Automotive Photographer- Atsushi Imai

September 24th, 2009

I came across this site the other day. I was blown away by the quality of the photographs. His photos are very moody. I don’t know much about him, except that he is pretty young. Definitely a motivation to go out and shoot.

You can see more of his work from his blog.

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Posted in Automotive, Motorsports, photography | No Comments »

Conrad Grunewald’s New Camaro

September 22nd, 2009

After seeing Alex Pfeiffer driving the Tanaka Corvette at the last few stops of Formula D, I was beginning to wonder what ever happened to Conrad Grunewald. Well I wonder no more. It looks like Conrad will be debuting a new Camaro for next season.

Being built by local boy Luke Lonberger and the BR Racing crew, the Camaro is scheduled to be finished in time for SEMA in November. For the sketches of the car, it looks to be an interesting build that will give the Falken Mustang a run for its money. Hopefully the real car will look like the sketch.

The build can be seen on Conrad;s website here.

conrad grunewald camaro
conrad grunewald camaro
conrad grunewald camaro

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Posted in Drifting | 1 Comment »

Family Man

September 21st, 2009

I’ve been looking for a nice daily driver for a while now. I had a thing for the G35 sedans for a bit, but after seeing a lot of sad looking ones around I decided that I was going to get an E46 M3. You can pick up a an earlier model with low mileage for under 22K. Now that I’m having a baby in December I’ve had a hard time convincing my wife that a 2 door car is anywhere near being practical. So unless I somehow make a lot of money in the near future, having two nice cars won’t be possible. So I’ve been looking at G35 sedans again. Still hard to find a lot of cars that look really good, but I’ve had better luck lately. I might be convinced.

Picture #2 from Marcus Cooke.
g35 sedan
g35
g35 sedan
g35 sedan

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Posted in Automotive, Personal | 1 Comment »

Drift Inspiration

September 15th, 2009

If you want over a thousand pictures of great looking drift cars, go to Drift World. You will be inspired.

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Posted in Automotive, Drifting | 2 Comments »

Proper Wheel Offsets

September 12th, 2009

While it may not be the most functional on a track, having your wheel offsets sized properly so your wheels aren’t sunken in looks so much better on a car. My opinion of course. Cars that are lowered and have the right offset look much more aggressive. There is a whole site devoted to this idea. Check it out at HellaFlush.

Bravo to this FD RX-7 owner for pulling it off. Wheels are 18×10 all around with +38 offset up front and +18 in the back.

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Posted in Automotive, Personal | No Comments »

Off Camera Lighting with Dave Black

September 11th, 2009

I came across the work of Dave Black today. He’s doing some cool things with speedlights off camera to create some great looks. He set up 4 SB-900 flashes in a single softbox to overcome the camera’s limit to sync a flash with the shutter. Most camera’s today have a limit on what the shutter speed is when using the flash because the duration of the flash and the shutter speed don’t overlap past a certain speed. You can overcome this by lowering the output of your flash, but that way you lose power. You can read a better explanation over on Strobist

So by stuffing 4 flashes in a softbox Dave is able to regain the power he is losing and shoot at much higher shutter speeds and create the dramatic looks you see below. Check out more of his work on his website Dave Black Photography.

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And the set up.

motorcycles set up

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Posted in Automotive, photography | 1 Comment »

Old School Rotaries

August 30th, 2009

I’ve always had a thing for rotary engined cars. I’ve owned both an FD and an FC, and have spent countless hours wrenching on them, swapping engines, etc. I’ve always wanted an old rotary like an RX-2, RX-3, R100, because they can look awesome and they are smog exempt. I came across this RX-4 the other day and it renewed my daydreams of owning an old school rotary.

This car is owned by Juni Asuncion of JRX Rotary out in Southern California. I remember meeting Juni years ago when he lived in the Bay Area and owned a widebody FC convertible with a 13B-RE from a Cosmo. Congratulations on putting together this proper looking RX-4.

Pictures courtesy of Japanese Nostalgic Car.

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Posted in Automotive | 4 Comments »

Formula Drift Sonoma in pictures

August 25th, 2009

Last weekend had the Indy Racing League come to Infinion Raceway in Sonoma County. Along with the IRL, Formula Drift ended up tagging along and having their event a few weeks early. This was also the first event where I was able to get a media pass to shoot from the other side of the fence. There were complaints from some of the other photographers about the IRL restricting where Formula D could put some of the cement barriers, thereby limiting the places where we could shoot from. I tried to do my best with what where were allowed to go. I definitely feel like there were some places that I wanted to shoot from but didn’t have time, and I guess that’s a lesson learned for next time to make better use of my time.

Click here for the full gallery…

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Posted in Drifting, Motorsports | No Comments »

We all start somewhere

August 25th, 2009

Well, here’s my first post. After recently being laid off due to the economy, I decided I hated my job anyway. So I’ve been taking this time to reinvent myself and start doing something that I like to do. So besides starting to work as a freelance web developer, I’m going to try and give photography a go as well and try and do it as more then just a hobby. And since posts without pictures are pretty boring, here’s a picture.

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Posted in Personal | No Comments »