ticket!) are in place now to visit Julie the last week of September! I'll be photographing her historic herd and other material for the book. After that, it's down to Ohio to reshoot the 40 horses whose images were lost on the defective SD card. 

After I get back to Japan the first week of October, I hope to arrange phone interviews with four other hobbyists...and then all the makings for this epic will be complete!

Remember, if you haven't yet submitted photos of your own Froelich creation or any you happen to have photos of, the photo submission deadline is September 30! Here are the submission guidelines.

Another progress report will be coming soon!

Progress Report #4 (7/03/2010)

The second of the two recorded phone interviews with Julie was today--and it was very much like having a time machine to revisit the hobby in the 1970s, '80s, and on into the '90s!

Next will be phone interviews with four other hobbyists. After that, in late September or early October, I'll make the trip from Japan to Wisconsin to visit Julie, get her comments on individual horses, and shoot photos galore. (Hope to also shoehorn in a quick trip to Ohio, to reshoot the 40 or so of me and Corky's horses whose photos were devoured by a defective SD card.)

Another progress report will be coming soon!

Progress Report #3 (7/01/2010)

Today turned out to be a hectic one for Julie--the hazards of setting up interview times a few weeks in advance!--so we've postponed today's planned interview until July 3. In the meantime, I'll start pricing autumn flights to Minneapolis, to visit Julie in September or October and shoot photos like crazy!

Progress Report #2 (6/09/2010)

Today's mail brought a treasure from Julie: photos of 83 more horses for the book, as well as some fun snapshots from early-'90s live shows...and this is the tip of the iceberg, she said!

Remember, if you haven't yet submitted photos of your own Froelich creation or any you happen to have photos of, the photo submission deadline has been extended to September 30! Here are the submission guidelines.

Another progress report will be coming soon!