One of lifes special treats.. a proper cheese steak. This is from Tonellis in Willow Grove, Pa

Just picked up a copy of rod&customs “little pages”. Its a smaller sized magazine like they did in the 50s. I got the cover and a 8-page feature. Pick up a  copy at your local retailer

Third time this year to vegas for some pbotoshoots for Honda Tuning

This event is an invitation only and there are 16 trucks. Each will compete in dyno testing, Drag Racing, Sled Pull, 10,o00 pound trailer pull, 150 mile efficiency drive and braking.

The day we arrived the entire region received about 14 inches of rain in 2 days, so to say the least there is flooding everywhere. In fact 2 miles from the airport the road was covered with about 2 feet of water, good thing we had a 4 wheel drive.

Today 5-3-10 we were just doing all the prep-production such as get supplies , establish data acquisition, work-flow, go to the different facilities to figure out camera angles and where to position the different camera operators. Already I am liking still photography a lot more.  Upon arriving at the Beech Bend Raceway we noticed a problem. The entire facility was covered about 17 feel of water…hmmm big problem.

This is the bridge over the staging lanes

These are the timing lights at the end of the 1/4 mile at Beech Bend Raceway.

Now back at the hotel to have a production meeting before the rest of the crew arrives. This should prove to be an interesting 3 days…Alot more work and planning goes into video shoots than stills. It is all very interesting and Ive learned a few things…off to bed and tomorrow begins the real work

I shot all 3 of my cars in the afternoon, the location I found gave 3 different looks. It was pretty straight forward, just time consuming. For the details I used available light and for the overalls I used my Dynalites with the xp1100 power pack. This pack was really expensive but so far has proved its worth, giving me the power I need on location.

The top 3 award winners of the Pioneer Buildoff

4-6 This shoot was a departure for me, it was a food shoot for Heavy Hitters Magazine, they were profiling  Ajos Y Cebolla located at 1648 Tyler Ave Ste D, South El Monte, CA 91733 (626) 279-6511. If you want to Get some amazing mexican food that is not your typical try it out, but come hungry as the portions are huge. After the shoot I didn’t eat the entire next day. It was nice though to shoot something different from cars. It was a lot of work, the shoot lasted about 5 hours but I was fairly happy with the results considering I’ve never shot food before.

ajos Y Cebolla

Ajos Y Cebolla

Ajos Y Cebolla

4-9/10 The season opener for Formula  D professional drifting series was held on a portion of the Long Beach Grand Prix circuit in Long Beach, CA. This is a challenging event to cover since it is a temporary circuit there is fencing on both sides of the track with some holes cut in the fencing for photographers. Jon from the idagency always does a great job in cutting a lot of holes to make our jobs easier. One nice thing about this event is that the pits are close to the track so I don’t have to walk all over the place. The first event of the season is always nice in that you get to see  people you haven’t seen for a while. I was happy when I saw Nick the Motorsports Manager for Falken tires and he gave me the VIP pass for the 2010 season. Falken has a great hospitality area for the team, dealers and friends of Falken where they provide drinks and food and a place to get out of the sun. This is very much appreciated especially at the events where it is hot and I don’t have to wait in line to get drinks and food.

Von Gitten Jr driving the Falken, Monster Ford mustang to a win at the season opener of Formula D

April 19 This was a shoot for Lowrider Girls Magazine, the location was a barber shop in South Central LA, I’ll be honest when driving through the hood I was a little nervous, but luckily the shop was not in the bad area. I love shooting for Lowrider girls because the Editor, Tanisha is always on scene so we can work together to get the best images possible. also the makeup artist Kim is great. This shoot was two parts indoor and outdoor with a lowrider.  The first part went fairly quick and easy inside the shop.  For the second half we had a lowrider, I was wondering where we were going to park the car but she shop owner said that parking it on the sidewalk is ok. I was a bit hesitant because try that anywhere else but south central and you’ll be getting hassled for permits and the police for parking a car on the sidewalk, but no problems and the shoot was finished with good results.

Lowrider Girls shoot in LA

4-23 This day was for mini Mini-Truckin. I was shooting in a studio that they use. The truck was really nice kinda a late 50′s early 60′s scallop paint scheme. It was for a cover and feature and we were using a model that I photographed before Helen Fancik, she is a pleasure to work with and  I got some really good images that day.

4-27 RV magazine cover shoot

Las Vegas S2000

The next couple of weeks I had a few shoots that were nothing memorable. On the 18^th I had European Car shoot that was a real pain in the ass to schedule.  The car was a highly modified Lotus with a carbon fiber body supercharged/turbocharged engine. Based on what my editor wanted I decided I wanted to shoot this on Glen Mountain Road the all the owner did was whine about having to drive his car 60 miles, whine about dirt on the road etc etc. Even the day we schedule the shoot at the last minute he decided that he didn’t want to go. So I made the drive to calabasis. One thing I really hate about what I do is dealing with self important self absorbed douchbags who think their car is the most important thing on the planet. Give me a break its just a car.  Well we went to the location that he wanted to shoot and of course it was not that great, I really didn’t care after dealing with him for 3 weeks of canceling shoots all I wanted to do was get this finished. It came out OK but if we would have gone to the location I wanted it wound have been a lot better

Lotus

The 20^th I had to cover the Remix car show for heavy hitters, it was fairly easy because all I had to do was shoot the exotics.

Remix show for Heavy Hitters

22^nd team menace mitsubishi shoot in LA

23^rd lowrider girls photoshoot

Surrounded by very good company while doing Lowrider Girls photoshoot

24^th Super street model shoot at Gearheinz

Super Street

26^th Super Street model shoot at DME

27^th Heavy hitters bmw show at Oakley

29^th Honda  tuning in la

30^th lowrider girls in la

In downtown LA Lowrider Girls shoot

Lowrider girls in LA

Early in the month I headed over to Tein for Import Tuner for a two car feature and cover shoot.. I got there a bit early and decided to drive around my hometown a bit. I was sad to see how rundown things have gotton over the years, it’s a shame because it used to be a really nice city, but how the traffic is horrible and the business center is slowly decaying.

On the 16^th I did a photo-shoot for one of our new magazines, Bound by Ink. I was hoping it was going to be some people shots but it wasn’t. I shot a story on how to make a prison tattoo machine at Inkface Tattoos. It was interesting to see how a tattoo gun can be made from a cassette player, mechanical pencil, guitar string and dental floss.

A cup that is "tattooed" using a prison style tattoo machine

The results of an hour of work is this prison style tattoo machine, it was pretty interesting to see the process to make one

On the 23^rd I had a cover shoot shoot for RV magazine, we took a truck and trailer to the cajon pass and did a lot of car to car photos, a fairly  easy shoot to do and the cover came out nice

RV magazine cover shoot

February 26^th shoot was at the former el toro marine air station for truckin magazine.  This was a testing day where they had six trucks doing slalom and braking. They took baseline numbers and then did some modifications and reran the tests. It was a bit of a long day, mostly what  I had to shoot was the behind the scenes photos and action photos on the track.. There was also a feature to shoot at the end of the day.

slalom at El Toro

slalom at El Toro

One of the trucks got a little out of control and ended up in the dirt and had to be pulled out