As mentioned in my From the Archive post a few weeks ago, I was recently down in Braselton for this year’s Formula Drift event at Road Atlanta. My coverage is up now at Auto Import Craze, so be sure to head over there to see the full set. Below are a few of my favorite shots from the weekend, but I plan to put up others in the coming days, including a behind the lens how-to post. As McNally would say, more tk…

Astute readers will recognize the angle used for this shot of Samuel Hubinette and Darren McNamara. Did I nail it like I planned?

I must confess, I’m a fan of RX-7s, and Ryuji Miki’s FD is no exception. The new-age Hankook livery is also very cool.

Later on, Miki got the car a little bit off track, and managed to rip off parts of his front splitter and rear bumper/quarter panel. In the shot below his rear fender conveniently caught some air and was lifted up, exposing the full tire so I could see the whole thing being cooked. Makes me wish some of these guys ran without fenders on purpose.

Speaking of burning Hankook rubber, Robbie Nishida debuted the team’s new Nissan GT-R in Atlanta. You may be wondering how a car that is normally all about grip with a stunning AWD system can pull off that kind of drift. Under its skin resides the same engine and drivetrain that he ran last year in a 350Z. Hankook has plans to keep tuning the car’s original motor and play with the diff in the AWD setup to put the power down in the rear, but for now Robbie looked right at home in the longer bodied Nissan.

Flames erupting from tailpipes are not a common sight in drifting the way they are in other forms of motorsport. That hasn’t stopped Matt Waldin from letting his 350Z run a bit rich though.

Ken Gushi is in his third season running a Scion tC that has been converted to RWD. It’s also his third livery, and probably my personal favorite to date – though I wish they had kept the fierce red halo headlights from last year. He put on a strong showing in Atlanta, and I expect bigger things from him in New Jersey where he placed 4th in 2009.

Normally I don’t photograph drifting with this slow of a shutter. It exaggerates the motion, and in reality the cars are not moving this fast. Every now and then it can be fun to mix things up though, so I’m glad that I experimented when Matt Powers was doing his final qualifying run.

Aside from the angle in the second shot above, this a view from my favorite area at Road Atlanta to photograph the tandem battles. It positions the cars close together in the frame (and in reality), while keeping a good view of the fans in the background. Below, Tyler McQuarrie puts pressure on Forrest Wang’s G35.

Having said that, there is another location from which I’ve always wanted to get shots in Atlanta. Below is an example of what happens when I can be in two places at once. I set up another camera in harms way only a few feet from the screeching racers. Luckily, my camera lived to tell the tale. I’ll share how it was done from the technical side of things later on.

Tanner Foust and Matt Waldin go at it in the first round of 32. Engine trouble caused Matt to retire, and allow Tanner to move on to the top 16…

…where he would face his Scion brother Ken Gushi. Gushi edged out the win in that round, so Tanner will have to wait another year before he challenge for a podium in Atlanta.

I won’t go through what happened in the entire main event’s battles (that’s what the Auto Import Craze coverage is for), but suffice to say that Dai Yoshihara in the Falken S13 was on a roll. In the top 8, he had contact with Darren McNamara’s Saturn Sky, and lost his whole rear bumper. This meant that the trunk and rear wing could no longer be supported, so his car was converted to something that more closely resembled an El Camino. The lack of rear downforce didn’t seem to make a different though as he continued to light up the tires nicely.

I enjoy photographing the podium for each race. I like the emotion that the drivers have built up and how they let it all out ceremoniously with the champagne spray. I wanted to do something different this time, so I went around to the side instead of straight on to photograph the uncorking. Unfortunately JR turned away from me, so I only got his back, but I still like the way the lights caught all of the liquid in mid-air as he and Forsberg doused the winner.

That’s all for now. I hope you enjoyed this set. Be sure to leave some comments after the fold to let me know what you think of them.

During my short time residing in sunny California, I was privileged enough to have a 350Z to drive for a weekend. The car was a fairly new 2006 model, with all the options one could ask for – including the navigation system. And, being new to the LA area, I decided to ask some friends where the good driving roads were. A few carefully placed taps on the navigation and I found myself in the spaghetti-like strings of tarmac that make up the hills just North of Pacific Coast highway. Somewhere between Stunt, Las Virgenes, and Mulholland I pulled off to admire the scenery, or more the billows of fog that were piping their way over the sides of the cliffs. It was there that I found the unique view for the shot above, and another that astute readers will recognize from my automotive portfolio. The shot was done originally in color as all of my work is, but the mood just seemed to work better in this monotone. It feels very still, with only the large highlight by the top of the headlamp drawing your eye closer, making you remember that this is a photograph of a car, and not a landscape. A car that was quite a lot of fun to stomp on through what are still the best curves I’ve ever experienced.

Oh, and a quick P.S. for this week. Make sure you tune into tonight’s season finale of House on Fox (preferably in HD). The whole episode was shot using a Canon 5D Mark II. Being a Canon user myself, I’ll be interested to see what they have been able to accomplish with this next step forward for the medium.

The May, 2010 issue of RIDES magazine has just hit the stands, and a shoot that I did at the beginning of March is featured within. The car, a Lexus LS, was painted an amazing candy pink by Alps Auto Body in Memphis, TN, and is rolling on 24-inch chrome spinners. Click past the jump to see a few more photos from the shoot, and pick up a copy to see what else got featured along with this beauty.

Special thanks go to the owner of the car, and to Alps Auto Body for their support with the shoot. I’d also like to thank fellow Nashville photographer Corey Gibb who was kind enough to assist.

Strobist info: Alienbees B800 x4, triggered using RadioPopper JrX series.

Currently, I do a lot of my own advertising. I submit posts from this blog to stumbleupon, digg, etc., and I do some shameless promoting on the different social networking outlets (more on that later). But I was pleasantly surprised to see that others had stepped in for a change to show me, and my portfolio some love. MotorsportPhotographers.com is a website with the goal of spotlighting photographers that specialize in racing, tuner, or other general automotive subjects. It works on a submission only basis, and sites are reviewed by the administrator before making it to the limelight. I am honored to say that my portfolio was submitted, by an anonymous fan, to this site, and approved. If my stat tracker’s hit count is any indication, this probably happened around January 11th.

I encourage all of you this to give the site a look. There are many artists there whose work will simply make your jaw drop. Because I’m a generous guy who likes to spread the love too, I’ll even name a few personal pals to get you started: Brad Wood, Jeff Creech, Scott Chu, Steve Demmitt, Scott Dukes, Easton Chang, and Rick Dole. If you like their work, be sure to vote for it!