After another long break from my regular Cars & Coffee attendance (who thought school would require so much homework!) I woke up bright and early on a Saturday morning to drive over to the Aliso Viejo Town Center to see what the latest round of other earlybirds brought to the meet. Continue reading
The time had come again to attend one of the many local parking lot meets hosted by “TheBigBangMeets” that rove around the general Southern California area, filling unsuspecting shopping center parking lots with a slew of modified local(ish) rides. Continue reading
I only spent an hour or so at The Chronicles: Year Six, but damn if it isn’t consistently my favorite meet of every year. Of everything I saw this Corolla was probably my favorite and I could (should) have spent my entire time at the meet with it. Continue reading
This was my first year attending the Spocom show, held in the Anaheim Convention Center…in Anaheim. I have to say I was not the least bit disappointed with the quality or sheer number of cars in attendance, because there certainly were PLENTY, but I must have shown up at the wrong time or maybe I just wasn’t properly prepared because I was struggling the entire time to get usable shots both outside and inside due to some gnarly lighting concerns that were honestly out of anyone’s direct control. I really should have brought a tripod for the indoor shots, a lesson that would be drilled into me throughout the day as I was shooting exposures that were waaay too long for my caffeine-addled hands to keep still on a regular basis, and outdoors the combination of direct sunlight and shade made getting clean shots of everyone posted up out front equally difficult. As if that weren’t enough to contend with, there was a protester (or two, I didn’t get close enough to them to find out) with a bullhorn screaming at everyone that the proceeds of the show were going to fund al-qaeda, among other statements designed to incite people’s tempers. Basically, I was laughing so hard at all the B.S. coming out of this guy’s mouth it was hard to get a steady shot! I was honestly proud of everyone attending the show because I KNOW there were at least a handful of people about to give this guy their opinion of him via their fists, but everyone restrained themselves and interacted with this jerk in peaceful, mostly non-offensive ways (I definitely heard a few f*ck-off’s, but hey, they were deserved). With all of this going on, it was still a great show that I definitely plan on attending next year and honestly, what’s going to shoot a show without a little challenge, right?
Anyway, here is part 1 of my coverage of Spocom 14, which will focus on what was just outside the convention center itself before the ticket booth and everything. It was a cool idea to have a big group of cars out front because if you didn’t know there was a huge car show going on, there was really no other way to know about it since there weren’t exactly huge banners flying out in front of Disneyland. I heard a few owners complaining about being put outside of the show itself as if it were some form of disrespect, but I feel like it’s the complete opposite to be outside enticing people to come in! Not only that, but the guys out front had considerably better lighting and backgrounds for photographers! Since I have SO many shots from this show, I’ll be brief with my words for the remainder of this post, enjoy!
A couple of weeks ago I got a random facebook invite to check out the Negative Stance X Rubbin’ Pavements meet, held in Huntington Beach. Usually I end up driving up and down an assortment of freeways and unknown streets to make it to a good meet that meets all the essentials: good lot, well lit, good cars, won’t get busted for people driving stupidly, but to my surprise this was being held about 3 miles from my house!
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Before hitting up the Extreme Dimensions show this past Saturday, I also woke up at the crack of 5 to brave the crowds and check out Toyota’s new FT-1, designed by California-based Calty design studio (who recently worked on the FT-HS, and Lexus LF-LC). “FT” to stand for “Future Toyota” and “1” to represent “the ultimate”.
Today I had the opportunity to make it out to Cars & Coffee in Irvine from 6 AM until 9 (more on that in a later post) and had gone home for a short nap before heading over to Fullerton for Extreme Dimension’s 8th Charity Car Show that is free to participate in and hosts a raffle with various pieces of Extreme Dimensions bodywork to be had for prizes. I was far too busy to wait and listen to raffle numbers being read off however, I had TONS of cars to pick through and shoot!
I was immediately greeted by this threateningly squatted blob-eye WRX that looked like it was ready for some serious track abuse. Continue reading
Today we resume where I left off before to finish up my shots from the Wekfest parking lot! We return to the sun-soaked pavement surrounding Long Beach’s Queen Mary to take a peek at the show outside the show.
I thought I had properly prepared myself to attend Wekfest this year, but as soon as I got out of my car and saw the line I knew I had a LOT of time before I was getting in. General admission was not until 1:30PM and the line was already hundreds, if not a couple thousand people long. While it’s awesome for the guys putting on the show that attendance is higher than ever, but for someone trying to get in and take pictures…it’s a different story. So rather than slowly sear myself on the asphalt, I decided to take a stroll around the parking lot to check out some of what the Wekfest audience was rolling around in. Keep in mind many of these cars may have been in the parking lot because they chose not to show, either because they are a work in progress or because they simply aren’t interested in building a “show car” and the main reason I go out to shoot parking lots is to see what trends carry over and what are presumably daily drivers. 
There’s not too much I can add word-wise that I didn’t talk about in my first post, but part 2 will be covering the main part of the show hosted on the grassy section where the bulk of the cars were located. No doubt you’ve seen a few shots of this insanely cambered Q45 (Y33 Cima) on rarely seen 3-spoke Work Equips from Low ‘N Slow, it had a primo spot and had the craziest wheel setup at the show. It’s not surprising this look has caught on so quickly; it’s dangerous, difficult to properly achieve, and it came from Japan!
Hobbaswaggle!© 