A camera from 1988, an ’85 BMW, a Porsche from 1980, and a rental beach house from the 70s: if you ignored the smartphones, it could have been a postcard image of yuppies enjoying success in 1989.
Last month, on a trip-within-a-trip, some friends and I headed to the Oregon coast. Daniel Sloan brought his BMW 325 E30, Chris Nguyen joined as a co-driver, and I had my 911SC (currently stored at Daniel’s house).
This post could have been about this mini-vacation, about driving and enjoying a beautiful region of the Pacific Northwest in dumb old cars. But instead I’m going to focus on my decision to bring my [Giugiaro-designed] Nikon F4 along instead of a digital camera.
I am once again humbled by my lack of control and skill with film. This was a roll of Kodak Portra 400. None of these photos are offensively bad, but everything is just a bit duller than I was hoping for. When you develop a roll, you always hope to find a ‘good surprise’ somewhere — something you couldn’t have achieved without film. It’s a letdown when every image is, instead, a bit disappointing compared to what you had envisioned weeks earlier when shooting the roll.
I fault myself and my expectations, not the film. I’m completely spoiled by digital — being able to see, and adjust, and know what I’m capturing in the moment. I’m not panning the entire medium of film here!
I complained a bunch, but it was nice to carry the film camera on a short vacation trip and leave everything else behind. I’m sure someday, looking back, I’ll be happy I have these unique images, which will stand out from all the endless digital stuff I’ve taken in 2023.
]]>This post originally appeared on Substack.
Thanks to electrification, we’ve become desensitized to the idea of large, heavy vehicles gaining speed at an absurd rate. It’s commonplace now.
The acceleration and horsepower figures of the latest high-performance EVs often read as if pulled out of thin air. We accept them — who am I to say that the first standalone car from a famed Italian design house doesn’t have one-thousand nine-hundred horsepower?
The 2006 Mercedes-Benz S65 AMG is a large, heavy vehicle that gains speed at an absurd rate. The way it delivers that performance is unlike like any electric vehicle.
The key to its capability, I suspect, is the 6-liter V12 up front, which AMG felt the need to turbocharge for good measure. Twice. Mercedes-Benz claimed the S65 was the world’s fastest sedan when it launched in 2005, and the spec sheet seems to back that up: 604 horsepower and 737 lb-ft of torque. This particular S65 has been chipped by RENNtech to offer comfortably more.
Stand on the gas pedal, which isn’t particularly sensitive, and it takes a moment for things to get cooking, but once all the horsepower have been rounded up, it moves. There’s no skill required, no shifting — just point the S65 where you want to go, and let the blunt force acceleration do the rest.
It wakes up above 75 mph. On the highway, you feel confident that you could out-accelerate any challenger (lower-case ‘c’), if only you had unlimited clear road ahead of you. The steering ratio that feels ponderous at slower speeds, feels instinctively dialed-in at full tilt.
The moment you start to feel a connection with the S65… is immediately followed by a sense that it will be disappointed in you for lifting off the gas.
The 5-speed automatic transmission is working harder than any transmission has ever worked before, which you can tell from the heat radiating through the firewall during hard acceleration. It warms your legs — it surprises you every time. The energy being produced under the S65’s hood *literally* cannot be contained, and is spilling out into the cabin.
I should also mention that this is the only time I’ve ever watched a gas needle move in real time. I’m actually surprised that it doesn’t have a digital gas gauge for the same reason that the Lexus LFA had to have a digital rev-counter: because an analog dial would not have been responsive enough.
Without hyperbole, every time you look at the gas gauge needle, it has noticeably moved since the previous time you put eyes on it.
Like Morty Seinfeld’s tip calculator, I’m sure this car does other things, but I’m not interested in discussing them. But I made a few additional notes:
The W220 S65 was offered only for the 2006 model year, and only 427 were sold in the US. The car’s owner claims that these were built with more care and craft than the other W220 S-class variants — a one-off showcase that enjoyed the full gamut of Mercedes-Benz technologies and quality. Is that true? I’m not sure, and there’s no time to research this claim here. But it’s a nice story.
This 2006 S65 AMG is available for sale from Europa Touring Ltd.
]]>
Moonstone is a rare, lilac-ish color offered by Porsche from 1979-1980.
You probably have never seen it in person, because only about a dozen people ordered it.
Why make an 11-minute video about a single rare, weird Porsche color?
That question never even crossed my mind. It seemed obvious to me, because I knew that Justin would be able to convey his passion and knowledge of this niche subject in an interesting, engaging way. If I could capture and edit it well, it would work.
I first read about Moonstone in the pages of Panorama – the Porsche Club of America’s monthly magazine. One story, in the July 2021 issue, stood out: it was about this guy named Justin, and his pair of 1979/1980 Porsches in this strange color.
I probably read it at the time because I saw the 911SC — a welcome reprieve from the monthly churn of brand new 911-variant first drives — but once I started reading, I was totally drawn in. It was educational, and opened up my eyes to a whole other world of how people enjoy these old cars.
Fast forward to this year, I spent some time with Justin at the Hill Country Rallye, and later, for a photo project. He had moved from Seattle to San Antonio, and I finally got to see the Moonstone cars in person, and hear him speak about finding and owning these unusual cars. Hearing him talk about color, and what color means to him, was engaging and fascinating. He’s never mentioned “value” or “resale” in any discussion we’ve ever had — not once.
It struck me that I should commit this to video. The article in Panorama — titled “Moonstone Destiny,” and written and photographed by Randy Wells — was brilliant, but I wanted to expand on it, using Justin’s own words, and I wanted more people to have the chance to see it. Of all the car videos out there, how many are about one paint color? The idea of making the definitive video about Moonstone was appealing (even though I arguably have the definitive video about the Toyota Harrier Zagato, and the views have not exactly been gangbusters!).
Justin was immediately onboard, and brought his own ideas to the project. He chose all the music, and had the idea to setup a timelapse video.
“No one has ever captured this color in that way,” he said, and he described how a timelapse could show how it shifts as the light changes. He then did everything he could do facilitate our shoot, by setting aside time, providing hospitality, and even finding a secure parking lot where we could shoot the timelapse.
Filming everything went smoothly, but I knew that capturing the color would be a challenge. If you make a video about a car color, you better represent it accurately, and this color is notorious for fooling the camera’s white balance reading (White balance is a camera setting that establishes the true color of white). For example, at sunset, white might appear beige or orange, and at night, white may appear blue or purple-ish. The camera meters this, and adjusts accordingly. Moonstone, however, is close enough to white that if you focus on it, the camera can read it as white, and compensate for it by shifting it closer to white.
A solution is to manually set the white balance: show the camera true white, so it doesn’t try to correct the scene. But still, I ended up having to make adjustments in editing. I thought about bringing a swatch book, so I could have a sample to refer to when I got home, but I ruled against it. Color is emotional. When editing, I adjusted for how it looked to my eyes in the moment, which may have differed from a Pantone sample or a calculated RGB figure.
All that said, I hope people enjoy this, or at least learn something new! It’s always a treat when I can step back from being on-screen in my videos, and focus on telling someone’s story from behind the camera. I like making tutorials, but I think things like this are crucial to growing and improving as a videographer.
Watch Moonstone: A Life in Color on YouTube
Follow Justin on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/33bosshog/
This post originally appeared on Substack.
I drive different cars, and some of them stay with me. The Porsche 914, for reasons I can’t quite understand, is one of those cars. And yes, I realize that in my previous post, I declared, “I don’t like writing car reviews.”
The 914 is the last regular Porsche model I had previously never driven. (Except for the 912)
It was a mid-engined, targa-top two-seater produced from 1969-1976, and a joint-venture between Porsche and Volkswagen. If you believed critics, it leaned too heavily on the Volkswagen side of things.
This isn’t the time or place to get into ‘who built what’ or ‘badge-engineered-this.’ For valid and also invalid reasons, the 914 has been considered uncool for my entire lifetime, and relatively worthless for the majority of it.
This car is a 1973 914 in Delphi Green, with the 1.7 liter flat four. The engine is loud and clattery, and the exhaust — there’s no nice way to put this — sounds like farts. It has no power brakes, no power steering, and an inexplicably heavy clutch.
The seats, which have a stunning modernist and minimal design, are actually very uncomfortable, and I could distinctly feel a horizontal support bar from the seat frame resting against the middle of my spine at all times.
<here comes the dramatic turn>
But this car charmed me. Maybe it’s the novelty — the 1.7 liter motor makes 79 horsepower, but feels like fewer — so you use the car differently than you would a conventional car. Likewise, during this extreme summer heat, you wouldn’t want to drive it in the middle of the day, so it’s more of an occasion to plan a drive around sunrise or sunset. The limitations make it more of an event.
Pretty much everything I’ve listed so far sounds negative, but there are lots of positives: the ergonomics are perfect for driving (aside from the seat, for me). You sit low on the floor, but with excellent visibility thanks to the super-low beltline. Shifts from the dogleg 5-speed gearbox (from the 901 family) are pleasant and predictable. The steering is tight and firm. It has the slender, ‘blade’-style turn signal stalk from the 924 (or rather, I suppose the 924 signal stalk comes from this).
The motor, which I criticized before, is clattery, raw, and loud. The controls feel like a 911, but you sit lower, and it takes bumps far better. It’s never floaty like a 356. It feels surprisingly wide, and it’s planted — not by way of having tons of grip, but simply from being lightweight (about 2090 lbs), and having a low center of gravity.
I held onto the 914 over a long weekend, and I found myself looking for excuses to take it out for a short drive and shoot a few more photos. The fact that it has a sub-adequate amount of power puts you into a different mindset, like it’s not even a real car. It is essentially a toy.
How can that be a good car? Or even a good second car? I’m not sure. These days, not a lot of car experiences offer the ability to surprise. This one did that.
]]>Originally shot in Spring 2021
M&K Dual Inlet Single Outlet Sport Muffler (MKM27) installed to a Dansk SSI heat exchanger setup, and replacing the Dansk muffler.
The car has Dansk SSI heat exchangers (think headers, but with plumbing to accomodate for cabin heating), and it used to have the Dansk 2-in-1-out muffler that came with them. This upgrade to the M&K 2-in-1-out 'Sport' muffler looks about the same from outside, and is just a bit louder, but it has way more character. It screams. Can't say I feel a massive performance difference, but the volume gives it the feeling of more urgency and sense of speed.
Work performed by Modern Aircooled in Houston, TX.
Hear it in action:
Removal and installation photos:
Ever wonder what gear people use to shoot fancy car auctions and listings?
I've talked a lot about techniques for these types of shoots, but I've never talked about the gear, until now.
A big part of this type of shoot is being able to work quickly and efficiently, and I think I’ve gotten my kit down to the essentials that allows me shoot everything I need, at a fairly high standard, with the least amount of fuss.
Gear shown in this video (commissions earned):
Nikon Z 6 II FX-Format Mirrorless Camera Body w/NIKKOR Z 24-70mm
Nikon Z 7 FX-Format Mirrorless Camera Body
NIKON NIKKOR Z 70-200mm f/2.8 S Telephoto Zoom Lens
B+W 77mm Master Circular Polarizer MRC Nano Glass Filter
Peak Design Travel Tripod (aluminum)
Peak Design Travel Tripod (carbon)
Peak Design Slide Lite Camera Strap
]]>
A lesson that I’ve learned about myself (and re-learned), is that I don’t enjoy writing reviews. Cars, products — whichever. Giving impressions and showing the features is like pulling teeth for me, and I feel obligated to cover every single aspect, which, coincidentally, I’m also bad at doing. But I like creating something else — telling the history, or measuring the impact. Framing something as a story or even a documentary opens up a million possibilities for me.
It’s with this mindset that I eagerly approached the Toyota Harrier Zagato, a fascinating and weird collaboration between Toyota and Zagato that I’ve long been interested in. Someone could make a great car review, but to me it seemed like a better opportunity to trace the history and answer the question: how did this happen?
I traveled to Ohio to drive the only one in the United States, and to uncover some of the hidden history behind this car.
It was a uniquely appealing challenge to research a car that has been entirely un-researched in the west. This car came and went in 1998, before the internet as we know it, so there’s almost nothing out there, and even the basic timing was a mystery when I went into this.
I really aimed to put together the most complete English-language history, and in the process, I even found the design sketch of the Harrier Zagato in a book, which has never been digitized until now.
Huge thanks to Myron Vernis and Bradley Brownell for the opportunity to make this happen.
“Actually, it makes a lot of sense to ship a car halfway across the country so I can drive it in a different place for the summer.”
The words sound absurd even as I’m saying them, but by the fifth or sixth run-through, my denial and confidence grow to the point where I have no trouble believing the line.
Oregon is a beautiful place to drive. Thanks to my friend Daniel Sloan, I’ve gotten to see the far reaches of the Beaver State (actual nickname) on nearly a dozen road trips over the years. When he offered to garage my 911SC for the summer, so I could experience Oregon from behind my own familiar steering wheel, it seemed like a fun plan. Plus, I’d be beating the sweltering Texas heat, which is generally unpleasant in a 40+ year-old car with a lot of glass and no AC to speak of.
Plans were made, a car was delivered, and over the last weekend in June, I joined Daniel and a group of friends on a birthday weekend in Summer Lake, Oregon.
With highs in the 70s (°F) and lows in the 40s, it was just what I needed. With non-existent internet and nowhere to be, the weekend was relaxing and laid-back, but there was still time for a few activities, with visits to the Paisley Caves, Fort Rock, and the Summer Lake Wildlife Area.
There and back, plus a lengthy photo detour on the return trip, came out to about 700 miles, and, honestly, I was thrilled for just about every one of them. Seeing these familiar and unfamiliar roads out of the Porsche 911 windshield was a treat that I couldn’t get over. I look forward to going back.
I take car photography seriously, not just as a job or hobby, but also because I believe that documenting cars and covering motorsports through the eras can be culturally and artistically significant, and as such I always want to pay respect to the people that shot the pictures that I find inspiring.
And that brings me to this photo.
The title is often listed as “John Cobb drives the Napier-Railton on a record run at Brooklands”, or, in other places it’s called “John Cobb in the 24-litre Napier-Railton taking the 'bump' on the Members' Banking in 1935.”
And the photographer… is unknown.
The Napier-Railton was an airplane-engined car, built on the grounds of the Brooklands Circuit in Weybridge, England. It set the the all time track record, averaging 143.44mph, a record that was never broken.
In the photo, it’s hitting the bump on the banking, and has all four wheels off the ground. We have this amazing low perspective, we see the movement from the car, and it’s a great composition of a dramatic foreground and a background that gives you a sense of the circuit and the scale.
There’s a more detailed caption of the photo from OldMachinePress.com:
Cobb takes flight as the Napier-Railton transitions over the River Wey to the Railway Straight and Brooklands. The bridge over the river created a bump that caused faster cars to become airborne, an indication of how Brooklands was a rough track. The image illustrates both the enlarged scuttle and the rear shield added to protect the driver. Note the bar-less radiator housing.
I was reminded of how much of an impact this photo had on me when I visited the Brookands Circuit, and saw the track, the banking, and the Napier-Railton in person. When you go to Brooklands, this photo is almost a mascot of the museum. It’s not obscure, you can buy postcards of it, refrigerator magnets, posters, and it’s a prominent part of the museum’s branding.
Once I got home, I thought it would be a worthwhile challenge to see if I could find out who the photographer was, and put credit where credit is due. Unfortunately, my 20 minutes of Googling came up with nothing. It comes up in lots of places, but the credit is usually only listed as Brooklands Museum Archive, or another archive image library.
So I contacted the Brooklands Museum to see if they can help me track down the photographer. It was a long shot, but I thought maybe there was a slight chance they knew, but no one had listed it on the website.
Within just a few days, a friendly staff member from the museum trust responded, and provided a little bit of added backstory:
I can confirm the photo is part of the Brooklands Museum Collection.
We actually have a photo of several members of the press lying on the track to take the photo, unfortunately I am having trouble find it to show you! I believe there were many shots taken by a number of photographers. I'm not sure of the exact photographer who took the one which is in our collection.
Apologies I couldn't help any further.
I was happy to get that response, and while I was researching that video, I think I found the photo she was talking about! This is a low-res version that’s circulating online. Getty Images has a higher-res version, with this description:
17th May 1937, Surrey, England, John Cobb in his Napier-Railton roars past photographers whilst taking part in the Brooklands Gold Trophy Coronation Race.
Even the dates aren’t consistent: this says 1937, and the other photo is claimed to be 1935.
In all likelihood, we may never know who took the photo, due to the nature of how photos were shot and distributed at the time, but maybe someone has an old book out there that has the names of the photographers who were out there shooting that day.
I would love for this to be resolved, I think it would be incredible to have someone to credit, but I also just wanted to share a little bit about this image that made an big impression on me, and opened my eyes to both car racing and photography in the mid-1930s. I can’t imagine being John Cobb, behind the wheel of that monstrous race car, going 145 on the banking with minimal safety equipment.
But spare a thought for the photographers literally hanging over the track, who were also risking their lives to tell John Cobb’s story.
]]>
My pal Matt Hardigree asked me about including my Photoshops in his Forester story on The Autopian. I said sure, let me provide a brief bit of context. I wrote way too much, and it was banished to here. Enjoy!
My descent into Forester madness began with a week-long road trip through Oregon. The Foresters were everywhere. It’s fine! They’re not hurting anybody. But when you try to start trying to identify and categorize them by generation, that’s when things unravel.
My travel companion and I swore off Wikipedia, and attempted to taxonomize the Forester generation sequence using only deduction and context clues. For nearly seven days, we observed and argued about Foresters. And it broke my brain in a way that I still haven’t recovered from.
Even if you aren’t a car nerd, you can generally tell when a new Camry is released: it’s the Camry that looks a little newer, and a little shinier. Maybe the lights are more complicated. And soon, you’ll notice this Camry is everywhere. Without making any effort, you absorb some amount of information about the new model, as if through osmosis.
With Subaru Foresters, I’m not sure that’s the case.
The ‘new’ Forester rarely looks newer than the previous one. Sure, it’s easy to recognize that any car from 2020 looks different than one from 2007. Trends and cars evolve over time. But put any generation Forester next to its immediate predecessor, and it’s unclear which one came first. And I’m not even getting into the mid-cycle refreshes, which historically have somehow been more visually transformative than the honest-to-goodness generational changes.
It’s not bad styling (well…), and it’s not even necessarily boring styling! I don’t know what it is. It’s accidentally timeless. It’s “we need to refresh the lineup every 5.25 years,” styling, a styling that’s driven not by focus groups, or trends, or a spark in the designer’s eye, but by, maybe… a calendar?
One of these is from 2020, and the other is from 2014. I promise these are un-doctored images of two different Foresters on two entirely different platforms. This is not a facelift.
Lots of cars go on forever, staying exactly the same as they always have. Lots of cars get many updates, only to end up looking basically the same – take the Porsche 911, for example. But, like it not, people look at the 911. For every tweak the factory makes, there are a million nerds to agonize over it, and then a million more nerds to reply to the posts from the first group. That doesn't make that car better or worse than the Forester, it just means that people notice it, study it, and can differentiate small differences.
With the Forester, I’m deeply convinced that almost no one has ever looked at one. Like really taken it in as an object. So it may come as a shock to you (as it did me), that Subaru occasionally will design the same car again on an all-new chassis.
If you haven’t truly looked at the styling of the Subaru Forester, don’t start now. All of my problems started once I started looking.
]]>
Last month I had the chance to attend the 80th Members Meeting at Goodwood Circuit in the UK with some friends. Goodwood has a reputation for being one of the most photogenic race tracks in the world, and I knew that I would regret not taking a few photos.
]]>Last month I had the chance to attend the 80th Members Meeting at Goodwood Circuit in the UK with some friends. Goodwood has a reputation for being one of the most photogenic race tracks in the world, and I knew that I'd regret not taking a few photos.
After an amazing weekend, I came home and realized that the images I took weren't particularly well-suited to posting on social media, or even viewing on a screen, so I put them together into a small book, and printed a small run to give away locally.
Here are the spreads from that book — it's not quite the same as holding the prints in hand, but hopefully this can give a glimpse of the event.
I organized the images into groups based on the exhibition or racing group, here's a little bit of info about those, since some of the classification group names aren't immediately obvious. This isn't all the race groups at the Goodwood Member's Meeting, but these are the ones I shot photos of.
GT1 Demonstration – Celebrating top flight GT racers from the 21s century with some of the GT1 category's most famous machines.
S.F. Edge Trophy – Edwardian racing cars and Aero-engined specials from the early 20th century.
Gordon Spice Trophy – Group 1 saloon cars of a type that raced between 1970 and 1982.
Porsche 911 Celebration – A demonstration run of purpose-built racing 911s from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Porsche 911.
Jim Clark Trophy – A 45 minute, two-driver race for Ford-Lotus Cortina Mk1s.
Gurney Cup – Sports prototypes that raced between 1960 and 1966.
]]>I recently spent a weekend driving a BMW E46 M3 (yes, again), but this time it was a little different: this one was equipped the oft-derided, frequently mocked, resale-value-poisoning Sequential Manual Gearbox (SMG).
A slow-shifting paddle-shift gearbox with Pentium-age processing power must be even worse to drive today... right? Or maybe it's a revelation: an electro-hydraulic gem of analog wizardry, perfectly-matched to the M3's raspy inline-six.
You can read my in-depth impressions over on FCP Euro:
Rediscovering The BMW SMG Transmission: A Hidden Gem or Obsolete Relic?
]]>
A YouTube channel trailer is a short video that lives on the channel’s homepage, and autoplays to non-subscribers who visit. It’s supposed to offer a preview of your channel so viewers can learn more and subscribe.
I created my original trailer in May 2021, which is about a year after I started filming and posting videos to YouTube. In the old trailer, it seemed like a good chance to explain the meaning behind “capturing the machine,” so I combined some clips with a spoken section where I talked to the camera.
This video got a few thumbs-downs, and after uploading, I began to see why: the song was very bouncy-sounding, even at the opening, and combined with the dialogue, it was a lot if you weren’t expecting it. Keep in mind... this video is set to autoplay. If I happened to be viewing my channel homepage, I would pause or mute the video as soon the music came on.
Along with updating the clips with newer footage, it seemed like there was some room for improvement.
Creating a new trailer was a task that had been on the back-burner for me for a while. Not as time-consuming as a normal video, but also not as important, it’s just... nice to have. It probably won’t get a lot of views or educate anyone, but, in the best case, it will look cool.
I didn’t want any voiceover this time, and I knew I had to find a better song.
When you put this sort of thing together, you pull a bunch of clips and drop them into a timeline, and try to have it make sense. It's simple enough, but it's a challenge to have a flow, and to communicate a beginning & end without the structure that a voiceover gives.
Once I found the music — Space Waves by Ben Elson on Epidemic Sound — it all came together. The right song just heightens the visuals, and, together, something magic happens. I'm such a sucker for video footage set to music in a way that aims to get an emotion from the viewer, and I found that even rewatching my own ‘5 Years With My 911’ video for the first time since uploading it was surprisingly poignant.
The final trailer includes some clips from a few of my favorite videos I've shot, plus a few that have yet to be released. I also experimented with a few editing techniques, like speed ramping and new title treatments. My goal was for it to be 30 seconds, but as these things go, it ended up being a full minute.
I like to think the new trailer is less annoying, and a better summation of the channel.
The DHL Timelapse footage was from a few years ago — here's the story behind it.
]]>This has been my most challenging video to make. The topic is nuanced! There's no one answer that solves everything, and even if there were, it would still be hard to describe, because a CPL filter doesn't have an indicator on it, or a setting that you can reference. There's no listicle that will make this easy.
I almost called this "Circular Polarizers and Cars: Here’s What We Know," to make light of how abstract and hard to articulate this can be. But instead, I've combined many examples, and all my experience, and tried to put together a coherent and thorough video on this topic. I am hopeful that my efforts to put this into words will help you understand CPL filters a little better, and enable you to take better photos with them.
Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:51 What is a CPL Filter?
2:58 When Reflections are Bad
3:55 The Good Reflections
5:48 In Practice
7:06 When Not to Use a CPL Filter
8:15 Every Situation is Different
9:23 Outro
Polarizer at minimum in environment with distracting reflections
Polarizer at maximum in environment with distracting reflections
I've created four different images using the Sirui T120 cinematic LED light, and I'll show you how I made them, and what I think of this tool.
The Sirui T120 Dual-Purpose Telescopic Tube Light is an LED light that extends from about 24 inches to just under 48 inches. Sirui says it has 14 lighting effects, has a variable color temperature range from 2500-8000k, and can be controlled through an app.
The device feels sturdy, and the quality of the beam of light itself is nice and solid, so you don’t see individual bands or LEDs, which is what you should expect from any professional lighting tool, but if you’ve ever used some DIY lighting stuff, this is gonna be a big upgrade over that.
Sow how is it to use?
Shot 1
For this first shot, I had an idea where I wanted to shoot a car from a high angle, and with the help of my friend Jordan and his Porsche shop Modern Aircooled, we put this plan into motion.
I set up a camera upstairs, we turned off all the room lights, and we filled the space with some fog to give it some eeriness and haze. I was triggering the camera remotely with my phone, and this made it really easy to experiment and have a good indication of what I was getting. Since our light source is in the frame, shining into the camera, the fog makes it bloom, or glow at the edges, and it helps to visualize the light itself, as if it’s just hanging in the air.
One of the most basic principles of photography is that you create a more interesting image when you have the light source at a different angle from the camera. Thats what makes things look good and gives them shape and visual interest. So I wanted to light the opposite side of the car and roof, and leave the side closest to the car dark and in shadow.
And here’s how that came out, I did ramp up the contrast and tweak the colors to get the look I was going for.
Shot 2
For this one, I had set the light down on the ground, and I was moving around the car, and I thought this just looked cool, seeing the reflection in the door and seeing the light itself. So, that’s the shot, the fog helps to make this a little more interesting.
Shot 3
For the third shot, it was kind of the same thing, Jordan was assisting me, and he picked up the light while I was setting up this rear camera angle, and it just looked so cool seeing the car in silhouette and the fog all lit up. He held it at various heights, and this was This is the horizontal version, I think I was envisioning a vertical crop on just the tail for instagram, otherwise I would have tried to light the front and get some definition around the full car.
A lot of times you go into something with an idea, but the coolest thing is the accidental one that you don’t plan for, and that was definitely the case here.
Shot 4
And finally, I did a really basic light painting shot, just trying to light the car evenly, and include some of the background cars in the shot. It was two 13 second exposures, I made a pass along each side of the car, and then combined these in photoshop using the Screen blending mode, and carefully trying to mask out myself where I ended up in the shot.
I think the haze made it harder for this, because it made it harder to hide the light, and easier to appear up in the shot. Even if I was blocking the light from appearing in the camera with my body, the glow from it gets picked up in the fog, and shows through. For a quick shot, I think this came out alright, and if we were in a bigger space or outdoors, you could probably light the car from farther away without being in the shot.
]]>Putting the Rivian R1T — and Rivian's new charging network — to the test, along California's scenic Route 395.
I’ve always been fascinated by car specs and stats. When you’re young, they’re your only measure for how cars stack up against one another. As you mature, they become less important as a car comparison tool, and instead, more of an almanac of feats of automotive technology. The most impressive and hyperbolic numbers become an indicator of the peak performance and technology of the era — the numbers that we’ll judge future vehicles against.
As the world moves toward electrification, the numbers keep getting higher than ever. With EVs, we’re presented with horsepower figures so fantastical, they almost don’t register anymore. Maybe someday, we’ll find new numbers to quantify power. Maybe horsepower will be a measurement of the past.
But today isn’t that day. Today, we’re now in the age of the 835-horsepower electric pickup truck.
The Rivian R1T is the first production vehicle from Rivian, an American electric vehicle-maker based in Irvine, California, and the numbers are only part of the story.
This highly anticipated truck is what Rivian calls the world’s first Electric Adventure Vehicle, and it is a production truck with a lot of power, a lot of battery cells, a lot of motors (4), and a lot of knowhow and development behind it. You don’t feel like you’re in an early prototype when you drive the R1T, or a transitional step towards something just over the horizon; it’s a complete, fully realized idea. Behind the wheel, it feels like you could be driving the 3rd generation of R1T.
I drove what is essentially the launch configuration, which consists of a 135 kWh battery pack, quad motors (one at each wheel). The base MSRP, as of this writing, is $73,000. If you can find one.
The Trip
For this trip, I joined my regular collaborator Daniel Sloan in Los Angeles, and we drove the R1T over Angeles Crest to California’s Inyo county in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. This area is home to Alabama Hills, Mount Whitney, and Death Valley, and to me, it’s one of the most beautiful parts of the country. I’ve really wanted to do a trip where this is the destination, rather than a stop along the way.
The town of Lone Pine is only about 4 hours away from L.A., but because it’s separated by the highest mountains in the contiguous U.S., it seems remote and isolated. When you’re there, it feels like a beautiful pocket of California that remains relatively untouched by development.
We had planned some hikes and a bit of off-roading, and set aside time for whatever trails and roads we came across that we wanted to explore.
Driving Impressions
Our trip spanned about 700 miles of highways, winding roads, trails, and gravel. The R1T weighs over 7,100 pounds, but big brakes, wide 275-section tires, and 908 lb-ft of torque do a lot to offset that, so it always feels responsive to your inputs. The weight is there, but it’s well managed.
On the highway, it’s quiet, fast, and effortless. You’ll find the usual suite of driver aid features, such as adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist, called Driver+.
I was impressed by how dense and solid it feels, sort of like a Mercedes G-class — you know it’s heavy, but everything feels bolted down. When you go on gravel in a lot of modern pickup trucks, you hear lots of shuddering and rattling happening around you. The Rivian just doesn’t do that.
We found some mud and some pretty steep trails, and while we didn’t put it through an extreme off-road test, we were impressed by how well composed it was everywhere we took it. The tires are so big and the ground clearance is so high that a lot of dips and undulations that might be a challenge in a smaller off-roader, become a non-issue in the R1T. There are various drive modes that optimize the R1T for different conditions, and it’s fun to try those, or you can just put it in All-Purpose mode and let the truck figure out what’s best.
An off road EV offers the ability to use electric power not just for impressive 0-60 times, but to lever four individual motors to precisely modulate torque between four wheels, in ways impossible with internal combustion. I find this potential very exciting, it’s similar to how hill descent control uses computerized, individual braking at each wheel to prevent you from slipping.
One thing that didn’t sit well with me is that the amount of regenerative braking varied in some situations. After we fully charged the battery, the vehicle display warned us that regenerative braking was disabled, and sure enough, if you lifted off the power, it just coasted forward. I understand that if the battery is full it can’t harvest more energy, but above everything else, for safety reasons, the behavior of lifting of the accelerator should be consistent unless you tell it otherwise. If you lift, and expect it to slow down, and it doesn’t do that, that seems bad.
Styling
I do like how this truck looks, and after spending some time with it, and seeing it clean, dirty, and in the landscape, it has grown on me even more. The shape is taut and sculpted, and it just kind of goes against the angry, aggressive trend of every other pickup truck. The lighting at the front and rear is futuristic and shooting this truck out in nature was like nothing else I’ve photographed before.
The interior is a smart design that uses nicely finished materials like ash wood, brushed metals, and vegan leather. It’s a premium, luxury interior, but at the same time, I didn’t feel bad hopping in with muddy or dusty shoes, because the mats are a weave that look like they’re easy to clean.
UI
Inside, there are two big displays… and almost everything is on one of these screens. These screens look nice, and I like how they’re integrated into the cabin, but the usability leaves a little to be desired.
This isn’t a very original complaint, I know, but to do just about anything, you go through the center display. Unlocking the doors is done through the touchscreen, and adjusting a vent position, or changing the volume, requires multiple taps or gestures.
And for the few physical controls that remain – there are two stalks, and a few thumb control buttons on the steering wheel — those all have to do multiple functions.
So the thumb button that skips between music tracks also toggles between menus on the screen, depending on context. For how my brain works, not having that spatial consistency leaves me without confidence whenever I hit a button. Maybe you get used to it, but it’s hard to see the benefit of stripping away so many control inputs, and making everything require more steps, more adjusting, more getting used to it.
Charging
In a remarkable coincidence, a month before this trip, Rivian built its first three fast-charging stations, and two of them were along our route: Inyokern and Bishop, California (the third is in Salida, Colorado).
I can say with certainty that our trip was made easier and more enjoyable because of these charging stations. The DC fast chargers promise up to 140 miles of range in 20 minutes, which seemed spot on — we fully charged our R1T to 280 miles in a little over an hour. These chargers are free for Rivian vehicles, and there’s no card or app required, it just plugs in and works.
Rivian has many more charging stations planned nationwide, and I think it’s very cool that there are less powerful Level 2 chargers at every station that are open to other EVs.
Conclusion
The Rivian R1T is a compelling truck and a totally unique proposition: an attractive, fully-electric off-road vehicle.
The numbers that this truck puts up will be eclipsed by other EVs, and other trucks, but after spending a few days with the R1T, it’s clear that that won’t matter. We will see this truck as a significant milestone, and great execution of an idea. I think it could be a while before we see a competitor offer a more appealing package.
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In the past, I have bought a new camera body once every 4-5 years years. But this year… I’ve bought two cameras. Today I’m going to talk about what prompted this switch, and how it has impacted the way I work.
You could watch anyone do a camera review, but I’m going to give you some observations based on real world experience, shooting over 18,000 photos with these cameras.
I’ll cover some of the main benefits I’ve noticed, which are:
1. Video
2. Stabilization
3. Native Live view
4. Screen quality
5. Speed
A mirrorless camera isn’t going to make you a better photographer, and your pictures aren’t going to be dramatically better. But there are some convenience things that make it nicer, making your quality of life a little better, and you might gain a few capabilities, such as more usable video, that will make you more marketable as a photographer.
]]>What is a photographer’s review? Is this just a contrived way of doing new car content on my car photography channel? Maybe! I look at practical (and some niche) things, like ease of use, maneuverability, cargo access, how it photographs, and how it drives.
The Kia EV6 is a new electric vehicle that boasts up to 310 miles of range, and stylish design, in a wagon-like crossover form factor. Currently, there aren’t a lot of appealing-looking EVs from non-luxury brands, but that is changing quickly, and Kia aims to make its mark on that segment with the EV6.
I was invited to drive the EV6 around Napa, California, and I’ll give you some insights into the driving, usability, and design of the Kia EV6, based on how I used the car — as a photographer.
]]>There are 470 auctions on Bring-A-Trailer at the time of this recording. Next week there will be 470 different listings. So what can you do to make your listing stand out? Originally, this video was going to be me identifying what I think will be "Bring a Trailer photo trends for 2022," but as I got into it, I quickly realized …these aren’t trends. The vast majority of listings on the site are going to look similar to one another, inevitably, because they’re all showing …cars from the front three-quarter angle view, and there’s only so much you can do to mix that up.
It's been 18 months since my previous guide to shooting Bring-A-Trailer photo sets. Since then, I have shot something like 25 listings, and I've adjusted and fine tuned my process a little bit. So I thought I would do an update on what I think are good techniques for shooting car listings in 2022.
]]>This video explores the history and my ties to Rattlesnake Bomber Base.
The site of Pyote Air Force Base is not publicly accessible, and is on private land owned by the University of Texas.
Images from 2014:
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The 24-70 f 2.8 is relatively expensive lens that offers a ton of versatility and a wide f/ 2.8 aperture throughout the whole range of zoom.
Here's why I hate using it.
It really boils down to this: 1) I don't like these focal lengths, and 2) I think it's a bulky compromise.
This isn’t about sharpness at the edges or how fast it autofocuses. Nothing technical. This is about do I take good photos at 24mm, 30mm, 35 mm? And the answer is no. To eliminate this lens from my process, I rely on two primes, and my 70-200.
Let me know if you think I'm way off base in the comments (please be nice)
]]>Autopia 2099 is a show for all cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and mobility solutions powered by electrons. Battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids will take priority, but there is room for hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to join the party as well. And what a party it’s going to be. You should come!
I will be there, and I can't wait. I have worked hard on the graphics and look and I think it will be really special!
Where: Optimist Studios, 5431 West 104th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90045
When: December 4, 2021
Tickets available here!]]>Radwood SoCal 2021 was an amazing time. In this short recap, I talk about my favorite cars and what makes Radwood so special.
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Panning is a photo technique where you move the camera to follow a subject in motion. The background becomes motion blurred, but the subject stays sharp, giving the image a sense of speed.
I created a video with some tips that I've found helpful, and thoughts about not only taking the shot, but where to set up and point the camera.
Here are some panning shots from the weekend at SVRA. Forgive all the dust on the lens 😂
]]>When I marked 3 years, I made a blog post.
To mark 5 years, I created this video.
This video was challenging to make because I really wanted it to be special.To celebrate this occasion, I've put together a short summary about the car and my experiences with it.
It's often a prop in my videos and photos, but I haven't made a video about it, so here it is.
Here's to however many more years! I need to stop marking these milestones because it's making me realize how fast time flies.
]]>It was an honor to create this video tribute to a Porsche 912 and its amazing owner, George Vaccaro. George picked up this 1967 912 in Germany at the factory, and then cherished, drove, and displayed it for 54 more years.
George's daughters are dedicated to honoring their father’s legacy by sharing the story of his beloved 1967 Porsche 912, and finding its next steward who will enjoy the car as much as he did.
The 912 auction on Bring-a-Trailer can be found here.
Main photo by Courtney Frisk
]]>It’s called Viewfinders, here are the first few episodes:
Viewfinders 01: Huseyin Erturk
Viewfinders 02: Courtney Frisk
Viewfinders 03: Tag Christof
Viewfinders 04: Douglas Sonders
So far, it has been incredibly fun and enlightening and I look forward to continuing this!
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If you experiment with car photography, you’ve probably tried light painting, which is a technique of using long exposure and a light source to light a car in a dark environment.
I made a video where I explained the variation technique I had used — using a rope light to create a 3D illuminated background that surrounds the car, as well as lighting it.
So I had recorded myself walking with the light to show the process, and to help visualize it, I used this effect in Premiere called Echo. It repeats the video over itself, and I had it doing that like 25 times. I thought it would be a great visualization of the process of moving this light — kind of a bridge between the realtime video and the final photo result.
But that imagery, of all of these crisp strips of light surrounding the car — is so cool.
But that only exists in video, and if I take a screen grab of it, it’s low res. The only photo I have is the long exposure photo I did the tutorial on — which came out as I intended, but suddenly seemed way less interesting.
So I went back to re-create this that as a hi-res photo, and for that I have to thank my friends at Modern Aircooled which is a Porsche shop in Houston, TX for letting me use the space and some cars.
To do this, instead of a long exposure, 20 second photo, I decided I needed to take like 30 photos and then stack them in Photoshop.
You can see the full tutorial in the video:
I came pretty close and I enjoy the result! I will definitely experiment with this more, but it’s a really cool look.
Even if you don’t try this, it just shows how important it is to try new things, because in in that process you have other ideas. If you try this, you might stumble upon a different thing, or build on this and do it better. Attempting this or the other long exposure light painting could be the spark that led you to something new.
]]>I’ve driven these roads on Porsche drives, but I rarely get the chance to stop wherever I want and it’s rarely at a photogenic time of day. This was all new to me so I just kinda drove around looking for interesting places.
Below are some of the photos I got in the Hill Country, plus some more I took in downtown Houston.
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It sort of worked!
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I had this strange idea that I wanted to try lighting a car using only its own headlights, via a mirror.
It sort of worked! It’s not entirely practical, but here it is. Maybe with a wider mirror (convex?), it would have a bigger spread, and reveal more of the car, but I kinda like the tight spotlight effect. Honestly, I have gotten worse results using dedicated photo lighting, but that could be user error and a younger me.
I mounted a 22-inch mirror on a light stand, turned the lights on, and aligned the beam of light to point back at the Supra. That's about it! I had envisioned getting the mirror within the shot, so I kept everything pretty close together. Ultimately, having the mirror and the car in the frame wasn't my favorite.
I used an 8-foot ladder to get more of a top-down perspective, and shot with my Nikon D850 on manual mode, exposing for the brightest parts of the direct-lit yellow paint, and letting the rest fall into the black shadows.
The lead photo is f/2.8, 1/100th of a second, and ISO 800.
My 24-70 lens was at 40 mm.
The smoke, from a cheapy Amazon smoke machine, was an attempt to make the light easier to visualize, and I think it adds something. I'm not sure if this is a technique I'll repeat, but maybe it will springboard a new idea.
I would try this with a 911, but my SC has to be idling to have the headlights on, and that sounded to be too noisy.
I plan to have some more traditional photos of the 2021 Toyota GR Supra 3.0, and a video, in the next week or so!
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