Tag: Car Show

Automotive by Sean

Event: AutoCon 2012 – Los Angeles V.1

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I’m sure by now between the roll in post, and other blogs, you’ve all gotten a taste of what AutoCon 2012 has to offer – so let’s just jump right into this.  I’m admittedly not the biggest fan of car shows in general, but the thing I like the most about these annual shows is the chance to see various cars transform from the previous year, as well as getting the opportunity to see totally new and fresh builds for the first time.  It’s also a great opportunity to meet people within the industry.  I always make it a point to introduce myself to a few new people during each show.  Not only to make new friends, but to get insight into new feature cars and stories; I can thank a lot of good material just from random introductions.  I can honestly say that it is easy to see the growth of NDF simply by the reaction of others when I drop the blog’s name.  I went from virtually no one knowing what Narita Dog Fight was and getting blank stares, to a good percentage of people who support it – and that’s cool to me.  Alright, enough reminiscing – click past the break to see part 1 of Auto Connection 2012 coverage.  It’s worth noting that I’ve been out of town all day, and will continue to be for the remainder of the week.  So if the coverage is slow to post, I apologize.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: AutoCon 2012 Los Angeles – Roll In

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When I started the drive out to Arcadia for AutoCon yesterday morning, I had been under the strange impression that media will-call was at 9am; where I got that impression and why I thought it was perfectly normal I’m still not sure.  When I got to the site and saw about 400 cars waiting to be rolled in I kind of figured I had some misinformation.  Well, there was nothing else to do really so I thought I’d make the most of it though and start snapping away.  The route into the Santa Anita grounds is through an underground route under an overpass to the Westfield mall that’s across from the park.  So I just posted up under the shade of the bridge, and did my best to avoid the already intense inland heat.  I talked to Justin from AutoCon when I saw him pass through and he had no problems with me starting early.  I’m typically late to car shows, so this was kind of cool for me.  The roll-in process was much smoother than last year, and it seems they were much better staffed this year.  Grab a cup of coffee and click past the break for the first of many Auto Connection 2012 posts.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Wekfest LA 2012 – Long Beach, California V.4

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It’s almost been a week since Wekfest LA, and I’ve just about wrapped up all my coverage.  I’m going to try and squeeze everything I’ve got into this final post – so it’s going to be massive.  I went ballistic on this one so, by far, you’ll see the most diversity in cars throughout this post.  I’ve also included another slideshow gallery at the bottom for the masses.  Hope you see your car!  Also, if you want some special VIP only coverage of the show, check out our friends down under at Street-Cover.  I supplied them with a few shots to help spread the Wek love over in Australia.  You should probably check the site out anyway because it’s pretty rad.  Again, special thanks goes out to all those at Weksos Industries involved in organizing such a massive tour, as well as the city of Long Beach for being cooperative.  Let’s just jump right into the coverage.  You know the drill – click the break for more.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Wekfest LA 2012 – Long Beach, California V.3

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I’m running out of ways to start these posts, as usual, so I’ll just start off by saying…here is part 3 of NDF’s Wekfest LB (A) coverage.  I even had trouble coming up with that.  I think from now on, literally this second, for the rest of the show coverage, I will highlight a handful of shots and then post a slide gallery of some cookie cutter coverage of the show towards the bottom of the post.  There are really way too many cars to try and put them into this format.  This will allow you guys to see the show in a more timely manner as well.  As a side benefit, it will also allow me to concentrate my commentary on just a few memorable shots.  After previewing the new layout, I think you’ll like it as it allows you to briefly preview a lower sized picture, as opposed to loading an entire page worth of pictures.  Once you click a thumbnail, a slide feature will pop up allowing you to view each shot in the gallery in succession. Typically, towards the end of posts my comments turn from semi-informational to just blatant observations (e.g. here is a civic on Volks).  You’re probably reading that type of stuff and saying, “Well, no shit”.  I think I left off around early afternoon, just before the gates opened and the flood of show goers rushed the grounds.  I think it was right about this time I decided to break off from the guys I was hanging out with and start taking photos again.  Click past the break for continued coverage.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Wekfest LA 2012 – Long Beach, California V.2

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Let’s continue the Wekfest LA 2012 coverage, shall we?  I left off somewhere around early afternoon just before the gates opened to the public.  By this time a line had formed at the entrance that wrapped around quite a ways towards the Queen Mary.  I don’t think it was as profound as the San Francisco show, but it was still pretty large.  The good thing about it being an outdoor venue was the amount of people that could come in wasn’t limited because of fire law restrictions.  Although Fort Mason is a cool location to have a show in the city, it limits the capacity in several different ways.  After I made my first round through the cars, I was getting pretty hungry.  My buddy Jon had ordered a pizza, so I took a break with him and some other guys and ate a little bit.  Sitting in the grass, under the cover of the mornings marine layer was extremely relaxing.  After a good 30 minutes though I decided it would be best to do another walk through before the crowds arrived.  Check the second round of coverage past the break.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Wekfest LA 2012 – Long Beach, California V.1

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This past weekend the Queen Mary park in Long Beach played host to the second stop in the 2012 Wekfest Tour; Wekfest LA.  It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a year since the show stormed the grounds in 2011; and as I was expecting, the show was unreal.  Honestly, if I could choose one show to attend for the entire year, there is no doubt it would be Wekfest – LA specifically.  There really is no better venue than the Queen Mary; great weather, beautiful ocean and downtown views, off-shore breezes, shaded grassy areas to relax, and plenty of room for the 300+ cars and the thousands of attendees.  The Wek get better at organizing these shows with each event’s passing and for like minded people, their efforts don’t go unnoticed.  I’d like to give a big thanks to Kenneth Li, Adam Luong, Geoffrey Nguyen and all the other behind the scenes people at Weksos that make this tour what it is.  I had a blast checking out the builds, catching up with familiar faces, and meeting a handful of new people.  With that said, I need to work on getting more sleep before these shows.  I’ve slipped into the unconscious habit of getting a maximum of 2-3 hours of sleep before any particular Wekfest show I’ve attended.  Somehow I managed to arrive a good two hours before media was allowed in; two hours I spent sleeping in the parking lot.  With about 30 minutes to 11am, I walked towards the entrance where I saw my buddy Jon.  As we were talking Geoffrey came up to say hi.  We talked for a few minutes, got my stamp a little early, and I slipped into the fray of glossy metal that is Wekfest.  Check out the first part of coverage past the break – hope you enjoy!

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Slammed Society x Fatlace Car Show – Long Beach v.1

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Like I had said in my previous post, I hadn’t planned on going to Formula D, and I really didn’t plan on inquiring about a media pass (although from the looks of it I probably should have!).  So, to say I was lucky I got in would be an understatement.  I didn’t get many great shots of the actual tandem runs because the track was pretty well fenced off and the parts that you could have possibly shot through had huge banners covering it.  That, and my zoom lens is a piece of shit.  Seriously, worst lens ever.  I don’t even know why I bother lugging it around.  It’s OK though because I have another new prime on the way – a must for the Super GT & Taikyu races I’ll be shooting soon.  Anyway, there was some serious down-time in between rounds so I had some good opportunities to snap the show that was going on in the parking lot.  Every year Slammed Society and Fatlace put on a car show concurrent with the Formula D event.  I never really bothered with it all the other times I went to Formula D here, but since there was nothing else to do I decided to check it out.  There was the usual mix of awesome and not so awesome cars.  I did get a chance to meet up with a few people, and make friends with some new faces which was great.  Take a closer look at the show past the break.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Wekfest 2012 – Fort Mason, San Francisco v.3

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By now I’m sure there is extensive coverage of this show up on every forum, blog, and auto site across the entire internet – so let me first thank you for sticking with NDF.  There are a grip of sites out there to get content from, but I want you to know that, although new, NDF is here to stay.  From where we are now, we can only get better.  So I’ve gone through hundreds of photos and it looks like I still have two or three posts left for this show.  Most car shows I just breeze through because I end up seeing the same stuff over and over; but since I don’t go to shows in the Bay area that often (I don’t go to care shows that often anyway; although I may attend more than I think!), I really got to see a lot of different things not from So-Cal.  Enough with the talk, let’s get into some more coverage!  I got some interesting stuff in this post, so click past the break for part three of NDF goes to Wekfest SF.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Wekfest 2012 – Fort Mason, San Francisco v.1

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According to the internet, there are currently around 800,000 or so people living in San Francisco; I think roughly half of them were at Fort Mason this past Sunday to attend Wekfest.  Yes, that is a gross exaggeration, but the Weksos crew did manage to more than oversell the show.  The massive following the show has garnered over the years resulted in an attendance number much larger than what was expected; so large in fact that the police and fire departments had to refuse entry to some people due to fire code regulations – which was obviously out of the hands of the organizers.  Other than that, from the eyes of a photographer, this show was unbelievable.  The venue is by far the coolest I’ve been to, the lighting is great, the people are all awesome, and the selection of cars was really well thought out.  Before I start the coverage I’d like to say thank you to the guys at Weksos and everyone one else involved in the organization of this show – something as large as this isn’t easy to pull off, and the hard work is appreciated.  Click past the break to kick this off.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: AutoCon 2011 v.2

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A little late, but it’s time for round 2 of AutoCon coverage.  Let’s kick it off with this shot of Big Mike’s Prelude.   The front fascia is now equipped with a molded Chargespeed lip.  It looks a bit more aggressive than his previous setup, especially without the bumper lights; I really like it.  The newly coated black Volks add to the upgraded look.  Click past the break to see more of the show!

 

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Nisei Showoff 2011 v.1

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C-h-e-c-k.  Check.  OK, my keyboard still works.  Holy shit I’m tired.  Two nights before Nisei I was stuck at work for 23 hours straight.  Yeah that’s right, 23.  I never fully recovered, so on the morning of the show I was hating my life.  I remember a fairly large line when gates opened last year, so this year I showed up pretty early and to my surprise come 11 o’clock, there was only about 15 people behind me.  I guess it must have picked up throughout the day though because people were saying the turnout was good.  I had stuff to do in Westwood a little past 1 o’clock so I figured I had around 2 hours to take care of business; Wakayama Ramen lunch included.  Click past the break for part one of however many Nisei posts I feel like making out of the 400 pictures I took.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Wekfest LA 2011 v.3

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I might as well just dive into part three of Wekfest coverage.  This post is going to have a lot of Honda’s, and a lot of S2000’s – as if that were a bad thing.  I was pretty surprised at the amount that were in attendance, and all of them were awesome.  By this point I pretty much lost all determination to cover this show in an organized fashion, so most of these will appear scattered.  Enjoy.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Wekfest LA 2011 v.2

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Let’s get on with some more Wekfest LA coverage from Long Beach, CA.  I ended up writing this entire post before I even wrote the introduction.  I never know how to start off the second part of event coverage.  This second part has a huge variety of cars, which is pretty cool, but it made it look kind of sloppy.  The grass section was gigantic and hard to cover methodically, so my pictures are a bit scattered.  At this point I was also running purely on Red Bull and Skittles, so it’s likely that I got a little sidetracked. Oh well, enjoy.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Wekfest LA 2011 v.1

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Up until Friday I wasn’t even sure if I was going to be able to attend Wekfest LA.  Requesting days off isn’t as easy as it used to be with my new position.  Somehow, last minute, I managed to get my shift covered; so what did I do?  That’s right – I went to Las Vegas.  Good idea right?  I hopped on a flight out of LAX Saturday afternoon, chilled on the Strip for 10 hours, and made my way back to Long Beach in time to shoot Wekfest.  Well, it turns out it wasn’t such a good idea.  I ended up losing way more than I intended, got no sleep, and smelled like cigarettes all day.  I gotta say though, Wekfest more than made up for it.  On top of that, it was probably the most beautiful day in Long Beach this year.  Unbelievable cars, good food, music, friends and great weather; can’t ask for much more.  I’ll  do my best to try and walk you through the show a little before I go ballistic with the pics.  Click past the break for more.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: It’s JDM Yo! 1st Anniversary Meet v.3

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The stragglers.  Leftover pictures that didn’t make it into an event post.  This is what you’ll get with the final It’s JDM Yo! event post.  Seriously, these events are getting so big that it’s near impossible to methodically post every car that was in attendance.  It’s too bad too because some really good builds go unnoticed sometimes.  Anyway, I’ve been working mad 12 hour shifts at work and haven’t had anytime to dedicate to the site in awhile.  I wanted to finish up with the final pictures before I go out of town once again.  With that said, on with the pics.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: It’s JDM Yo! 1st Anniversary Meet v.2

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Welcome back to the second part of the It’s JDM Yo! meet coverage.  The sites traffic has been way up recently, I’d like to thank everyone who checks the site regularly.  I’ll be getting some merchandise together soon too, so everyone that’s been interested in it, hold on just a little longer!  Anyway, after we checked out what was in the outside lot, we ventured into the main warehouse building.  They put up a DJ in almost every room in the warehouse, playing different music.  I thought that was pretty sweet.  Check out the pics past the break.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: It’s JDM Yo! 1st Anniversary Meet v.1

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Alright, let me just start out by saying that this meet turned out to be way bigger than I had expected.  I had originally planned to stop by real quick, say hello to a few people, snap some shots and jam to Aliso Viejo to the Tamiya RC track.  Despite my attempts to hurry, we ended up staying for about 2 hours.  The layout of the meet was really cool, with multiple doors leading to new warehouses; all packed full of self-built cars.  Some were track inspired, many were heavily VIP influenced, all were cool in their own right.  I didn’t have my 28mm with me, so the majority of these were taken with my 50mm – forgive the lack of full car shots, but at a meet like this, and the lenses I had, it was all but impossible to snatch a frame without anyone getting in the way.  Click past the break to see the first of the coverage.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Eibach Open House 2011 v.3

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I thought it might be appropriate to end my Eibach coverage with a poster shot of the Eibach built CR-Z.  One of only two at the show; the other being the Honda Tuning CR-Z that was parked next to the Chronicles booth.  You can see behind the car the giant line that had formed in the afternoon as soon as they started giving away free stuff…scavengers.  I’ve been at work everyday since the show, so I haven’t really had a chance to scope out what other people have been covering.  I know for a fact I didn’t get as much coverage as I wanted to, especially around back of the building.  Hopefully you enjoyed everything up until now.  Check out the last gallery past the break, and I’ll see you all again at the JDM Yo! Anniversary meet tomorrow.

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Eibach Open House 2011 v.2

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OK, on to round two of the Eibach Open House coverage.  Hope you’re liking the content so far – the sites traffic always shoots up dramatically when I post event photos.  Now that I’ve browsed through the shots I took and can truly say I am floored by some of these builds; like Mike G’s internet famous EG.  I’ve known Mike for a few years now on theJDM and NWP but he always seemed to elude me at shows.  I’m glad I finally got to meet up with him.  Cars aside, these shows are a great chance to meet the people behind the scenes; those who constantly push the industry to new heights.  There has been a ton of coverage popping up on forums now that it’s been a few days, and I thank you guys for visiting NDF.  Check out The Chronicles for Joe’s coverage of the show from his point of view.  He’s got a great knack for free writing, and his posts are always interesting.  Enjoy the second gallery past the break!

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Automotive by Sean

Event: Eibach Open House 2011 v.1

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For 7 years now Eibach Springs, with the help of some dedicated people, have been hosting the largest Honda/Acura meet in the country at the company headquarters in Corona, CA.  Each year I attend, and each year I am blown away at the quality of some of the builds, as well as the sheer amount of people in attendance.  Despite the rain in the morning, thousands of Hondas stormed the gate and filled the side streets even before the show officially began.  If you’ve been before though, it’s to be expected.  I tried to get the best coverage possible, but with this many cars it’s pretty tough.  Click past the break to enjoy the new gallery feature of NDF.

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Motor Sports by Sean

Event: Speedventures/Hontune Fontana v.1

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Here is some general coverage of the track day/car show at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.  Even though it seemed like the track was dominated by S2000’s, I was pleased to see a wide variety of cars present; especially at the autocross track.  Although my preference has always leaned toward Japanese manufacturers, I am a fan of all cars in general.  There were many Euro cars that I shot too, but seeing as how this blog is geared toward Japanese performance, I’ll stick to that.  Check out more below.

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