During an impromptu trip to Phoenix, AZ (read previous blog posting) Matt and I decided to do a quick photoshoot of an idea I had floating in my brain. In my circle of close friends, Matt is the one we all live vicariously through when it comes to thrill-seeking. When I first met Matt I mainly knew that he liked to drive (very) fast on mountain roads. Then he got a sport bike… then a bigger sport bike… then he started playing with rattlesnakes, then he started sky diving, then he started learning how to fly a helicopter… and now what seems to be the creme of extreme, he started base jumping. I forget the number, but he’s well over 800 base jumps and aiming to clip 1000 by the end of the year. He’s the kid on the playground that would swing as high as he could and then jump out.

Matt steps up to the ledge, checks the wind then…. “3, 2, 1 See ya!”
Now 1,000 feet of air separates him from solid ground.

After a few exhilarating seconds of free fall, the chute comes out and delicately glides to the desert floor… then drive back home to down some breakfast burritos, catch a 2hr power nap, and finally back to the normal boring life of flying helicopters.

Typical landscape of California. Bogart was a great co-driver. He pointed out all the squirrels.

Just so California could remind every driver on the I-10 that they care about the environment, they set up 3,100 turbines near Palm Springs. An amazing spectacle, and would be interested in knowing how many rear-ending-rubber-necking car accidents happen because of them.

Rows and rows and rows and rows of turbines.

They almost look like trees from very far away.

5:00 AM next morning I head out with my adrenaline junkie buddy Matt Frohlich from South Carolina (who goes to helicopter school in Phoenix) to base jump off of Superstition Mountain. Me? I was just along for the ride for a good hike and take some pictures

We park and start the 2hr hike to the top of Superstitious (the jumping point framed in the background).

An Arizona sunrise is about as good as it gets.

For a brief moment I felt like I was delivering some ring to some volcano.

Once the sun rises the rock looks even more menacing.

Rule #1 when going anywhere in Arizona: Bring plenty of H2O.

Matt looking EXTREMELY nervous to be doing his 800-some-odd jump off a big rock.

Rule #2 when going base jumping: Bring a friend. Rule #1? Open your chute.

Finally reaching the top, Scott and Matt do a wind check to see if it’s safe to jump.

Yep, it’s safe. Tie your shoes tight and get ready. Rule #24 of Base Jumping: Strap a video camera to your helmet so you can impress the ladies on youtube.

One last survey before descending over 1000 feet in a little over 1 minute… hopefully not any less than that.

Matt’s recorded jump. Listen at around 00:10, the sound of the chute opening sounds like a shotgun. That’s me at 0:14 watching from the tip top lol. They got to the bottom of the mountain in 1 minute. It took me 45x that to get back down

For Matt, base jumping is more safe than driving down a highway, so I wasn’t very worried about picking up any body parts. In fact later in the day we did an impromptu photoshoot near Camelback Mountain of another base jump. Look for the edited shot very soon. After the shoot, and jump, I had just enough time to snap off an incredible sunset over downtown Phoenix. One day I’ll sky dive… and dare I say, one day have enough confidence to jump off 1000′ tall rocks? That’s a damn good way to get over my fear of heights.

“Ahhhhhhhh!!! The world is coming to an end!! Bring out ALL of the artillery! I don’t care if it’s from WWII, Desert Storm, or Grandma’s attic! FIRE!!… Oh and call Rokhsan in too, she’ll handle it.” Rokhsan “Roxie” Shafiei, her sister (Nabaht) and I got trigger happy and decided to work on a personal project. I’d never put Roxie in the line of fire of an Apache fighter helicopter. So obviously these images were pieced together brick by brick. The 3 guns attached to Roxie were loaned to me by my friend Ti Tong (who was obviously should have been born during the Wild West era), the dress was bought by yours truly at Ross, the ground is from the Salton Sea, sky from Anaheim, tanks from the Patton Museum, and lastly I couldn’t get an Apache helicopter and HUGE explosion picture without US Government clearance, so I opted for a stock image. Once pieced together the image came out to 1.22GB, possibly a new personal record.

Photographing cars was the reason I got my first camera. I’ve always been a big car guy, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by my current ride; a Scion xB. Maturing sucks. My brief 10 year driving history includes having my name under an 87 300ZX, 96 300ZX, 94 RX-7, 99 Subaru 2.5 RS, and now…. the box. Unfortunately a fire-spitting RX-7 can’t haul all of my photography gear.

Back on point, after a 2-3 year hiatus of not shooting cars (focused on people and designing), I got an itch to shoot Lauren’s new Volvo C30… that, and I had a day left of renting the Canon 15mm 2.8 lens for the Ashley Knights Jr. photoshoot (hence the same location!). I wanted to focus on just 1 shot, a motion/rig shot. This technique used to be a super tight-lipped secret up until a few years ago. I like to think I was one of the first digital photographers to figure out how to take this kind of picture. Along with names like Easton Chang, Luke Munnell, Josh Mackey, and Jason Siu come to mind as well. Back then I was using a 2.5mp “state-of-the-art” Olympus camera lol. In fact it was a rig shot that gave me my big break in the automotive industry, and opened a lot of doors. Now with the spread of blogs, tutorials, and every photographer out there willing to share every shred of knowledge in a youtube video for any kind of fame, the secret isn’t so, secret.

Unedited image. Despite an occasional car at 3am, the famous tunnel had very little traffic.

My trusty rig, totals 12′ in length. Got the piping specialty cut at some NASCAR shop in North Carolina years ago.

The two 6′ poles are connected with a slightly smaller diameter metal sleeve, and held together by… yes, paper clips
I may not have the fanciest rig on earth, but I dare say it’s the most practical!!

I almost felt like I was 16 again shooting my buddies cars long after midnight. In hindsight I would of done a few things differently for this Volvo image, but it’s a good starting point to my revamped interest in shooting things with 4 legs instead of 2.

…on 2 wheels, without an engine, and on a flat surface. Unless you consider your legs an engine, then Ashley Knights Jr. is the Pagani Zonda of the bike world. Normally a person would hop in a car to go the National speed limit of 55, Ashley just does it with a 15lb carbon fiber bike and 2 (very) powerful tattoo-clad legs.

Ashley had just reached Cat 1, now aiming to ride internationally in the next year, and what better way to get extra attention than eye-opening pictures? Personally as a road bike enthusiast I was all about the shoot. Cyclists are some of the nicest people I know, and make a very fun and challenging shoot. So, after a meet-up time of 3am in downtown LA, we were off.

After the tunnel, we had a short breakfast to wait for the sun to come up, then headed to the river for some downtown LA backdrop shots:

Fortunately at 4am on a weekday, the tunnel had very little traffic. My beautiful assistant Lauren doing a FINE job of adding sweat to Ashley

I think Ashley kinda looks like Michael Shumacher… which is pretty fitting. With a call-time of 3am to 7am, I promptly went straight home after this shot and slept till the sun went down. Oh and thank you for the chocolate chip cookies Briana!

I wouldn’t call myself an expert on the latest gizmos and widgets out there, but I’ve used enough cell phones in my time to realize a good gadget when I see it. In the past I balked at the first text message I ever received, and laughed at people who paid more than $50 for cell phone plans. Now? I can’t leave home without my iPhone in fear of not checking my email every 5 minutes, not being able to navigate to the nearest Starbucks, or hearing a song I love but don’t know the name (Thanks Shazam!). And now after waiting 5hrs in line, next to people who talk WAY too much, on a beautiful sunny day in LA, I have a new shiny faster gizmo to replace my older gizmo. I don’t care how much more awesome your HTCevoPalmPreAndroidBlackberry Version 3.6.71 flavor-of-the-week is than my nose-in-the-air iPhone. It. Just. Works. And it’s delicious.

My old 3G is loved, used, and very well done… say hello to my new iPhone 4!
Enjoy my hand-me-down big sister!
/subtle i-have-an-iPhone4-on-release-day blog post

I had to pinch myself till I bled. Is Adam Smith, Senior Staff Writer for Advanced Photoshop magazine emailing me for a feature in their magazine?!? I instantly google’d his name and email address to verify if this was real, and sure enough it was! Let me try to put this in perspective… This is THE magazine I genuinely gladly pay $15 to take home and read. Oversized pages, spot-uv covers, high quality paper stock.. so nice I’ve never thrown away a single issue. Dare I say the only magazine I buy? (American publishers can learn a thing or two from Imagine Publishing.)

I literally screamed when I saw my picture as the lead-in image for the feature. The feature is simply titled “Photoshop for Photographers”. Myself and 3 other photographers (Jaroslav Stehlik, Jim Lind, and James Quantz Jr)are interviewed for their insight on how Photoshop helps our workflow. Very humbling to be paired up with such great photographers. One line inparticular in the feature caught my eye when I was mentioned in the same sentence as Dave Hill and Jim Fiscus, truly 2 of my main sources of inspiration over my history behind the camera. Maybe now they’ll let me have brunch with them

Dual page lead-in image to the feature, I owe Adam Smith a drink!

Original image from my portfolio.

Pullquote by yours truly, plus the Fast & Furious 3-car rig shot.

Original image from my portfolio

PRO TIP! haha.

If you’ve never picked up a copy of Advanced Photoshop, do yourself a favor and at least flip through it. Chances are you’ll take it home. I have for years, and now I’m featured in the very pages I read!

Crazies as far as the eye can see. Check out the plume of sand and wind-swept trees.

People watching at it’s best.

Birthday boy Luke Munnell, Import Tuner tech editor.

Modified Magazine editor Peter Tarach tagging along.

Hundreds of seagulls fighting the wind. Took a little coercing to fly, so I ran into them

Being careful not to get pooped on.

Luke getting brave with the poop monsters.

Last shot before the sun went down. I would of joined in but damn I forgot my hoola hoop. Next time.

BIG thanks to UrbanRacer.com for getting me media access. Shamefully I spent most of my time having a few Yuenglings in the paddock area, but hell I was mainly here to have fun. On to the pics:

I have this foot thing I’m working on… trust me it’ll be cool. But this shows where I was shooting for most of these pics.

One of my favorite shots; 2009 Champion Chris Forsberg leading 2004 and 2006 Champion Samuel Hübinette around the horseshoe.

Forsberg ripping around the horseshoe again.

Ryan Tuerck blowing smoke in my face. Thanks

Ross Petty smokin’ around the horseshoe. One of my favorite cars of the crowd.

Vaughn Gittin Jr. showboating for the crowd. The sound of this mustang’s V8 almost makes me want to buy one… almost.

Dai Yoshiahra against Chris Forsberg in the semi-finals.

Close-up of how beat-up these cars can get over 2 brutal days of drifting.

The big weiner; Dai Yoshihara. A crowd favorite.

Formula D has been around for nearly a decade, and the sport of drifting much longer. It’s one of the few motorsports where I see absolutely everyone associated with the sport having fun. Any attitudes that flare up over an unethical bump or crash is dissipated as quickly as the smoke just made. Drifting was founded on having fun, and when the sun goes down and cars are tailored away it will still be based on fun. Long live drifting.