Appeal to Pixels.

There’s a story here. I’ve written about it often, but not here. Not in this space. It’s a real story, tender and loving, but gratuitous and real and shameless, like life, but hidden and secret. 

It’s not dirty, but it is emotional and honest and pure. More than that, though, it’s a source of information, a perspective, a journey, and a transformation. 

I’ve mentioned it only once before, but this is about the end. And perhaps a new beginning?

Goodbye my #love. When you wake up, you’ll be good as new! #stroker #16g #cars #subaru #wrx #sti #wagon #wagonation #awd #carporn

asiab3 asked: Along with your slight blur, which I love, all your car review shots have a sense of realism that I love. Not in a art history sense, but a sense that if I owned that car, that's where I would go with it! Do you scout your own locations?

Man, I hate to ruin the glamour awesome… I went into this job as a writer, with a journalism degree. When they found out I love and know photography, it kinda developed that I went in that direction. Of course, I still write, and I’m pretty decent at it, I might add.

But it was weird, despite knowing cameras and shooting, I had no idea how to shoot a car. So, I hung out with the Motor Trend Magazine photographers, Julia LaPalme, Mike Shaffer, William Walker, and the photo dept. head, Brian Vance. I learned how they shoot for MT, how they stage, prep, and position the car, etc.

And they’re the best in the game…

Me? Yeah, I can shoot, but let’s be honest. I’m not a Photoshopper at all. I can do a couple basic things, but my work just doesn’t stand up to theirs at all. 

Yes, I do scout my own locations. I’m laughing as I type this, because really, it’s like, “shit, I got two cars to shoot this week. Where can I shoot that I haven’t shot before?” Furthermore, even though I work a few cubicles away from the bigtime MT photogs, I don’t have their budget, or their time (also, while they’re shooting Bugatti’s and Ferrari’s, I’m shooting Camry’s). I’m kinda locked to within a 150-mile radius to the office. These guys travel all over. 

To me, I think that is what you mean by the realism. ALL of their shots are gorgeous and kind of inaccessible to normal people, but my shots are like, “hold on, that empty parking lot looks good!” Know what I mean? So, yeah. Thanks.  :)

*edit: Also, I have a completely different audience at Automotive.com than the Motor Trend audience. They do smokey burnouts and track stuff with awesome exotics. No boring cars! Me, at A.com, we’re writing for the consumer who doesn’t understand what “torque” or “direct injection” means. Maybe they’re just shopping for a hybrid or a minivan or something. When I shoot a vehicle, I keep in mind an audience and the vehicle’s perceived targeted demographic (BRZ, Miata on windy roads, economy and family cars in denser, urban areas, etc.)… 

wagonation:

Wagonation News: Jason Davis of automotive.com recently reviewed the all new Audi allroad and gave wagonation a nice shout out.  Read the full article here!

> http://www.automotive.com/audi/allroad/2013/road-test/

Oh you know, me and stuff. Words. Pictures. I kinda do it all.

#lagunitas Hop Stoopid #ipa in #diy light tent. Still needs a seamless backdrop, but letting the glue which holds the fabric over the windows dry overnight. Final image via #nikon D700 at ISO800 F3 w/ 105mm F2.8 Micro AF. #beer #craftbrew #fullframe #instabeer #iphonography

#diy light tent w/ @jaysrobyn. Epic #beer bottle photoshoot coming soon! #photography #instaphoto

My daughters new flower vase is repurposed #35mm #believeinfilm canister. Cute, huh?

Yellow-Green Tennis Ball PTSD

I want a yellow-green tennis ball, the kind I had when I was a kid. Its scraggly fuzz should be worn to reveal a cracked, rubbery core. And somewhere there, between the mock stitches, it should have once said Wilson or Penn or Dunlop, but probably Wilson, except that it maybe wasn’t even yellow or green anymore because the dirty old street gutter water and the chalky white sunscorched paint of the garage door transformed the nature of its appearance one screaming fastball at a time. Over and over and over until my 12-year old arms grew weary, and faster and faster and harder I charged to unload a short-armed quick toss across the diamond, across my body, to hear the pop against the inpenetrable wooden door. 

PAHK!

PAHK!

PAHK!

PAHK!

PAHK!

And then PAHK and PAHK and PAHK and PAHK and PAHKPAHK PAHKPAHKPAHK until I was sweating and swearing and crying beneath the Eucalyptus trees, my arm throbbing, and my calves stinging from the charge. I would pop the goddamned phlegm-colored ball or pass out trying. Then thirteen years later, in the courtyard of a Baghdad prison and surrounded by port-a-john’s and concertina wire, there was a giant metal sign with words in English and Arabic. Huge metal sign, as big as a strike zone, and beneath my feet—all around me in the Murafa Yard—rocks. Several tons of rocks. Rocks that fit perfectly between the thumb and the first crease between your pointer and middle fingers. Some rocks jagged as a lava stone, and others smooth and rounded, or oblong and flat, but none never too far from fitting between the fingers like seams of a baseball. It was a yard of rocks so deep, so plentiful, my combat boots sank with each noisy step. And each overnight, 12-hour shift beside the airstrip at Baghdad International Airport, that giant, metal sign with the warnings in English and Arabic clanked and panged and sparked from the blazing fastballs I unleashed upon it. Hundreds of fastballs each night, that sign would PING and TANG until the goddamned sign fell from the fence or I would pass out trying. 

But I don’t have a yellow-green or phlegm-colored tennis ball. I don’t have a wooden garage door, or a giant sign to hang on my fence. There are a few rocks, but by this point, or after I’ve had another drink, there won’t be enough. I won’t have the ammo I need to throw my arm out, to charge and to quick step and to unload from a high, three-quarter arm slot until my legs collapse or constrict, or until I’m simply out of breath. 

This is how I deal with anger. 

Or depression. 

The kind of anger or depression that by tomorrow morning, it’s still there. As are the charred, skin-pulled eye sockets of the corpses along the side of the road, or the rise and fall of the man’s chest as he lay silently in the back of my humvee, me racing over center medians and through traffic to get him to the hospital, or that time when Dex and Boom stumbled out of their bombed-out room with blood running down their foreheads and necks. You could practically see the stars circling over them like it was a fucking Tom and Jerry cartoon, except that brothers aren’t cartoons. Instead of word association, it’s emotional association, the kind of feeling that doesn’t stop feeling, and each new feeling is not just a recollection of the old, but an addition, another carcass tossed atop the burnpit. And so I drink and think about the feel of the worn rubbery seems between my fingers, the chalky-dirt layer on the tip of my middle finger, the tingling and then the numbness in my arm, and the pain the next day. That pain, that muscle soreness worn again the next night overcome by fever and anger and satisfaction that with each throw, a tiny little globe-world of anger hurtles toward destruction—its own, or mine. 

IKEA fun. 

For most of the past five years, I’ve embraced the idea of shooting for stunning, technically perfect photos with almost no grain. Then I bought a Leica and I haven’t shot a single roll that I haven’t pushed to suit my available lighting needs. 

There are a few things I don’t like about this photo on a technical level. But somewhere deeper than that, I love it. 

Wherein my hotass wife and cute kids wash my ‘05 @Subaru_usa WRX Sport Wagon

Oh hey, look, my article in the New York Times. #iraq #oif #veteran #war #army

Christmas morning.

Gettin’ Our XMAS Tree.

My lady loves.