If you wanted to read what I had to say, this blog wouldn’t have so many pictures…less talking, more shutter clicks. My life, May 9, 2011.

Until next time. More dancing, less talking.

Been behind the keyboard and mouse a bunch lately – without being able to release much finished work. Here are some stills from videos I’m working on right now – yet to be released. Shot with Vaughn Gittin JR in Charlotte, NC and had some fun with his personal Ford Mustang RTR.

A white car and a great day for clouds = black & white treatment.

Spent some time last month directing and operating a RED One and shot at DirtFish Rally School in Washington.

120FPS @ 2k.

My girlfriend, high stepping. This is my family’s dogger, Bailey, she has an incredible personality.

More to come. Stay up suckas.

Thanks to Day Light Savings time, I got an earlier start than usual on my Sunday and started working on a few edits. The following are screen grabs from a quick assembly – for Chris Forsberg’s year in review video for NOS Energy Drink. They’re all from FD Long Beach and represent an event – we didn’t get to cover for NOS/Chris this Formula Drift season – meaning that all of the footage for the year in review – will be fresh and unseen.

At Long Beach, I was testing out my Red Rock Micro – captain stubbing rig. Which allowed me to get closer and navigate quickly – without the bulk of the standard tripod. DSLR video is not the greatest handheld and when shot handheld it can be vomit inducing – there is no image stabilization.

Long Beach has a great backdrop, being the city’s downtown. The trade off being that the entire course is surrounded by fencing and barriers. Establishing the location and surroundings is important to my style of presentation – context and details.

Excited to log some more hours on this project and a few more – then share them with you.

Until then, stay up.

Had the pleasure of visiting SUMO Power in Rye, England this month and to shoot in their impressive facilities. Both R35 GT1 cars were present and about to be loaded up for a test session in Spain. Having seen the GTRs race around Silverstone, Paul Ricard, and Algarve – seeing them in the same garage bays as street cars was a trip. I have a hard time imagining one of these monsters driving down the street. Traveling Budai also got a closer look at the Rays One Lug GT1 wheels.

Thanks to Andy and James for their hospitality. Excited to share more information about my current project(s) as soon as they get declassified. :p Stay posted and there will be plenty more behind the scenes.

Stayed in San Francisco for an extra day after Formula Drift. Explored the city and show off some of my favorite places in the city. The Golden Gate bridge was a morning stop, as the previous trips across it was covered in thick San Francisco fog.

Check out ARTPANTS, my 365 photo blog for images from the trip over the next week.

- Will

August 21st was the 5th round of the 2010 Formula Drift season – Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It is not my favorite course on the Formula Drift circuit, but it is unique because it runs later in the night than the other rounds. Due to the later start, practice happens in the early evening also the time of the day with the best light – magic hour or the time right before and right after the sunsets behind the horizon. The colors are unbelievable in the desert sky of Las Vegas.

This is a screen grab from one of my video files. Team Need for Speed driver Mad Mike Whiddett creates a golden cloud of smoke with his Mazda RX8. Mike made first appearance in the Top 16 this weekend and drove like the mad man.  Formula Drift fans will come to recognize Mad Mike as one of it’s best entertainers.

Congrats Mike. Be on the look out for a new Team Need for Speed video – coming soon.

There are some serious concrete parks here in Vancouver. Unfortunately, my skateboard setup is somewhere in Minnesota – with the Westy van. So in the meantime, I picked up this Kitsch board.

So clean, that changed the same day when I rode the park down the street and scuffed it up proper. A lot of my friends collect skateboard decks. Which are like modern day prints of artwork. Never understood it. Maybe after you’ve ridden them, I can’t look at a skateboard without wanting to ride it.

China Bones bearings are the jam. Reds are better than most cheapo ABEC 5 or 3 rated bearings out there. These Momentum wheels were a bit softer than my last set of wheels, but I wanted some more grip like I have on my sector 9 longboards – so I opted for a lower durometer wheel. Pivot turns should grip not slip for my style.

Rounded out with Enjoi hardware – with some bright colors to indicate the nose truck.

Skate or Die.

A good friend from Charlotte and a good friend from Los Angeles joined up with a good friend from Philadelphia that we were crashing with to explore West Philadelphia on a Tuesday afternoon. I’d been following the Love Letters mural project in West Philly for a while now online – so it was awesome to see the murals in person. More to come soon.

Off and on rain all day. Humid and miserable = perfect.

More about the project.

While JOB’ing it up at the Chateau Elan I smashed my head into the ceiling – FAIL.

Linhbergh got this snap mid-fall on the return. The beds were too soft and the ceiling was too low.

Gotta pay the cost, to be the boss. Or some other cheezy idiom for the occasional cost of being rad and doing goofy stuff.

Yo! One of the reasons I started this blog was to let people in on how I shoot and create my work. These two images are screen grabs from Final Cut Pro and from footage from the 2010 Formula Drift Altanta event. Since November 2009, I have been integrating the Canon 7D more into my productions. Along with my work horse video camera – my Panasonic HPX-170.

The top image of Ken Gushi is from the bottom of the hill at Road Atlanta. 1080p/24 Canon 7D with the Canon 400mm f2.8 IS

The bottom image of Andy Sapp is from the starting grid at Road Atlanta. 1080/24p Canon 7D with the Zeiss 85mm f1.4

Both shots were graded with Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Looks 1.0

More coming soon. Back to editing.

About a year and a half ago, I became fascinated with high tops. Ditched the low top-low cut shoes I had been wearing for years in favor of a different flavor – high tops. There are many brands that make high top sneakers, but only one that I’ve found and like enough to buy pair after pair – DC Shoes. Right now, I’m on my sixth pair of DC high tops and that’s no easy task. I abuse shoes. In college, I murdered a pair of Reebok Classics in less than a month. Destroyed. Stitching was popping out, toe cap was worn, and they were faded.

My feet have been wrapped in DC goodness and been all over the place. If you follow this blog, you know I travel for work, and if you catch me on the street I’m probably wearing a pair of bright DCs. In the image above, the shoes start in top right and end in bottom left chronologically Oldest to Newest pair of high tops.

These brown, blue, and tan Spartans are my first pair of high top DCs. I owned a few pairs of low top DCs prior to the Spartans, but these shoes made me fall in love with the feel, the look, and the style – the color is understated and the design is clean.

These spartans are special. I learned to ride a motorcycle in this pair. Check out the wear in front of the laces on the toe cap from my motorcycle’s shift lever.

These three are my newest. The white/blue/green spartans are fresh. I usually only bring them out when I know they will stay clean. Which us difficult for me to achieve – because I tend to spontaneous break dance, jump around, and rock out.

These rebounds are worn like a good book’s jacket or the lines on a elderly person’s face. If these shoes could talk, they would tell you about walking around in Dubai, working on the Project Westy van for Keep Drifting Fun, or how they enjoy compliments about their color. This color is awesome, there is something about it that I connect with and is very representative of me. A large reason why I wear them so frequently.

These rebounds were bought at the DC store on Melrose in Los Angeles. The pattern on the inside is what sold me on them. Here is a great angle showing how I tuck the laces inside to keep the exterior even cleaner. Which also gives the tongue more poof and size. Which is a characteristic of the old late 90′s DCs which I liked in school.

The red rebounds are coated in primer over spray, have chipped plaster from ceilings while jumping on beds, and were worn across the US and back on the Nation of Go tour.

If the rebounds were a person, they would be a blue collar-hard working mechanic who secretly likes whiskey mojitos.

The new steez are the Rob Dyrdek signature mid-tops. Perforated leather, baby blue, quick lace style, and classic flat sneaker profile. Not as wide and flared at the top like the Spartans or Rebounds, but with the same style and character as the other DC’s I’ve grown to love.

Skinny jeans, a clean t-shirt, and a bright pair of DC’s – that’s me.

Over the past two months, I’ve been working on several projects with the Canon 7D. These projects include Linhbergh and I’s daily photo blog/365 photo challenge ARTPANTS & client work like the upcoming Dubai 24H short film for Speedhunters.

The Canon 7D is far from a video camera. Its a digital still camera with an APS-C sized CMOS sensor.

It does have an advantage over the Letus 35mm and other 35mm adapters for video cameras – in that it does not have a prism or ground glass element + plus additional lenses to pass light through in order to create shallow DoF.

Here are some screen grabs from graded clips I’ve shot with the Canon 7D. A sneak peak at the Dubai 24H short film coming soon on Speedhunters.

Photo by Linhbergh

Down the bike path from me is Playa Del Rey. Playa Del Rey is situated on the beach just north of LAX. Its a chill and relaxed little town. Dive bars and coffee shops. Plus a washed up sail boat that is now fenced off with snow fence – like a monument or tombstone to the tides.

I brought my pin hole camera and Panasonic LX2 to snap a few photos of the boat. The LX2 is great for wide images with its native 16×9 sensor.

Easy does it.

2009. This year, I’ve driven across the United States three times. Most recently from Buffalo, New York back to Los Angeles, California. The trip that landed me in Buffalo and back on the east coast was the BFGoorich Nation of GO tour. In June, I piloted an equipment van from Atlanta to Los Angeles for a film shoot that I worked on as a Camera Operator.

Why?

Because I love driving. The United States is a great country to drive across. It doesn’t matter if you spend 2 days or 20 days getting across it. Sea to shining sea, the US is a road trip friendly country. Our infastructure revolves around the highway system and in 2,500 miles you can see a lot of America.

For example, the image above is in a traffic jam as a result of sub-freezing temperatures, swirling white outs of snow, and over seven inches of snowfall that hit Wyoming, Nebraska, and Iowa at the beginning of October 2009. Days before, I was in 90+ degree heat in Austin, Texas. Followed by brisk fall nights in Cleveland, Ohio.

Here are a few of my favorite images from an upcoming post about my NY2LA (New York to Los Angeles) road trip. All shot with my trusty, Panasonic LX2 Point n Shoot.

In college, someone showed me Breakin’ 2 – Electric Boogaloo. The scene that really had the greatest impact was the rotating room dance sequence. Where Turbo and Ozone pop and lock all over the walls and ceiling of a rotating room.

Another influence was getting really hyped up listening to Lionel Richie’s Dancing On the Ceiling as a kid. My sister and I used to rock out to a lot of great music. Like Earth Wind & Fire, Poco, The Beatles, and Lionel Richie. I credit my parents for starting my eclectic taste in music.

Here is what the images look like flipped vertically. Or if you use your imagination, what I look like breakin’ on the ceiling. For the record, yes I can do the clock and a few steps – invite me to your wedding reception and prepare to be entertained…

Thanks to the Holiday Inn Express in Harrisburg, PA for providing me with some springy beds and solid walls – to keep housekeeping off my case.

JOB is an acronym, an initialism for Jumping On Beds. More cities to visit on the Nation of GO tour – more hotel beds to jump on. The shot above was taken with a 10 second self timer on a Canon 5D Mark II with a 14mm lens @ 2.8

This pair of snaps was taken with a 24mm lens. Bonzai.

So long San Francisco, you’ve been swell. Thanks to Joey and Lars @ WORKS for the WORKS t-shirt.

The water is the warmest it gets all year. As the summer sun fades into California’s other season…non-summer… moon lit swims or mid day surf is the secret to happiness.

There is a plaque on my neighbor’s door that reads “If your lucky enough to live at the beach…your lucky enough”

Ray of Royal Flush clothing reading one of the many “rice books” (aka sport compact magazines) in my apartment. Medium Monster & Co. had a work n surf day- meaning that we worked and surfed el porto (my home break). We recently picked up a Canon Rebel T1i. Which shoots 720p video @ 30fps and takes some very nice stills. The photo above is lightly processed in Adobe Lightroom and shot with my 50mm 1.4 EF lens.

More medium monster and Rebel T1i photos to come.