I’m standing downwind of the wafting smoke from a freshly corded set of Ironman tires, thumbing through the last ten shots on a camera I’m still learning how to use. The Houston air was brisk in the December afternoon, with final moments of sunlight from 2022 reflecting off of the Speedsportz Racing Park paddock at Knuckleup.
There was a sense of pride as I clicked deeper through my 16gb SD card, hundreds of photos facing back at me looking something like what I always imagined life would be. Big body drift cars, polished Japanese wheels, and a pit full of friends savoring the last moments together of the year. Ready to get back to shooting, I pass by one more frame before I open the viewfinder with a satisfying click. Facing me are two gloves, holding onto each other on the center console of an R32 Skyline, bathed in the red glow of the suede-cloth upholstery. The focus was a little soft, the exposure was a little off, and I couldn’t have been more excited. I pulled out my phone to take a picture of the display and texted it to my Dad, who had been on the other end helping me dial in my settings over my two days in Texas. This felt like I was doing something right.
Now eleven months on from Friday Night Lights, the longest I’ve been without a camera in my hands pointing at something low and wide has been two weeks. I’ve edited close to three thousand photos this year, a portion of which you’ve more than likely seen on Instagram. 100 posts deep, a comical but not insignificant metric to judge my growth on, I wanted to take a minute to reflect back on some of my favorite shots from the year given the comfortable quiet that will most likely come with December as I take a much needed break from Los Angeles.
I also, quickly, owe a thank you to everybody who has continued to read, hang out with, and help grow Racing Couture. As a passion project, the incentive has never been money or explosive growth- maintaining an independent automotive blog in 2023 creates more bills than it pays. What it has allowed me to do, however, is connect and find common ground with people I never would’ve met. Every story reply, comment, and DM asking for photos has not only helped me understand more about the enthusiast world and made it more accessible than I would’ve ever thought it to be, it’s made me understand more about what I find motivating. Late nights and early mornings, I’ve found a passion through my readers, and so just as I ended last years coverage, I’m beyond excited to uncover where we’ll be blasting off to over the next 100 posts, armed with a camera and a quarter tank.
I hope then, to share a story in this post about three sets of my favorite photos from the last year behind the camera, and what lessons they taught me as an amature photographer. I’m proud to understand at this point in my journey the enormity of what I still have yet to understand.
Please enjoy the summation of the last 100 posts, 11 months, 5 states, 2 SD cards, and the $15 I earned while laying the foundations for what I hope Racing Couture will become.
Before we begin, if you are on the staff at Pit and Paddock, I owe you an apology. This photo, which has become one of a handful of my poster shots for RC, was snapped from the VIP section at a Grid Icons event, which, I’m sure much to the surprise of all of you, I was not invited to. That said, if all it takes to look like somebody important in the car world is an oversized Essentials mock neck and some jewelry, just wait until I finally get my Margiela Tabis.
What this photo taught me though, rule breaking and high society cosplay aside, is that when you’re ready to leave whatever event you’re covering, you have at least another half an hour of work to do before you can go. I’m the first to admit that I often fall into the trap of taking the same photos of a lot of different cars. There’s a certain body memory invoked in taking pictures; I hold this camera in my hand, I press these buttons in this order, I get into this insane pose while I take a photo from this angle. It wasn’t wholly untrue for this event either: the space itself had really excellent studio lighting but my angles weren’t creative and I hadn’t met anybody new yet.
It was then, like a message delivered from former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn himself, that realistically, if you’re already going to leave, it really doesn’t matter if you get kicked out— does it?
As I climbed up the back staircase into the red-roped section, I felt freshly aware of my surroundings with the knowledge that there was more I could do for the night. I’d been taking turns with the other handful of photographers shooting similar shots, but I had yet to see a camera venture upstairs (most likely because there was a sign that said not to go up there).
This extra detour, full of polite smiles and awkward looks ended up granting me undoubtedly the best photo of my night. Almost entirely unedited, the freedom that came from knowing I had enough of my staple photos for a good post let me try something I hadn’t seen yet, and pushed me to work a little more creatively in an artificially allotted amount of time.
In the same way that the best cars always pull into the meet once you’re leaving and the best song at the concert is always the one you skip to try and beat the traffic, your favorite photo is waiting in the half an hour of effort once you’ve decided you’re done.
I could’ve pulled so many photos for this next one, but these handful demonstrate a range of the theory’s application— shorthand, I try to remember that I’m not out to cover cars, I’m covering an event.
What this means, practically, is that there’s more to the feeling of an event than the cars that show up for it. There’s a backdrop, for one: the venue plays a huge role as you get a feel for what style of photos you choose to take. Grab a few shots of the architecture or the landmarks, look for how the weather plays with the shadows lingering on a sign, or find creative ways to take a photo of a car without taking a photo of the car.
There’s also the builders themselves who set the tone for event coverage. What are people wearing? Who has the most insane outfit on, and what can you learn from their style and presentation when they get out of the car? What are the little moments we forget about that can elevate or highlight something about a car? Not every photo in the pit has to be somebody changing a wheel.
Thinking this way, you have a much more contextually rich opportunity to convey that taste in your mouth, sum it up in five words feeling about a race or a meet. Relying on a temperature slider or dehaze effect in Lightroom limits the emotional connection that you create as both the photographer and viewer.
Having lived in California a little over two years now, finding my circles and hitting the meets my friends host mean that there are a lot of cars I’ve shot more than once. That said, the same car can look very different somewhere else, as long as you’ve built enough of a story around where it is right now.
Looking beyond photography, the mystical and enchanting world of stance videos on YouTube or Vimeo is a great tool for finding inspiration in terms of powerful and intentional vibe-establishing. Usually, you don’t have to get much further beyond the first twenty seconds to understand a handful of tricks videographers tend to use before hanging out of the back of an SUV.
Whether it’s a gritty, dark, late night-mobbing shoot or a high production value reveal of Kato-San’s latest hacked and widened Liberty Walk Aventador, there’s almost always a handful of shots to create a more developed feeling for how you perceive the car in the video. Lights flashing in high rise buildings, a static perspective shot in a dirty garage, a car cover pulled off, or the well loved and warn walk up and unlock the car trick. Regardless, there’s effort put into framing and telling the story of whatever you’re about to see rollers of, so understanding the ways that practice applies to a series of stills has helped me make more out of the opportunities I have to create media.
Last, and undoubtedly the most important lesson I’ve learned throughout my travels, is that in order to succeed by any metric, you need to be in it for the right reasons.
I had a friend laugh at me once— it was unholy early in Los Angeles, and I was headed North East a few hours through a still-hazy morning rush for coverage of an event at Apple Valley Speedway. The hours of driving, editing, gate fees, burning in the sun, and persistent singe on my eyebrows from decatted JZs all for thirteen likes on Instagram was, admittedly, absurd. Business 200 level classes about maximizing utility aside, even amongst the car community, it’s clear to everybody with an explore page that my style of content is at times, too antiquated for its own good.
Multi-page content strategies, rushed merch drops, and an assault on TikTok’s algorithm with hundreds of flashing videos were all, at one time, suggested to me as a means of growing Racing Couture like they weren’t the reason I created this website in the first place. Shortcomings of each of these options aside, the goal of Racing Couture strictly as a blog is to exist as an honest and humble archive of cool shit that makes my own heart pound. Cars with stories, for people who love making them.
I was frequently reminded in my upbringing to find a career I truly loved, because it would still be there tomorrow even when I don’t want to go. As many of us feel the unrelenting presence of using social media as a means of promoting ourselves, building an image, finding opportunities, or demonstrating a skill, it’s important to remember that you need to love what you do on the weekends too, not just your day job. I owe my body hours of sleep for these thirteen likes, and it’s because I care more about showing those 13 people what was hot this morning than the bliss of two more hours in bed.
You cannot create anything truly of value if you don’t care about why it exists. Nobody asks me to run this blog. The world has collectively moved on. And yet, firm in conviction, I wake up every weekend both tired and hopeful that I am creating something people resonate with the way I intended them to.
My “why” is more extensive, of course. I want to take over the world and make weird clothes and build racecars with my friends in hexagon-light-lit garages, host more meets, show the world the East Coast, and never stop obsessing over looking good and going fast. Until then, I will take photos, share them with Instagram, and upload them to a website I built to show you, me.
And so, rule number three: your best photo has always been whichever one is your favorite. It should tell a story; why you care to capture the moment in the first place.
This photo is my why— this is what I imagine the LA I wanted to run away to feels like in July, what breaking the rules and stopping traffic feels like. It shows off the people who find value in automotive excess and baggy t-shirts, and is every bit as angsty and beautiful as I could convey the moment. Over 100 posts and 20,000 miles clocked this year, this is my pinned photo, my three lessons summarized— and thankfully, I actually managed to catch it in focus.
I hope you were able to find something valuable here; for your own photography, to learn more about my mission, or just to kill a few minutes. While I keep the dream alive in the meantime, keep doing cool shit in cars. Thank you all for reading and supporting the cause, I’ll see you back out there soon! ///RC
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