OWNERS MANUAL
Issue 4
April 2020
Themed Photoshoot - Quarantined
Person of the Month - @smurf.media Car Club Intro - Unwanted Garage
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Stories
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I first met Swan about a year ago during the early days of my photography journey. Since then, we’ve done several other photoshoots together, this one being the latest. I’ve always been impressed by his down to Earth attitude and work ethic, especially given his level of success at such a young age. I had the privilege of driving his NSX to this shoot location, and it was a really cool experience that I won’t soon forget. Here’s what he had to say about his love of cars. “My name is Swan and I’m 24 years old. My number one goal in life was to own an NSX and absolutely everything else revolved around it. I told myself that I cannot call myself successful unless I own one. One of the hardest decision I had to make was whether to have an NSX at the age of 21 or buy a house. I’m really glad I invested in a house first because having a garage to store my babies was really important to me. Working hard paid off because two years after that, I got my dream car. This was all thanks to a friend of mine who had been looking out for me and helped me find this car.” 3
“Since I had this vision of driving in my dream NSX, failure was just not an option at all for me. I understood what sacrifice and discipline meant and applied them. Ever since I was younger, I’ve always been into Japanese cars. My first ever car that I bought was a Toyota Corolla at the age of 16. I started working at 14 and saved up enough to buy an affordable and reliable car. My second car was a 2002 Toyota Celica. I’ve always loved Hondas but at the time, I felt like Toyotas were more fuel efficient and easier to obtain. My first ever Honda that I bought was my motorcycle. I started off with a CBR 250 RR but someone hit me and totaled my bike so I had to have another one but way faster. My second Honda was my CBR 600 RR which I still have now. After being promoted multiple times at work, I decided I needed to leave the Toyota brand and finally start on my dream garage. I never really believed in sacrificing vehicles to have a different experience, I just wanted as many cars as possible. I went and bought a yellow S2000 that turned out to such an awesome and fun project.”
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“I learned so much from working on it. It was so awesome to see the vision come to life. The reason why I was into Hondas so much was because the of NSX, of course. Everything about the car was amazing. The history, the way it looked, the way it felt, the sounds, the soul, and not a single thing on the car that I didn’t like. The white on white theme was something I’ve always wanted to do. In my opinion there’s nothing cleaner than a white car. And having white rims also means that if you’re not cleaning your rims and taking care of your car, it will show and it’s very obvious. If you have white rims, you know what I’m talking about. When I played racing games, I would literally customize every single car I had to have white TE37’s and be painted white. I have always loved the simplicity of it. Having a theme is important to me.”
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“I was so obsessed with having the keys to an NSX t in one of my rooms to remind me why I woke up to working towards your dream car, make sur
“It makes me feel like all the cars are part of something bigger. It’s like they bel they gang gang. My vision has always been to have a fully modded NSX the way I wa good for being at stage one. I want it to have Sorcery V2 wide body kit and many mo Eventually I want to twin turbo my NSX and turbo my S2000 as well. That will b stop there. There’s still so many cars I haven’t added to my dream garage. I currently NA1 NSX but I still have yet to get a NA2 NSX, NC1 NSX, 240SX S14, BMW M4, and Je that level but the best part about goals is that once you achieve one major goal, you okay too because at least then I can focus all my time and energy on what I do have. I would have to say my favorite place to cruise is South Mountain. It’s super clo taken my S2000 to a lot of drives but I can’t wait to go experience those roads with m Mount Lemmon was closer but that’s been a favorite drive of mine. Driving to Jerom haven’t done in a while is the drive down to Globe. There’s an awesome tunnel 9
X, I even built a shrine with collectible NSX models to go to work every morning. For those of you still re you obsess about it as much as possible.”
long to a team and when you see them all rolling down the street, you know that ant it. I have a whole build list that I have to save up for. For now, the NSX looks ore smaller details too. My S2000 is almost complete and is almost on its last stage. be much later on but it’s nice to have an end goal for those cars. But it doesn’t really y only have 2 out of the 8 cars that I can realistically obtain. I have the S2000 and eep Gladiator, just to name a couple. It’s going to require a lot of hard work to get to u just keep setting more. And if I don’t end up getting all those cars on my list, that’s . ose to where I live and it’s not that dangerous. Plus the views are just amazing. I’ve my NSX. I also really enjoy the Canyon Lake AKA Tortilla Flats run at night. I wish me was also an awesome experience. One cruise I really want to go on again which I and the scenery is superb.” 10
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Themed photoshoots are my favorite way to express my passion for automotive photography. The world we’re living in is undeniably crazy, but I’m a silver lining type of guy and a quarantine themed photoshoot was begging to be done.
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Anyone who has done a photoshoot with me will recognize this 3000GT. It’s been my daily for over 6 years and I love it more than any other car I’ve had. I was anxious to use it for this shoot, flaws included, even though it needs some work. To bring the theme to life, we combined a gas mask (which I’ve always found terrifying) with a pretty dress and golden hour skies, to create that stark contrast between beauty and fear. 13
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Our original photoshoot location for this theme was an old abandoned house. It’s a real proper abandoned building, complete with destroyed windows and falling apart wood and brick. Unfortunately, the road to it was gated and locked, so we settled for shooting near the gate instead. Considering the fact that we’re in the middle of a viral epidemic, and that the abandoned building shares a road with a water treatment facility, it’s not suprising that the government wants minimal access. I’m happy with the results, because the mask was the primary factor that bring this theme to life. The sunset lighting and NO TRESPASSING signs were also nice touches. 17 7
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TL is for Tony
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I saw this car in a parking lot a few months back and left one of my cards on it, as I do whenever I see a car I love out in public. The owner sent me a message the same night, and we were finally able to meet up to shoot his car. I took the opportunity to try out a new technique that a photographer friend told me about and was blown away by the results!
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“I’ve been into cars since I watched the first Fast and the Furious with Vin Diesel and his RX-7. I chose this car because of the functionality of a sedan, it worked well for my family. My favorite modification is the bags by far, it was always a dream to be on air suspension. I also upgraded the wheels and tires. I’d like to keep this car around long enough for my kids to enjoy. I want to show them the value of building something for yourself.” - Tony, the owner.
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The image on this page was achieved using a technique called Steel Wool Photography combined with light painting, long exposure settings, and compositing in post-production! I’ll be doing a tutorial write-up of how to replicate these results in a future issue.
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SMURF.MEDIA
I came across this man’s work as a natural result of joining the automotive photography community here in Arizona. His style is easily recognizable, as is his unique logo. I’ve always been a fan of his work, and he’s given me advice and taught me techniques to use in my own photography on more than one occasion. I’m glad to have him in this issue to share his journey and put his impressive work on display. 25
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How long have you been doing photography? What got you into it? I’ve been doing photography, mostly automotive photography, for about two years. What really got me into it was quite random. While I was at Round One of Formula Drift in Long Beach, CA., I took a photo of a VIP Nissan President on my phone. For some reason, that single photo got me hooked.
What are your future plans for your photography?
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In the future, I would like to get better at motorsports photography, especially drift. One of my biggest inspirations is Alec Donaldson, also known as adphotosofficial, and his drift photography really makes me want to get out on the track. In the next couple of years, I believe that photography is going to become more abstract, as more and more photographers are taking photos that are similar to others.
What are your favorite types of settings? My favorite type of locations to shoot photos are just outside of the city. I like to have an industrial setting with the city still visible in the background. I love to photograph stance cars, and by placing them in these industrial areas it shows how these ‘unfunctional’ cars are still able to drive and go out of the city.
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What advice do you have for new photographers? For photographers that are just getting started, I believe that if you are going to invest into equipment, invest into lenses. Get a low aperture lens, such as F/1.8 or F/1.4, and it will improve the look of your photos and your capability to shoot at night time. Also, practice is the best thing you can do. Although there are no car meets at this time, when they come back, go to every single one you can and take photos. The more you shoot, the better you will get. And before starting out, I wish I would’ve known about the proper export settings for Instagram. It took me over a year and a half to figure out the proper settings.
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“Nobody watches you harder than the people who can’t stand you.” 32
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I was driving through traf fic two weeks ago and noticed an Instagram sticker on the car in front of me. Naturally, I had to take a look. I saw that the driver was par t of a car club, so I asked if they wanted to be par t of the magazine. A week later we met up, and these are the results of our photoshoot! Ever yone I met was really friendly and welcoming, and I had a great time taking pictures and lear ning a bit about the driver s and their car s. Based on my experience with them during the photoshoot, and from later conver sation with the founder s, it’s clear that a suppor tive family mindset is a fundamental par t of their club culture.
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“We all used to be par t of dif ferent car clubs, but we all seemed to be unwanted by them so we star ted our own. T hat’s where the name Unwanted Garage came from.Right from. Right now we have about 20 member s, with around 15 more prospects. We accept all the unacceptable. We don’t ple by the car and look more into the enthusiast themselves. If they are motivated dedicated, we will bring you in and show you your unwanted car really is wanted and we’ll achieve your goals.
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just peoand that help you
Our favorite thing to do as a club is to host family functions where we have all our loved ones come BBQ and hang out, to show newcomer s how we all come together as one. We love to cr uise all over the place but our favorite would be inner city cr uising in Phoenix.”
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“We want people to know that just because there are teams that are quick to judge and treat you or your goals as silly or not wor th their time, not all clubs are like that. They are still your goals and we accept the unaccepted and help you achieve your goals. If something is impor tant to you then it is impor tant to us, we shy away from no goal because all of us here are unwantd.�
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