Romel’s Hachiroku AE86

January 3, 2014 / jasonhoang / Leave a comment

Here’s a crazy flashback to one of the first cars I had ever shot. This was in 2009 and when I started getting into shooting and getting to know people with cars. This is a funny photoshoot to me because this is actually JC’s dad’s car (that he still owns today) and at the time of the shoot, I didn’t talk to JC nor did I ever talk to him. Fast forward to today and JC is one of my groomsmen in our wedding! Small world!

Anyways – Romel’s car is in extremely immaculate condition – most of everything has been replaced and kept original. The door seals were replaced with brand new ones and the doors pretty much sounded better when they closed than my 2006 Civic. Actually, immaculate is not even the right word to describe it. The AE86 is barely driven and most of it’s life (that I’ve known it for) has been spent in the garage. I personally don’t know how one can let a great car sit there without being driven everyday because it would drive me nuts. I can barely get through a winter without driving my car… I’m not sure how I’d be if it was parked in the summer too…

So there’s not many pictures… I was noob at the time, so excuse the lack of everything a good picture should have. I still feel like I have lots to learn in the game of photography… Lots of things to learn and every time I shoot, I learn something small to carry forward next time. I lol at those people that purchase a dSLR, a few lenses, a flash and all of the sudden they’re offering to do paid photoshoots a few months later. Sorry junior – you have a nice camera, but that’s about it. Even today, I feel uncomfortable asking for some type of monetary compensation for shooting cars only because I think I need to produce amazing amazing work to be able to even bring up money. I shoot because I love to do it – I don’t do this to make a living and I don’t need extra pocket change. The gratification for me comes from coming home and dumping the pictures onto the computer and having a great collection of shots of great cars.

Anyways – maybe I’ll get to do a better photoshoot this summer of it again. Hopefully I get more under my belt this year.

DTP 2011 Favourites… Part II

April 4, 2013April 4, 2013 / jasonhoang / 5 Comments

Since I saw that one of my top posts was DTP favourites from 2011, I thought I’d revisit it and share some other shots. I catered the original post to be around the cars mainly with GT wings because of my obsession with them. Trust me – if in some weird world, VIP cars existed with GT wings – I would be the first one to have it. However that is not the case, and I don’t foresee it ever being the case, so I have to admire other cars that have them now.

But as I was going through this – 2 years later – I am still at the same conclusion that I came to when I posted part 1 last year. It is that the automotive scene – only a province away – is much more evolved than ours today. Even 2 years after I’ve shot these cars, they were still ahead of the curve that we see here. There’s no cutting corners, everything is done right. You might even find that I’m writing a similar paragraph to the one in part 1, but I swear I didn’t read it again before writing this.

Truthfully, when we attended this show – you could see the differences in our group compared to the rest of the show. Subtle, minor modifications vs. aggressive and all out – which is something that is just catching on locally here IMO. There is a certain aesthetic value in creating a car with great parts in combination with each other and that just doesn’t happen all too often.

Anyway – I think I sound bitter because I’m jealous, not because I hate. Enjoy.

Here’s the first part I posted WAYYY back in April 2012.
DTP 2011 Favourites

CL63 AMG – one of my favourite from Mercedes. I saw one in the lot when we were looking for a GS for Punit and I wanted one so bad. The Ti exhaust on this was bad ass.

I also don’t usually dig the black on black, but this was pulled off nicely.

NSX

Rear scoop

STI Hatch of Wedsports SA-60M’s.

Honda CRZ on Spoon CR93’s. These were pretty new 2 years ago and I was pretty close to buying a set because they were quite affordable but they were too bland for my tastes.

370Z. I still love this.

370Z and 350Z together in the AJ-R booth.

GT G35. Love the look.

Matte black M3 on black Volk G2 wheels. I remember way back when they were rumored to be replacing the original TE37 with these… I was devastated cause I didn’t like them at all lol. Thank god they didn’t.

Speed Syndicate AE86. Love the color

VIP Merc. Now that I have a greater appreciation for VIP style – I can totally dig this. Not that I didn’t back then, but I love this even more now.

Speed Syndicate Matte Red 350Z.

Nice green 350Z

Gangster GS on Bazreia’s. Love these wheels.

Super clean S14 on Meisters

Matt’s yellow Initial D-inspired FD. The white TE’s will look deadly on this.

The internet sensation bagged VIP-style Fit was also there.

M3. I forget the name of the company, but they did a lot of accent styling and cues which was different. Doesn’t work on many cars, but on all the BMW’s they brought out – they were nicely done.

EDIT: The company is MW Designs. Thanks Brad!

JP Scara’s – too crazy.

Wicked Miata from Garage Five on SSR SP1’s. Fender flares killed it.

Finish! I want to go back…

Beautiful Day for an #IMissSummer

February 3, 2013February 3, 2013 / jasonhoang / Leave a comment

Let’s go back to 2011 to the first illmotion Sunday School show & shine that was held. This was partly because Driven/DTP didn’t come and frankly – this blew it out of the water. The hottest day of the year, tons of people came out and a good time was had…

Lots of changes to a lot of these cars today – some have been parted, some have been sold, and some have gone through drastic changes.

The stage of the STI I actually hated the most now that I look back on it. However, it only ever had two stages… haha

Corey’s Civic

JC’s Corolla – now gone.

Ryan’s Ep3

Diana’s Fit

Steve’s RSX

Rhys’s MR2

Jamie’s S2000

Jeevs’ 240 and A4 with Nick’s (now gone) J’s S2000

Arif’s EK

Eric and Jack’s drift sluts

Scott’s turbo SI

Rajan’s EG

Romel’s AE86

Jame’s fully custom built STI – body work and paint was done himself and the wing – I can’t remember the name – kognition I think – is mounted and welded into the chassis through the trunk.

Giuseppe’s Skyline

Darren’s RSX

Not sure who the owner for this is now. It seemed to have gone through tons of owners, but it’s sick either way.

Jimmy’s GS

Jackie’s S2000 with Jackson’s ex-S2000

Hoang’s turbo K20 civic

Terry’s turbo K20 Type R

Tien’s S2000

The Ultimate Random Throwback Post

January 30, 2013 / jasonhoang / Leave a comment

Like I said earlier, I was going to go through all my pics and just edit random shit where we’re hanging out, installing things, going to meets, doing shoots and everything that’s just not really formal. I feel like besides the posts about my own car and its progress, all you really get is shots from the shoots I’ve done. It’s a lot better when you can just look at pics that were taken for fun. For some of you guys – those that are part of some of the pics – it’s good for memories to look at how our cars used to look, what we did and we can even say we regret some of the stuff we’ve done. At the end of the day, I’m glad I got the pics I did that show us just having fun – that’s the main reason we all look forward to summer so much.

Keep in mind – NONE of this is really in a chronological order – batches of the pics will have been taken together, but it would take forever for me to put all this in the proper order. We’ll be jumping anywhere from 2008 all the way to 2012. The main point of this post is just to randomize the throwback and go through all the things we’ve been through since I really started picking up the camera and taking pics of cars. I’ll try my best to explain each batch as we go…

Let’s get started

The night we shot Darren’s RSX – a rainy and gloomy day, but an awesome shoot.

BTW this was back when I still had the Civic. Man, that was its prime right there…

Like I said, the times we just get together and do random things are usually the best. I’m sure everyone reading this that shares the same passion can agree. We were installing Barb’s coils this day. Some of you might remember my post of it.

Sharing the heater…

Check out Punit keeping warm with the heat gun.

This is usually my friend whenever we go to Rich’s. Every time we go there, it’s cold for some reason…

Fast forward a bit more and this is the day that Ricky picked up his SSR SP1’s after a long wait. Just in time too!

Derrick also came by – I can’t remember why… but we ended up sanding Ricky’s engine cover and repainting it.

Here is the day we braved the snow storm in the beginning of 2012 to make the 3 hour drive to Edmonton for the season opener meet. A lot of us were supposed to go but they chickened out because of the snow. It ended up being an awesome short day trip.

Punit showed up…

This was some of the ride.. It only lasted for about 45 minutes… slow driving and drafting behind big trucks helped lol

Cleared up and we were good to go.

Stop at gasoline alley to take a washroom break.

When we got there, the weather was awesome. We made a stop at iHop for brunch.

We “heard” there was a BBQ at Speedtech Edmonton – we made the trek there because we got lost on the way so many times and there ended up being nothing. That, or they didn’t like us… haha

This is where Daniel and Isaac invited us to their shop and let us wash their cars VIP style… This was the best part of that trip lol

Troll

Derrick somehow hit his head on his trunk and got this huge ass bruise. He blamed it on me for some reason…

The awesome group shot we were able to get with the help of a super high ladder. I hate heights so this was scary as shit.

A bad ass burnout as this guy was leaving the meet… pretty random, but this car was rad.

Gas fill up on the way home. Gas station pictures are always, I repeat – ALWAYS sick. lol

The day Ricky took his car home after installing his ballin’ air suspension.

Accuair e-level…

Oh look, Boo decided to use his face to clean the exhaust openings of my bumper. How kind. Gopesh approves

Installing my JDM brake light… lol it actually didn’t take this many people, but it was faster.

Installing Gopesh’s APR exhaust… this thing was a pain. But once again – teamwork.

Prashant was up top installing the APR intake.

The old..

The new…

A random shot when we were shooting…

Summer 2012 – good days…

I think this was 2010 track days when Race City was still open. Romel’s AE86 – still minty.

Peep Punit’s Integra – still on gold meisters. PS – those meisters are now on Diana’s Fit in purple… we’ll get to that soon.

The MR2 shot that made Speedhunters…

The random day we went to go chill at our chill spot and some random old guy wanted to use our phones. We all said no but I threw Derrick under the bus…

Derrick is not impressed. LOL

A random shot I didn’t even know about until today haha

This was the day after we put Ricky’s SSR’s on finally. Played hookie and we both called in sick to chill. One of the best sick days haha

Went out for a shoot too… Same location I shot my LS a few days ago.

Chillin’ in the sun… This was the day JC got his VS-XX’s on and we were waiting for him to wash his car.

Random shot at the beyond meet.

The day we shot Almond’s 335 and G wagon…

Rooftop!!!

This was the night that Diana took her Fit home for the first time. We were out late and everyone came to gather behind Speedtech… I called Diana to come by to chill and we ended up test fitting Arif’s TE37’s on there.

So new.

Boom! They’re 16’s so they look kinda small on the fit.

Some JDM poses…

Still looked good though. White on white was nice. Diana was trying to decide which wheels to go with – I think the TE37’s and the Meisters were the two choices.

JC doing random shit.

A random day. Don’t even know what we did that day… but we cleaned our cars. Always a good time.

JC still on Rota’s. Glad he’s out of that black hole.

The day Corey and Ryan shot the video of my car…

One of the more popular pictures of 2010. We got Jackie’s S2000 under the trailers – legit too. A lot of the under trailer pictures that you see are only the front part of the car because it actually doesn’t fit. I remember the cage and his wing were just cm’s away from hitting. This was shared on a ton of pages… still is today.

Another night – when Dal still had the Integra that Reggie owns now – recently featured on The Chronicles top ten Honda’s – we swapped wheels.

This was a FWD stagger – 17×8.5 +30 up front and 17×7.5 +40 in the rear. We ended up trading – my TE37’s for his J’s wing. That’s where that came from 🙂

The trip to Vancouver for DTP in 2011 I think. This was another awesome trip with a group of good peeps. Washing our cars in the outdoor car wash.

When the STI was stock. This show was kind of shitty cause it rained ALL day.

Chillin

Daniel’s BMW M3 GT shoot…

Mean looking…

BOOM. I was actually surprised when I came across these pics. This was the day that Diana bought the Meisters off of Punit – he dropped them off and we test fitted them right after. Hard to believe that they were gold, especially after seeing them in purple for the last 2 or 3 years… Look at that droop. Holy shit haha

4×4 height.

Still looks fresh.

The day my Civic was finally complete. I went over to Speedtech after work to get Paul to put on the Spoon diffuser for me…

Test fitting Prashant’s wheels on his ex-GTI…

Outside chillin.

Here we installed Diana’s T1R springs.

Comparison.

Not sure what’s going on here. We’re in the hood, so that must be the reason for gang signs.

Nice height!

Punit putting in work.

The finished product. The purple she ended up choosing was perfect. I’m guilty for hating on it at first… but it’s actually dope. I wanted to paint my meisters purple for quite a while…

Random shoot. This was when we shot Benny’s AE86 and 350z

Steve ended up coming in his 2JX Cressida… Burnout in the alley!

The day we shot Devon’s CBR and EG… Guess what they’re actually looking at?

Random model that came up to us…

See this post for the full story

https://lifewithjson.com/2012/09/23/our-not-so-typical-lazy-sunday/

The AE86 shoot…

Arif getting his Spoon diffuser mocked up for the EK

Pieces had to be cut off for it to fit. With the left over pieces, I dremeled out a Spoon crane. I have two of these – legit spoon crane made from legit spoon carbon fiber. I bet no one else has these lol