Although I lived in Japan for nearly one year and have countless photographs from my time there, this post isn’t about me, and it isn’t about photography. This is about a disaster that has befallen a great nation. My deepest sympathies go out to all of those who have been affected by the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan last week.

Donations are now being accepted by a number of organizations participating in the relief effort. If you would like to make a contribution, please follow one of the links below.

Network for Good (Multiple Charities Listed)

Japanese Red Cross through Google’s Crisis Response page

American Red Cross

I am not affiliated with any of these charities. This post is simply a way to help spread the word to others. Please re-post those links on your own blog or social network of choice if you feel it would help.

June 5, 2010. Wall, New Jersey. Vaughn Gittin Jr. battles Daijiro Yoshihara in the 2010 Formula Drift Round 3 final.

For this year’s Formula Drift race at Wall, NJ I was privileged to be shooting for two publications. After a lot of fun down in Atlanta, AutoImportCraze asked me to keep the streak alive and provide shots from the other East coast event on the calendar. You can check out the full gallery of shots here: http://www.autoimportcraze.com/coverage2.php?menu=3&Warn=0&ShowID=561&car=1.

June 5, 2010. Wall, New Jersey. Yoshihara, Gittin, and Foust (middle, left, right) made up this year's podium for the 2010 Formula Drift Round 3 event.

The other publication was Drifted.com. I was contacted by Alex Quail not long before the race, and asked to provide not only photos but also editorial coverage. I enjoy writing about motorsports almost as much as photographing it (hence this blog), so it was a no brainer to hop on board as a contributor.

I crafted six posts going over the whole weekend, and adding a few words of praise for APEX’i/Hankook driver Ryuji Miki. A link to each is below.

1. Welcome to Wall
2. Qualifying Results
3. Ryuji Miki’s Past Rides
4. Ryuji Miki’s New Lexus SC Drift Car
5. The Main Event
6. Crash Still-frame Video

Be sure to browse the rest of the site and show them some love in the comments. Alex and Jord have assembled a great crew of photographers and film makers from around the world. I am honored to add to the USA perspective.

Click past the jump for a few more of my favorites from the weekend.

Continue reading Coverage of Formula Drift Wall, NJ 2010 »

The new opening tiles for Andrew Jennings' Portfolio

I’m happy to announce that I recently completed a refresh of this humble website. I actually started showcasing my photography on the domain Andrew-Jennings.com back in the summer of 2005. The five year anniversary just passed, and I figured it was a good time to update it with a new look, some added content, and functionality.

The big news is new portfolios. As you can see from the image above, I have doubled the number of portfolios that are now showcased on the site from three to six, now accessed through a mouse-over menu on the top right. The automotive portion has been broken into four subgroups: Transportation, Motorsports, Drifting, and Auto Shows. To make each worth while, new images from some of my most recent work have also been added (some never before seen on the web!). The Entertainment and Travel portfolios are virtually unchanged, for now. I have plans for both of those in the future too, so keep an eye out for them to grow and evolve with my work.

The other news is a revamp to the blog. The old one had a more stand-alone feel. It was an adaptation of a pretty basic WordPress theme to tide me over as I got used to posting. The layout you see before you still uses the underpinnings of that original Plainscape theme, but has been heavily recoded to fit the overall brand feel that I want to convey. Mobile phone users should also be greeted to the new WPTouch app that I installed on here to make the experience simpler for small screens. There are still some things that I intend to clean up, such as the look of the menu on the right, but nothing that should impede your regularly scheduled programming.

If you’ve had a chance to familiarize yourself with the new site, I would be glad to hear any and all feedback in the comments here. For aspiring web designers, if you are interested in how I did it, let me know that too. If I get enough requests that may prompt me to write some detailed posts about my process, from conceptualizing, to coding and testing.

Thanks as always for visiting this site and viewing my work. Here’s to another five years of great fun and photos to come.

This week I wanted to share another monotone photograph that was taken back in college. At that time, there were active weekly contests on the AccessPhoto.com forums, each with a theme to guide the entries. The theme for that particular week was “patterns,” so I decided to head over to the library’s stacks to see what I could come up with. I brought along what was at the time my brand new Canon EF 85mm f1.8 lens to give it a thorough testing in different conditions also. Happily, both the lens and the photograph that it produced were well accepted. It is a lens that I continue to use often today, especially in low light conditions such as concerts.

The above image was originally shot in color, but like the sunset I felt it just worked better in this blue tone. All of the books were different colors, easily distracting ones eye to bounce around from place to place. In the singular tone, it is simplified into the light and dark contrasts, and helps the eye not get so lost with one single focal point in order to take in the whole image.

If you have not done so, give monotone colors like this a try on some of your own photographs. Save it as a different file name, and look at both back to back. You might be surprised what it can do to the feel of the image!

With all the work surrounding the recent Formula Drift event at Wall, NJ, I didn’t have time to post a ‘From the Archive’ yesterday as planned. So, a day belated, here is a shot from my time at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. I haven’t shot many sunsets with the intention of using them in black and white. Generally, sunsets have such vibrant colors that it seems like a shame to hide them. On this occasion, I set out to capture one, but the angle of the sun and the light just wasn’t cooperating as planned. I didn’t want to give up outright on the photograph though, and gave this monochrome look a try. I like the way that it brought out the texture of the clouds surrounding the sun as it descended, a texture that was otherwise invisible in the original image.

As I gear up for this coming weekend’s Formula Drift event at Wall, NJ I decided to take a look back at the first year that I shot the event in 2007. Not a lot has changed in terms of the track, but the driver lineup sure has. Anyone in attendance that year will recall the exciting battle between Chris Cook and Samuel Hubinette. Samuel was trying his luck in a Dodge Charger that had been fitted with a V10 V8 engine, while Chris Cook was still getting used to the V8 V10 power of a Viper. What unfolded was a tandem fight too close to call after just one round, and shockingly in the second runs, Cook sped away from the crazy Swede, something that not many can accomplish. It was one of the best races I have ever seen in the sport, so who knows what might happen this year.

Happy Memorial Day everyone.

This week I couldn’t help but post this second shot from the same morning. There are enough spots to park on the side of the canyon roads North of Malibu, C.A. that finding a good one with an overlooking view wasn’t an issue. Is it a landscape photograph, or one of a beautiful automobile? I would argue that it is both, when the location both compliments and interests the viewer.