Before the turn of year, I had the great opportunity to shoot my very good friend and mentor, Peter Li and his girl in a very seedy and dark part of Los Angeles. For this particular shoot, I took a lot of inspiration from the Chinese art house director, Wong Kar Wai. I specifically drew a lot of the look and mood from, from his masterful film, “In the Mood for Love.”

I finally had a bit of breathing time to post these shots up!

It’s been a long, long while since I’ve shot couples and looking back at this set gives is giving me that itch again. Oh, and Cortizone, I’m sure, will not help.

This Thursday, April 8th, 2010, is the Art of FormulaD: a 2009 Season Retrospective presented by ID Agency and Formula Drift. The show will feature the works of Estevan Oriol, Jose Martinez, Will Roegge, and myself.

If you’d like to attend please RSVP to john@theidagency.com!

I’ll see you all there and be sure to wear your best ARTPANTS!

A few months ago when Kenny Chieu and I started talking about his car being sponsored by KINOD, it seemed like something we’d both like to pursue. The more we talked, the more it seemed like the talks would actually bear fruit. Speculation turned into some rough ideas, ideas transformed into real concepts, and the concepts finally became a reality.

About a year ago, I shot Kenny’s Toyota MR-S for a ColdTrackDays feature. Who would’ve known then that the street tuned car, that also moonlighted weekend track car, would turn into a fully dedicated time attack machine.

Kenny and I met for coffee one day. We sat down and worked over all the details and finalizing the livery design concepts. Kenny is an OCD sort of man himself. As my client and I had to make him happy but I also had to make sure that my design vision would be realized. The KINOD branding had to stay true. After a couple of hours, we both approved a final design concept. Those concepts is what you see above.

The image on the top left is our original rough concept and the one below it is the finalized design ready to be sent out to get the vinyl cut.

In 2009, Kenny ran KINOD stickers but it did not brand KINOD correctly. So for the 2010 season, KINOD has teamed up with Kenny to become his title sponsor! Jesse and I wanted to step up KINOD’s marketing and reach while Kenny wanted to step up his competitiveness for the 2010 Redline Time Attack season. It became a perfect marriage.

We wanted KINOD to be known as a quality brand with quality taste. The livery design on the car is to portray that exact connotation –and I believe it does. The design is simple, clean, yet striking. It will definitely stand out in the RTA street class: a class filled with high dollar builds with high dollar companies backing them up. Then there is us: a small business trying to get their name out while helping a privateer racer whom we believe will be very competitive this season.

Portrait and wedding photography advertisements on a time attack car? Wrong demographic? We think not. So many people fall in love and get married: including race car drivers! We can’t wait to see how Kenny will do at round one of the 2010 Redline Time Attack season in two weeks time. If anything, he and his newly KINOD’d up car will look sexy in the process, yes?

Back in October, I obliged to be set up to a blind date (with the help of 0-60 Magazine). I had no expectations but I did have an idea of who I have been set up with. The door bell rang in the early morning the day of our date. I open the door to find a lady in a very sexy red dress. The first things that came into mind was that her looks wasn’t anything to write home to mom about, but she did have a mature yet playful look going about her.

As we proceeded with our day together, we grew to know each other more and more. We spent a crisp and cold day in the mountains and she showed me how she danced –and oh, how she did dance!

They always say that appearances are always skin deep. And as you get to know someone more and more; they either become uglier, or they become stunningly beautiful. That was what transpired that day on crisp and cold in those mountains. This girl showed me that her beauty is not from her looks, but how she danced with true seductive confidence.

I never got that second date.

These days, a lot of my work is purely digital. So when I was given this box from the people at NOS which has two of my photos printed on it, the a great warm feeling wafted over me. This box is one of those “special edition” things which are made in limited quantity. It includes; a comemorative 2009 Formula D Champion box, a Chris Forsberg 2009 FD champion t-shirt, a bottle of NOS energy drink, and a NOS Energy drink 1 gigabite USB drive which includes the Speedhunters.com film Portrait of a Champion directed by Will Roegge!

You can see the original Speedhunters article which featured my two shots here. And you can also watch the Will Roegge/Speedhunters film, Portrait of a Champion, here.