It’s been awhile but we’re back!! 2022 has started off kinda crazy for us over here. Though we haven’t made a video this year, there is so much going on behind the scenes!! While we are busy planning out the rest of 2022, we provide you guys with some updates on Ryan Der’s Civic build, we meet the legendary GReddy RX S-Roc for the first time, Kenji from GReddy tells us a fantastic story about his history with the S-Roc, and I stop by round 2 of the VTEC Club USA event at Buttonwillow Raceway!!
It’s been a while since I’ve been out and about at a car event. Don’t get me wrong, there are no shortage of events here in Southern California. You can literally drive anywhere in the city on a weekend and come across something car-related. I just haven’t been out because I’ve been busy. If you strictly follow my social accounts you’ll notice the lack of activity, but my days are pretty full of tasks. Since I haven’t been able to go back to Japan, I’ve decided to take the time now to start planning for the rest of the year while also completing my third book. The book took me over a year to finally finish but I’m proud to say that it is some of my best work yet—and also currently available for pre-order. Let’s just say that there are a lot of things going on behind-the-scenes and you’ll realize why I haven’t been as active online when the time comes. I’m planning big things. And I’ll leave it at that. A big part of me has been itching to get out and start doing car things again though. Especially now that the grunt work for the book is done. I feel like I can dedicate more of my time now to covering automotive events and shooting cars for fun. I also want to be a supportive friend so when I found out that Round 2 of VTEC Club was happening, I thought I’d make the trek out to Buttonwillow…
Okay, so with the Volume 3 Pre-Orders basically locked and ready to go into production, I’ve been getting quite a bit of requests for people to acquire the entire set (Volume 1, 2, and 3) as a bundle. The original bundle orders went on sale and sold in December but it appears as though many people may have missed out. I did order extras but I can’t guarantee that there will be enough for everyone that needs one.
After carefully putting this next book together over the course of 2021, going through thousands of revisions, I am proud to say that Volume 3: “Somewhere Only We Know” is completed! It comes with a nifty box and everything which you can get now exclusively at http://www.chrncls.com!!
Most of the photos that I captured at The 25 Hours of Thunderhill were done before the event even happened. It was important to document everything that led up to the race itself. The actual ’25 hours’ would be spent just watching the car go around and around, and around, the track. There wasn’t much I could capture. Of course there would be the occasional pit-in but those shots are going to look the same after the first few. We weren’t allowed to go into the pit lane area either since the rules of engagement were pretty strict, so I spent most of my time just filming when I couldn’t get photos. I actually loved the way the Vlog episodes came out, though the view counts are down because it isn’t something my audience typically gravitates towards, but it was expected. I have more fun putting the videos together than I do uploading them. It’s always been that way, lol. I could really care less about views or the monetary compensation that comes from an extra revenue stream like YouTube. It’s all about the content creation for me and an event as unique as this is one that I made sure to give 1000% to. The return on investment is the experience itself. I had an amazing time…
These photos have actually been sitting on my PC desktop for some time now because I’ve been trying to decide on whether or not I should post them up or not. I had this idea that it would be cool to compile some of the best shots and put them into a hard cover book but I’ve been so busy trying to finish Volume 3 that I just haven’t had time. This one wouldn’t be anything intricate, it would just be a small collector’s item type of print and even Aaron from Spoon Sports USA liked the idea. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet and don’t want these photos to go unseen so I figured I’d start putting them up here on the site now. Aaron invited me to come out to the 25 Hours of Thunderhill a few months ago when he started building an FK8 Civic Type R for the endurance competition. I’ve never been to an endurance race before and being a part of anything Spoon Sports-related is usually pretty fun so I agreed to go. I think Aaron has always been appreciative of my work and wanted me out there to capture the behind-the-scenes feel of the event. He told me that it was going to be pretty tiring and most of the time we wouldn’t have much time to sleep at all and it was going to be incredibly cold. All those things occur regularly in my normal life anyway so nothing he told me sounded too daunting, lol. My only condition was that I wanted to bring Der along with me so he could experience the event as well. Aaron had no problem with that and mentioned that we’d be very well taken care of all weekend. There would be a hotel, multiple RVs for us to chill inside of, and a dedicated staff to make sure everyone was fed. There was even a menu all planned-out and all. It didn’t sound like anything I’d really have to ‘endure’ and I already agreed to go long before any of the good stuff was mentioned, but I liked the fact that he was so thoughtful…
Back with the rest of the photos from the recent “Phantom Day” event held in Chiba, Tokyo, Japan. Though this was a smaller event, I can imagine how much fun it would have been to just walk around all day and shoot some of these builds while shooting the shit with my friends over there. Hopefully sooner than later, I’ll be able to do just that when I can head back to Japan. For now, we’ll just have to look at these great photos captured by Yasutaka Shimomukai from Exceed Japan. I’m glad he’s been around me long enough to understand what cars I’d capture and what angles I like to shoot them at. He sends them over to me and I process them the same way I process my own photos. The end result are photos that look just like mine, honestly. Only people that are incredibly familiar with my photography and level of detail will notice the differences.
Admittedly, I’m a bit bummed because I wasn’t able to attend Tokyo Auto Salon this year due to the ongoing global shitstorm. I thought Yasu was going to go, at least, but I couldn’t even convince him to be inside the Makuhari Messe venue and be exposed to the plethora of possibly infected humans. I knew I was going to miss 2021 because they cancelled the event outright but was looking forward to going back in 2022. This actually marks the first time I’ve ever missed a TAS event since I first started attending back in 2013. From what I heard from friends in Japan, the event was much smaller and the crowd was definitely smaller, which was expected. I think my friends were trying to make me feel better because the show wasn’t nearly as big as it has been in the past but the thought of just being able to shoot the cars there with a smaller crowd sounded amazing. It’s usually pretty impossible to get a clean shot while the show is going on but from what I’ve seen of the photos posted online, you could definitely tell that the show was smaller. I’m hoping Japan re-opens by spring time so I can finally return and visit friends there but at this rate, who really knows?…
The video was posted last week but I thought now would be a good time to actually get the photos up of the recent private event I was invited to where we got to see Aaron Espino’s CR-X unveiled. Unlike most build debuts, this was actually planned to coincide with somewhat of a housewarming party at Ryan from Rywire’s freshly remodeled home in Huntington Beach, California. I remember once upon a time Ryan had these grand plans for this house. It sounded crazy at the time to build a partition inside his home where he would be able to display a car but Ryan is an unconventional type of dude so we all had faith he’d pull it off. And of course, he did. I don’t have all the details on what was all involved with the overhaul of his house but I know it wasn’t particularly easy—and definitely NOT cheap. There was a point when he wasn’t even able to live in the house because everything was torn down and being built from the ground-up. When he told me he was doing this event with Espino’s CR-X parked inside his house, I just had to see it for myself…
There is much that could be said about the Texas Wekfest event this year. I think privately some enthusiasts who attended were a little upset by some of the criticisms that were passed-on during the awards ceremony, at least that’s what I heard from people anyway, but nothing was said to deliberately hurt feelings. These things were said with good intentions because we want this region to flourish like it has in the past. I think there might just be a generational gap or something where social media has mislead some enthusiasts into thinking that only certain things are important when it comes to creating good car builds. Perhaps they haven’t been presented with proper examples to help guide them in the right direction. Or maybe people just stopped caring? I don’t know. It’s a bit of a mystery to me….
