It started in high school when I got my first Super Street magazine and it was then when I got addicted to tearing out pages of my favorite pictures and pasting them in a huge collage on my walls (this was after I got over Britney Spears). Close friends and I also collected car show flyers from Hot Import Nights with the pictures of Natashi Yi and KT So on the foreground with a Bomex fitted Supra in the background. It was an infatuation and a never ending mission to collect every single picture of my favorite cars and models.
After high school, I was able to get some old Japanese Option magazines which broadened my knowledge of Japanese tuners. It was then when I first saw hints of the VIP, shakotan, drift and wagonist styles in pictures.
After I got rid of my first few Integras I was determined to build a VIP Aristo (GS300), but reality hit when I saw how much it would've cost to do some of the basic upgrades to even get started to look semi-VIP. Plus gas on that V6 was not helping me get closer to saving any cash I could've spent on fixing the car.
At that point I could only dream of owning a car with stance and enough negative camber to make my car look like a space ship. I only had magazines and I obsessively collected them, barely read them but drooled over the splash pages of these cars in Japanese scenery.
This time in Japan, I was fortunate to have met a relative of my wife that was just into two of the same things I live for: alcohol and cars. We actually started off getting along because we both were the only ones drinking at dinner and I realized that this guy was not drinking moderately, where I was trying to hold back to be polite to the family. We ended up ordering round after round talking about cars for hours. It was the moment that defined our relationship and I finally felt like family.
The best part of being related to Makoto ni-chan is that he has connections with other car lovers and they drive cars that they build and tune themselves. I took this opportunity to break in my new camera and to emulate some of the pictures I saw in those Japanese magazines that I obsessed over. I don't discriminate when it comes to what kind of car I shoot, if it's lowered with wheels that fill in the fenders and flush with body lines, you got me. In my opinion, ANY car with the right wheel selection, ride height matched with the right offset and rubber stretch will look awesome.
With a broken Speedlite that only fires with Pilot, I managed to pull off some successful night shots with the help of my wife a.k.a. The Assistant, and me the running "strobist," we were able to pull it off in the freezing cold. We found this awesome location at a Mitsubishi factory somewhere in the industrial streets in Himeji. The smoke from the factories and the industrial backgrounds really set the mood I was looking for.
It was late at night and it was freezing and we ended up shooting for 3 hours, fine tuning each shot and making sure each shot count. Standing in the middle of the street was not a problem but when a car would pass by we would get some suspicious looks at what we were doing. We used the other passer-byers as an advantage for background lighting.
After hours standing in the cold, scraping bottoms trying to get into certain spots, and constantly trying new lighting we wrapped things up a little after midnight. There's only one thing to do after a cold night of shooting and that is getting some hot ramen! Thank you to EVERYONE for putting up with the cold and for being so patient!
皆さん、お疲れさまでした！
本当にありがとうございました
