As always, I like to post up the unpublished photos from the shoots that I do for the various publications that I work for. Since the Super Street 2013 Honda Issue has now come and gone, I can now unload the rest of the photos here on the site. Today we are going to take a look at the photos from Yoon Saechao’s feature. I made a trip to the Northwest a couple months ago specifically looking for cars for the Honda Issue and Yoon’s Civic was one of the tops on my list. He had a really clean build that he had recently completed and since not too many people were aware of it, it was the perfect choice for the Honda Issue. It not only had a timeless quality about it, but it was almost a relative unknown. The best part about it was that he had a build thread going on the NWP4LIFE forums that was updated in a way that wouldn’t reveal that his project was completed until right around the time when the issue dropped…

I was originally notified of Yoon’s build through a friend of his. I had made a public post on Facebook indicating that I was looking for Hondas to shoot while I was in the Northwest and his friend contacted me. Not soon after, I got an email from Yoon himself and he explained that he would try his best to get his car out to Seattle while I was there. He had spent the last few days trying to finish everything up but since he was from Oregon, he had to make a drive up to Seattle and wanted to make sure that everything was in working order. I liked the build and immediately set-up a date to meet up with him. He was incredibly easy to work with and communication was fast, even though it was just mainly through email. I was a little worried that he wouldn’t have his car ready in time but he came through when it mattered and that is how he ended up in the Super Street Honda Issue…

One thing that I don’t believe that many people knew about the shoot that day was that even with everything seemingly falling in place, there was a huge possibility that it wasn’t going to happen. While on his drive up to Seattle the morning of the schedule shoot, he ran into problems with the car pulling very hard to the right. He didn’t know what the issue was and didn’t have a whole lot of time to fix it but he luckily had his cousins with him in a support vehicle that followed closely behind. The erratic weather of the Northwest didn’t help either, as the rain made it increasingly difficult to keep his car from driving smoothly. It wasn’t until he met up with me and a couple of my friends from the Northwest did we realize that one of his axles was almost completely disconnected from the transmission. It turns out that he had the wrong axles in the car and it caused them to not seat correctly on the car. The car was pulling hard in one direction because he was basically driving on just one axle. The other was probably fighting for dear life to stay on. In any case, I commend him for pulling through and actually making it to the shoot, otherwise we would not be a witness to his hard work and we would be a car short for the Honda Issue that was already running on a very short deadline. I don’t recommend anyone doing what Yoon did though. It is dangerous and I would prefer that you guys alleviate any problems you have before you attempt to make a long drive like the one he made. Most of the time during the shoot, we barely even moved the car. When we did Yoon either drove it very gingerly or we had friends push the car around. After the shoot wrapped-up, Yoon attempted to fix the car by looking for the right axles all over the city but had no luck. Instead of risking any accidents or imminent danger, he made the smart choice of having the car towed back home….

Another interesting tidbit that I would like to add is the location of the shoot. It was a very picturesque location and I thought that it was very fitting of the Northwest, especially considering the trees and the grey skies in the back drop. The area we shot at was actually private property. It was a printing shop that actually looked a lot like an old church. I had been scouting locations the days prior to the shoot and thought that this was a good spot. It was a Saturday so the printing place would be closed and I wouldn’t disturb anyone from operating their business. I was just worried that they would have video surveillance on hand and we would ultimately get kicked-out of the location. I showed up maybe an hour before Yoon and crew arrived and the spot was desolate. We were good, so I thought… When we later pulled up, I saw an elderly gentleman staring at us from the balcony of the printing place. He not only saw us, but heard us coming already because we had a couple of cars with modified exhausts that weren’t exactly quiet. There was a brief moment when I thought that we should leave but I saw that he had walked back inside the building and so I went to the front door and rang the door bell. He opened up and explained that I was from California. I was there strictly for print work and he was quite generous about letting us use his place to shoot. I told him that we wouldn’t be a disturbance and that it would only take a couple of hours. He said that it wasn’t a problem at all and we could do whatever we wanted as long as we weren’t in the way of his shipment that was supposed to come in later. I obliged, shook his hand, and a couple months later, you get to see Yoon’s Civic on the pages of Super Street magazine…. All in a days work, I guess…

The images below are both the unpublished images and the web versions of the images that made it to print in the 2013 Honda Issue. If you want to see larger versions of any of the images, simply click on the image themselves and it’ll enlarge for you. Save them if you want, distribute them, but please do NOT alter them in any way, especially with the watermarks. I want you guys to be able to save these and enjoy them later at your convenience, just don’t fuck with them. It’s common sense really, but today’s world seems to be a little lacking. Anyways, enjoy and thanks for looking. Thanks to Yoon, his fiance’ Cindy, and his family for making the trek out to Seattle. And thanks to the guys like Jeff Diaz, Tai Akigami, Steve Kwan, and others from Trikspeed for helping out during the shoot. These days were a huge help in a city that I was unfamiliar with and I owe it all to them for making me feel comfortable…

The above shot was actually originally planned as an alternate shot for the cover of the Super Street Honda Issue, if head editor Jonathan Wong had decided to use Yoon’s Civic as the cover car. Ultimately Reggie Mah’s Integra Type R was chosen as the cover car but it was a tough decision…

Here is a LINK to his original build thread on NWP4LIFE.COM

Thanks for looking.