PHOTO (SORT OF) COVERAGE :: Behind the Drifting of TD ProAm

See that film burn? Yea that wasn’t photoshopped in. That’s the product of forgetting to rewind your film roll, BEFORE swapping out rolls. Crap. Haha. Well..it happens. Anywho, I shot the first round of TD ProAm all in film. Hipster-ish you might say? Naaah. Am I trying out for some over hyped episode sponsored by Urban Outfitters? Not even. My digital SLR crapped out on me so I was sent 20 years back in the film department. All manual focus, no preview, and every shot counted.

Well..this is going to be one of those “unique” post on FL that really is in a classification of itself. For the most part, this whole post covers me and MotorMavens’ own autoshooter Joe Ayala’s random shenanigans. We pretty much took the road less traveled, well mostly because I was goofing off, on covering this event by shooting the behind the scenes. So let’s get started shall we?

Oh! Zipties! Thought they were spares, probably were, but I think they were used to tie up the stacks of tires (sort of) protecting us. Well, regardless, it was a sick shot and I got some drifting blur. But, wait..is that Gabe I spot!?

Gabe Stone was killing it during comp landing him in 4th place! I’ve never seen Gabe go beast mode before, so it was amazing seeing him go all out. Someone should’ve recorded Joshua Sher’s commentary during Gabe’s runs as it was hilarious.

Clean! There were some noticeable spectator cars that came out. I think I’ve came across this 350Z while shooting a bay area drift event. Sorry can’t get the specs on the wheels, I usually take mental notes, but somehow I lose them after five minutes.

There was much discussion about these windmills between Joe and I. Wouldn’t it be cool to see a time lapse of these while the clouds coasted by? Would be rad methinks.

Since I was unable to get any action shots, I though well hey, why not shoot some tandem still shots!? Here are some of the neat contenders on the grid. By the way, at this point, I didn’t even know competition was running already.

Lunch break was held way after lunch, but it was not a problem. I held my appetite while everyone else went ahead and ordered food. Despite the lack of staff, everyone managed to get their grub on in a timely manner.

Pictured right (off the photo canvas) is Ryan Kado as we chatted about his upcoming Formula Drift debut. If this is your first time tuning in, Ryan is one of the youngest drifters to get his Formula Drift license and it’s quite inspirational. I mean, even before I started attending TD events last year, I’ve been a fan of Ryan since the beginning (lol..I can already see your eyes rolling bro haha).

Back to the food. So Joe couldn’t figure out his ticket number due to the fact that California receipts aren’t cool. As Joe puts it, Oregon receipts come in sparkle print, laminated, and are 10 times better just because. lol. Whatever you say dude. Keep chewing gum.

Oh yea, can’t shoot an event without my trusty Vans, my kicks of choice. I love these shoes. I got a few more pairs and regardless of my others kicks, I always find myself going back to my Vans. They’re a little dirty from the TD shenanigans, but one thing for sure is that they’ll clean up quite easily.

Back to grid. So we decided to start from the grid and worked our way back to the main clipping points. It’s really cool to just chill at the grid, but at the same we killed the event’s flow by stalling Julian Jacobs! Get in the car Julian! It was due to us slapping stickers on Julian’s car. Before..

After! Good one Joe!

After Julian mashed into competition we decided to randomly meditate in the middle of the field. Here’s Joe filming something. Saw the preview and it was pretty cool. Maybe something to look forward in the future.

I decided to kick it like a bum under a bridge and shoot some photos of cars passing by. It was scary as I was standing on loose gravel. But risk the shot eh?

Oh damn! Look at Lee with Bohan’s lens! Baller. This shot was taken after 5 minutes of arguing about me using a Canon DSLR and failing at it. Oh and another 5 minutes arguing about how I didn’t really know Lee’s first name (which I do!). Good times. haha.

At every TD event, somehow Virgil’s car gets rocked up. But despite the problems his chassis has faced, he came out first place at this event! Congrats.

We had some nice guest drifters such as Ron Freitas from Maui. Here’s his super clean kouki S14. Breakin’ necks!

Overall a great light hearted event. Though I didn’t have my main photo arsenal with me, shooting in film really showed my weak points. One, I suck at manual focus and from here on out, I’ll be practicing more until Long Beach. And yes I’ll have one film roll on hand, for those memorable shots at round 1 of Formula Drift. Super stoked about it and I can’t wait.

Which brings me to my final point. This post is one of those feel good and reassuring post. We blog about life first, about the moments, and about what interest us. Shooting the same thing over and over again, it becomes redundant, and our passion lies in exploring the uncharted areas of this scene. There is so much angle to photography and so much more to life that revolves around our culture. We don’t limit our photography to the usual shots that you see on every other motoring blog. It’s settled, we’re different, and we don’t mind it one bit. And we owe it all to that everyone reps that proper mindset. Trends can’t kill us and we’re constantly paving the road forward.

:. Michael Cabuco

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