Welp, since TBT or “throw back thursdays” are the new cool thing to do on social media on thursdays… I decided I’d hop on the bandwagon today.

I’m gonna take things back to Nov. 5th, 2011. The day I took my little hatch all over downtown Austin, TX for a photoshoot. I had gotten tired of my 14″ low offset wheels and was about ready for widebody and Angelina Jolie lips on my hatch. So I decided to take it out on a shoot so that I could remember the way it looked back in the day…

Lucky for me the day was an overcast day. A lot of people are afraid to shoot on days like those; however, I feel like the lighting is PERFECT on days like that. The sunlight comes down and is diffused through the clouds. I didn’t have to worry about EXTREMELY bright sunny conditions or EXTREMELY dark conditions. I decided to use my dad’s film camera instead of my digital SLR. I was hoping it would give the photos a nice grainy, nostalgic look compared to the crisp clarity of today’s hi-tech DSLR’s. It was my first time ever shooting with film, so I was very nervous about the outcome. But I think things came out really well!

The locations I chose, I scouted out a couple months in advance — driving around town and seeing what areas would have great backdrops. I focused on the area just east of downtown Austin for a very industrial setting — perfect for car shoots.

My first shot:

D’oh! I got my finger in the shot! But man, did it come out nicely. (also, most of these images were slightly touched up in photoshop). That was my first shot of the day. The scary thing about film, is you can’t be 100% sure of your exposure. Most of us have been spoiled with our DSLR’s where we can see exactly how the photo was exposed. I messed around with the settings, adjusting my aperature and my exposure, but didn’t always get perfect images:

But with a little adjusting and observations, I found the exposure bar on the camera and used it to adjust my settings. It’s that little bar in the viewfinder (the place you put your eye to look through the camera) that moves left and right. Ideally perfect exposure is in the middle, underexposed to the left and over exposed to the right.

All of my photography skills from high school journalism and my photojournalism class in college started slowly coming back. I decided to drive around east austin some more and take a few more shots.

So at this time, my car was lowered on BC Racing BR coilovers. The fronts were about 2 inches from maxed out. And the rears, I had spun the shocks all the way down and removed the adjustable spring collars. The wheels are Toyota Celica-Supra wheels, spray painted pink. 14×7 +9. I was LOW LOW LOW. My car road VERY harsh, but man it looked soooo good. As I cruised around town, bystanders jaws just DROPPED when they saw my front bumper merely 1-2 inches from the ground. These two gentlemen walking by me stopped and cocked their heads sideways, wondering how I got around sooooo low. Man, do I miss rubbing frame everywhere I went.

As Branden mentioned in the previous post, my cars keep going through phases. I guess you can say, during this time, my 86 was going through the “HOW LOW CAN YOU GO” “SLAM SLAM SLAM” phase. But does that mean it was a show car? HELLLLLL NAW. You see the dent on my door? Hahah. The hatch was my daily, I drove it everyyywhere. At the time it was a stock 16v Hi-Comp 4AGE with retrofitting AE101 Silvertop ITB’s running Megasquirt engine management. Sooo, needless to say, it was sooo fun. I even took it on the occasional track/autox events.

Towards the end of my shoot, I began to sprinkle — so I decided to take a couple more shots before it started pouring down rain. I drove my car to the west side of downtown Austin where there are train tracks and the old City of Austin Power Plant was. Snapped a few pics of the hatch here:

LOL LOOK AT MY LOW HANGING EXHAUST (the hanger snapped from the welds)

It started pouring down rain, so I decided to call the shoot. I had gone through three rolls of film. I thought it was enough. I dropped the rolls of at Wallgreens because they’re one of the few places that still develop film. (at like $15 a ROLL!! It was sooo expensive!) But the way the images turned out and the fact that I got them on a CD, made up for it all. To see the full album check out this link here. Download all you would like for your Car FAP folders and if you share, please give credit to “Natsukashi Garage!”

I leave you with my favorite shots of the shoot: