Everything seems to be coming together now for the IS300 daily cruiser project. The car is finally sealed-up with a […]
Tag Archive for ‘exceed na’
The Transformation Of The IS300 Begins!!… CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #14
Well, it’s been a long time coming but the IS300 Sportcross is finally back at the shop and we can finally start throwing all the goodies on there. The first thing we had to do right away was to put the Advan wheels back on and fully overhaul the worn-out suspension components. I was pretty excited to see the Exceed big brake go on the car finally as well but was slightly nervous about brake caliper to wheel clearance. Once that was all dialed-in, I started tinkering with other ideas and also swapped-out my interior for rare Modellista Qualitat stuff. Check it out, I can’t believe the car is actually back!!
Meguiar’s “Portrait of an Icon” 90s-Era Shoot and Unpublished Photos…
Earlier this year, I was contacted by Meguiar’s and invited to be one of five creator’s to be on their “Portrait of an Icon” campaign to celebrate their 120-year anniversary. I was honestly a little surprised at first to hear from them since there are so many good content creators out there in the industry but was deeply honored when I got the details of what the project was all about. It was to be a generational piece, spanning five-decades from the 1980s to the 2020s, each themed according to the time period and the main caveat being that there had to be a “Meguiar’s Easter Egg” hidden in the photo. Each photo must have one of their products, that existed during that particular generation, present. It didn’t have to be blatant or in your face, and just had to appear somewhere within the photo. Think “Where’s Waldo” type of hiding, which is basically hiding in plain sight. The more it blended-in with the photo the better. It didn’t take a whole lot of convincing for me to agree to be a featured artist in their campaign because I was presented with absolute freedom to do whatever I wanted. Over the years, I’ve been offered and turned down a number of projects because I felt it was too restrictive in what they wanted and expected from me. When I feel that type of creative ‘stunting’, if you will, I shut off and just can’t find myself wanting to produce anything. This project was the opposite of that. I could get a check and have creative freedom doing what I enjoyed? I’m in…
Time-Traveling Back To The Nineties… CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #12
On this episode, I take you guys back on the road with me on three different photoshoots throughout Southern California for the ongoing project I’m working on for Meguiar’s. You guys got a short glimpse of the 80s-themed shoot I did for them with a E-AT Civic a few episodes back and the next one I’m shooting is dedicated to the 1990s. If you’re a Honda guy then the nineties will undoubtedly be your favorite era. That’s when Honda made the best cars and the import scene was still in its very exciting early infancy. Being that it was a shoot focused on that era, many tiny details had to be incorporated into the shoot that were plucked from that time and obviously, the cars themselves as well. In-between shoots, we also found some time to stop by Unit B to celebrate our good friend Kristian Wong’s birthday. This is a good one and I hope you get overwhelmed with that nineties feeling while watching!
Out And About At Evasive Motorsports, BMWs Take Flight, And Brew’s Cruise!! CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #11
We’re out and about for this one! Since it’s been getting pretty hot lately out here in Southern California and Der is taking a break from working on his Civic, we decide to go out for the weekend to check out some events. Things are starting to open up everywhere so car stuff seems to be happening throughout the city. I head down to Evasive Motorsports first for a private event where they reveal this year’s Pikes Peak Hill Climb competition car before Der and I attend a couple other local events. There is quite a bit of diversity in this episode with all types of different builds of all styles so check it out!!
Surprise Car Meet At The Shop And I Got A New Job!! CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #10
We haven’t done a Chronicles & Coffee gathering at the shop in a while but since Memorial Day weekend was coming and we didn’t have any plans, I decided to go ahead and set one up last minute! So in this episode, you get a glimpse of what happened that day and whether or not people actually showed-up or not! Before that however, I give you guys a glimpse into what I actually do as a freelance photographer and bring you guys along on a new gig I recently got for Meguiar’s “Portrait of an Icon” series!!
No Good Racing Night Meet 2021 Coverage…
Seems like Yasu has been out and about quite a bit lately, regularly attending shows and meets in his area. I don’t know if it is necessarily the best idea being that the number of cases haven’t really gone done much, if at all, lately in Osaka but he’s being careful and selective of who he hangs out with. I honestly feel like he’s just getting a little bored being at the shop every day and going a little stir crazy so he wants to be outside again. The last year and a half has probably felt a little odd for him since he’s usually either in the U.S. hanging out with us or we’re over there in Osaka with him. Hopefully in the next few months or so things get better and he’ll be able to return in time for the Wekfest tour to start here in America. He recently attended a night meet hosted by our friends from NO GOOD RACING and asked me if I wanted photos. Of course I’m always down for Japan content so I asked him to shoot some stuff. He mentioned that the meet was happening in a brand new parking area which was just recently completed and that sounded exciting since the night meets we go to are normally poorly-lit. There wasn’t a specific reason behind the meet happening, I think everyone just wanted to do car stuff and wanted to not think about the pandemic so they hosted a gathering. Here are the photos from that evening, captured by Yasu Shimomukai from Exceed Japan. Enjoy!!…
The Civic Interior Is Finally Complete & Ly Stops By In His Integra!! CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #9…
If you’ve been waiting for updates on Ryan Der’s Civic build, this episode is perfect for you! He’s been putting in a lot of work on the car lately while paying particular attention to finally finishing up the interior. He’s got all kinds of cool little details in the interior as he’s been collecting parts over the past few months. It’s crazy to see the interior all wrapped-up because all we’ve been doing since he got the car is talk about all he has planned for it. While all that was going on, our friend Ly came by with some friends to hang out for the day so that I could shoot some photos of the brand new Exceed by Mode Parfume front lip on his Integra. The 94-97 Integra front lip is brand new and barely arrived in the U.S. recently so we wanted to get some good photos of it and Ly’s car seemed like the perfect choice!!
Stancenation Japan G Edition Yamaguchi Coverage… Part 2…
Serious FOMO is setting in right now, especially since I’d normally be in Japan right now for Golden Week and the Wekfest Japan event. With this global pandemic still hitting some countries pretty hard, Japan in particular, the border remains closed to foreign visitors which means that I’m stuck here at home. Luckily I do have some content on reserve to show you guys as I await my eventual return. This particular set of photos is from the Stancenation Japan event in Yamauchi…which happened last year, lol. I showed you guys the first half last week and today, we’re gonna look at the rest. Some of these cars actually did make it to this year’s Wekfest Japan event so that’s kinda close enough to having WFJP coverage, so we’ll just have to be satisfied with that for now. There are some pretty cool builds in this set though, so please look through it thoroughly. Huge thanks to Yasu for attending this event and taking photos for me. He even conveniently made the photos look very similar to mine so the coverage looks pretty consistent with whatever I shoot. Enjoy and share if you dig it!…
Asanoshima FF 2021 Coverage…
Sometimes cool things just end-up in my inbox, what can I say? I was just hanging out in my office one day during a random weekend and I get a message from Yasu. He tells me that he’s heading to Fuji Speedway but he doesn’t really know why other than the fact that he’s going to support Masa from X-Point because he has a booth at some event that was being hosted there. I was like “what event?” and he responded by saying “I don’t know”. And then I said “then why are you going?”. This is usually how our conversations go. I should mention that Fuji Speedway is about a 5-hour drive from his shop so I assumed it must have been important. He reiterated that he didn’t know what the fuck was going on or why he was going but Masa had a booth. He told me that there was an event called “Asanoshima FF” going on but he’s never actually heard of it before and didn’t know what type of cars were going to be there.