Unedited Shots: Adam’s Honda Civic

January 16, 2014 / jasonhoang / Leave a comment

Going back to just last summer when we shot Adam’s (now totaled) Civic (not by him BTW). His Civic was definitely one of my favourites in terms of styling and simplicity. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea but I was really digging the wheels, stance and overall look. It wasn’t so much of a functional look but more of a “fuck it, I’m gonna fit the craziest wheels on here and look good doing it” type of look. I’m a fan of anything put together with the right pieces – whether it’s functional or not.

Later, near the end of the summer – Adam ended up parting the Civic and trading it for an LS400 that was also quite slammed and on a set of wheels (I don’t recall what they were). Realizing that’s not the route he wanted to go, he sold that not too long after and is presently looking for a new project car. We always chat about how we miss the one we let go – in our case, my STI and his Civic. There was just something about my STI that I was completely bored of but absolutely loved at the same time and you don’t realize it until you sell it that you made a huge mistake. I’m sure Adam feels the same way, as do many others that may have sold a car to move on and realized it was a bad decision.

Anyways – most of these shots are ones that I don’t remember editing or completing skipping either because I didn’t like the composition or whatever. Either way, I am totally abusing the shit out of this edit right now and I love it. Although, I already see how it can be abused quite easily… I’ll tone it down after this post and get back to my usual edits, I promise haha!

Filllin’ up before we head out to the wilderness

An angled rolling shot of JC

This shot in particular wasn’t my favourite… But like I mentioned in Almond’s post, the edit seems to make the blur/out of focus look decent.

Has cleaning supplies. Still has a dirty bumper.

And the last shot.. I believe I have edited this one before but it was too good to leave out again. Look at that dish.

Flashback: Almond’s Mercedes G500 & BMW 335

January 13, 2014 / jasonhoang / Leave a comment

Time for another little throwback… Again I apologize for the lack of any relevant content lately. I haven’t had the time to pick up my camera to shoot anything, not that there is anything much to shoot… I think I also feel a little uninspired lately. There’s a lot of exciting things going on that the last thing I really think about is picking up my camera and shooting. In a few days, it’ll be exactly 2 months until we move into the new crib and then another 7 months until the wedding. So you can imagine that there’s a lot of things going on in my mind and the last thing I’m really thinking about is my car. Although, I do want to start driving it again.

This throwback is back to Almond’s two cars – his daily, winter beating Mercedes G500 – which you really don’t see much of, and his summer fun car – BMW 335 full of Dinan goodies the last I remember. The reason I decided to do a post on Almond’s cars is mainly because we’ve been talking lately about shoes and whatnot, so that naturally reminded me of the shot I took of his wife in her Louboutins – a popular shot that I took and one of my personal favourites. I believe Almond also ended up printing it in high res and put it up in his house!

Almond really is one of the most down to earth guys and is a very humble guy that I am happy to have met. I met him when I got a job at Apple – little did I know that we’d soon have lots in common – the love of cars, fashion, photography… The usual. When I found out that he had the G-wagon and the 335, I was excited and happy – not because he owned those particular cars, but because it’s hard to find someone that “loves” cars and shares the same passion as you do. I’ve met lots of people that love cars, but their love might have meant an upgraded shift knob or some altezza lights. Same kind of love, but different type of passion. The moment Almond said “BBS”, I said “Stop, you need not say more”. #NoHomo

Anyways, I decided to also try a different style of editing on Almond’s pictures. I’m not gonna lie, I’m becoming a huge fan of VSCO and their edits (thanks to Alex Mack for telling me about it after I told him I spent $1.00 on camera+ lol). It’s also becoming quite a popular edit among photographers and you see it lots for people/object edits, but I haven’t quite seen it flow into the automotive photography side just yet. We’re still in the “sun flare” and slight HDR look – which is still a great look, but I wanted to try something a little different. It seems to work for some shots, but not all even though I applied it to all. I’ll see how I feel about it as I try it out more…

Let’s start off with that infamous shot of his wife and her Louboutins and his G-wagon in the back…

The edit works well here. The depth of field and the red sole… drool.

I almost cried as I was editing this picture. I feel my eyes watering as I write this… I’ll just keep scrolling before I start tearing up again.

His G500

Massive wheels that look dwarfed by the size of the G500

Also brought along his 335…

Almond also let me take his fisheye for a spin as well.

And boy, did I have fun with that…

JC’s Corolla!

Downtown Calgary and of course – cranes.

Great profile. Perfect for a summer fun car.

Two of them together.

Oh God, here come the tears… Keep scrolling, keep scrolling….

Rolling shots for days

I never ended up editing this shot but with the new edit, it works well. One of my pet peeves are blurry pictures, but sometimes (just sometimes) it works…

And an end with part of the Calgary tower in the back…

Happy Monday!

Flashback: Punit’s Acura Integra

January 7, 2014January 7, 2014 / jasonhoang / Leave a comment

The saddest thing about winter is the lack of posts that I have and that I have to go back to old pictures and post them to make up for it. Only a few more months and I’ll be back in the groove!

However, this is an interesting post (to me, anyway) that Punit reminded me of last night. I would always go into my folders of pictures and see if there are any hidden gems that I might have missed and I always end up going into Punit’s folder and right back out again. Why, you ask? Because in all this time of knowing him, the only time I shot his car was back in 2009 and that was when we barely knew each other, and that was also when I first started shooting and started getting the hang of it. At the time though, they did beat any point and shoot lol.

Anyways, similar to JC or Ricky, Punit is/was always at the photoshoots of the handful of other cars I’ve shot. It’s not like I never see them or they never drive their cars. They do, in fact drive their cars everywhere we go… Except it’s to shoot other cars or for me to ride shotgun in to do rolling shots. We always get so caught up in shooting all the other cars that we never really think about shooting our own. Even when we talk about it, we don’t really feel like shooting our own cars and I think it’s cause we’re just around each other all the time that we don’t see the point. In retrospect, I really regret not being able to shoot Punit’s car in the various stages that it’s been in. I’m actually embarrassed that I’ve only ever shot it once and it was when I sucked balls. All other times were random shots and I think his car deserves more than that.

Last year, Punit’s car was kind of out of commission – not because it didn’t work, but because it wasn’t presentable in Punit’s mind. He was on Ohlin coilovers that were basically 4×4 height at its lowest setting, he was on TE37’s that didn’t have the fitment he was looking for, etc… He was also busy working on the GS and getting that ready so you can imagine how difficult it is to keep up with modding two cars. Over the year, he’s stock piled a bunch of parts that will be going on for this summer and I promised myself and Punit that we would go out and give his Integra a proper photoshoot once the warm weather comes our way. I’ve seen a sneak peak at the parts he’s got so far and I think you guys will love what he’s got in store for the Integra. Until then, I’m looking back through the shots I managed to get randomly over the years…

This was when I first met Punit – the Integra was done up decently and he had just gotten rid of his Rota’s for the Work Meister S1’s that are now purple and on Diana’s Fit. Unpainted carbon hood and hatch, the basic interior mods like Recaros and ITR wheel. Keep in mind this was way back in 2009 when real wheels were rare to see… This was considered quite modded back then.

His paint was and still is in great condition. This was a noob rolling shot when I didn’t know what composition meant. LOL

Soon after he picked up a set of very aggressive CCW’s and again, at that time – the wheel specs were unheard of for a stock body Integra.

You look at the fitment today and it looks pretty standard, minimal camber, it’s flush with the fenders like they should be… But at that time, let me tell you – we were like little girls in the school yard when we saw this for the first time. He also got a lot of flack for doing this…

The following year he had the faces powdercoated to a teal. A bold move for a red car but it ended up also looking deadly! This was the only picture I got of the wheels when they were teal…

And finally the next year, he did the unthinkable and purchased a set of re-barreled Regamasters from Wheel Flip. At the time, he was the only one in the world with this set. Soon after, Wheel Flip made a few more sets… Not only were they rare, but they were wide as f*** and we even wondered how he was going to fit them. You can see how much camber is needed to do so…

Even with a wide angle, from the back of his car you could see the crazy amount of camber.

Side profile was winning though. White on red was perfect.

This was just as winter was finishing up and we all went over to his place to get the wheels on and his interior back in after he had it repainted. The only differences here from the first picture is the addition of the Mugen wing, his K24 swap and Spoon exhaust. He also dialed it in a little lower and of course the insane amount of camber.

Front fitment – with more dish than my SSR’s lol *facepalm*. He also got a lot of hate for this set up too, but it was awesome IMO.

The rear wheels. Absolutely love how they look.

And that is the final shot I really ever had of Punit’s car. I didn’t even get a chance to shoot it while it was on the Regamasters which I also regret dearly. However, I think with the changes Punit has in store for this summer, the photoshoot I want to have will be perfect.

Flashback Fridays: Because Racecar Civic

December 6, 2013 / jasonhoang / Leave a comment

After posting the instagram pic of my Civic last night, I thought about it for a little bit and I don’t think I’ve ever posted the set of my Civic up on my blog before, nor have I gone back to re-edit ALL the pics since I shot them. Who knows – maybe I posted it a long time ago, but this doesn’t seem familiar to me. So I thought it would be a great winter filler post lol

Looking back at these pics really makes me miss the way the Civic used to be and how it looked. It went through so many stages – unlike the two cars that came after it – the STI and now the LS460L. The Civic was the starting point of it all for me. The modding, the addiction, the empty wallet, the photography, and blogging. Everything that I “am” today all started with the Civic. I went through a bunch of phases… The first phase being the cheap, whatever looked good, whatever I could afford phase. It was arguably the most embarrassing part of my life with the Civic. MOMO shift knob, no suspension mods thinking stock height was “low enough”, a muffler weld on thinking it was bad ass. I cringe as I write it out because I can’t believe I did that… But at the same time, I didn’t know any better. I was young, broke and excited to mod a car – don’t tell me you didn’t all go through that too.

I quickly found out that parts can’t just look good on their own, rather they have to look good on your car. A set of expensive wheels might look good on the shelves, but if it doesn’t suit your car then it can be straight up ugly. I think I went through about 4 different sets of wheels and other various parts before I figured out what I really wanted the car to look like. Instead of wasting all this money buying useless parts, I sat down and decided what I loved and what I liked, I got rid of what I just “liked” and then moved on from there. Would it suit the car? Would it match what the look I was going for?

Eventually I came up with wanting a “race-inspired” look. I’ll admit, at the time – which was almost 5 years ago – GT wings and anything of the sort were really foreign to the scene. Stance was just becoming popular because I remember all of these guys asking if 17×7 +42 is aggressive enough and chuckling to myself. So anyone that went out and did some ridiculous fitment was either crazy or wanting to get hated on… Let alone put a GT wing on a FWD car. It took a winter for me to gather all the parts, I began switching out shitty parts for better ones, finding the best possible solution to get it done. It wasn’t much really but it was enough to change it entirely.

My favourite shot from that day was this. The J’s Racing wing was my favourite piece on the car and trust me – if I could afford to just keep all my parts, I would have just kept them with me and let them collect dust for all I care. It would just be nice to keep that collection.

Nowadays – GT wings are becoming more acceptable. I’m willing to bet the one guy that hated on me out there is now wanting a GT wing himself or already has one. I really don’t care about the FWD, RWD bullshit – it looks bad ass. The Spoon diffuser from the S2000 was also one of the first to go on an 8th gen civic. Thanks to Paul over at (the now closed) Speedtech worked his magic and retrofitted it to my car. I originally got the idea from Dal and his K20 Integra who also had Paul retrofit a Spoon diffuser to his car.

It really helped complete the back end of the car. When I took the diffuser off, it just looked so naked…

The front of the car just had a J’s Racing-style lip. At the time, J’s Racing apparently stopped making parts for the 8th gen Civic and so it was admittedly harder than I thought to find a genuine lip. I’m not sure what happened with that whole situation but that’s what I ended up with.

Loved rear end shots of the car. Super aggressive and the lines are so good. The 8th gen Civics are probably my favourite model after the 2000’s. Even now, they’ve got weird lines and it looks awkward to mod.

Side note: I remember posting this on the 8thgencivic forums and had multiple comments about how there was too much camber. That was -3.5 degrees of camber… Now no one bats an eye at -11 degrees of camber. How times have changed…

The roller I made into a canvas that still hangs in my house. I do wish the wheels were spinning a bit more (now that I know how to properly take rollers) but I still love it. The paint is so perfect in these pics…

Can’t forget the sticker roll call down the rear windows. It’s dying now, but you still see it around… I feel like it’s turning into the livery-type decals and larger styles on the sides of the cars.

The shot I posted on instagram last night. I love the Meisters so much – it is my favourite wheel of all time. Corey still has them from when he bought them from me after I parted out the Civic and we’ve all been trying to convince him to just make them fit on his S2000 – they’ll fit with a little work, but I still think he’s adamant on getting rid of them. They are just so perfect though – everything down from the sizing to the colour IMO. PLUS they are now discontinued and WORK has moved onto the S1R’s…

Close up of dirty wheels (but awesome wheels).

The J’s Racing wing from Dal’s Integra that he traded with me for my old Volk TE37’s paired with Titanium ballerbolts that are also now on Jackie Law’s S2000.

Ah… the memories. I do miss the way it looks, but I don’t miss it… Mainly because it’s my winter car now and it has just hit 150,000 KM’s. How baller would it have been to keep it as is for winter? Dumb… But awesome.

Anyways – hope you guys who are lucky enough to be living anywhere in Alberta right now are enjoying this deep freeze of -40 weather. I love it (sarcasm). I also love that everyone is posting how cold it is out there (sarcasm). Shout out to the people who are posting themselves sitting in traffic and of the snow in their front yard (sarcasm).

Morale of the above paragraph: We get how cold it is. We know traffic sucks. Don’t post dumb shit.