Arizona State University, with its over 83,000 students, makes for a great place to find cool people with awesome cars. Two weekends ago I got to have a photoshoot with two of these people, Tanner and Griffin.

I first met Tanner through the car club on campus, Street Refined. Tanner, a marketing major, drives this Scion FRS, sitting on Parts Shop Max coilovers and 18x9 Cosmis XT-005R wheels, wrapped in matte mint by Bourbon St. Wraps and sporting an Invidia exhaust. As you can see, it makes for an incredibly clean looking car. The Toyobaru twins were marketed as an enthusiasts car, an answer to the call for affordable, fun, RWD driver's cars echoing the Miata and AE86 Corolla. Thus, it was the perfect car for Tanner, who wanted a sporty, fun to drive enthusiast's car with tons of potential and can turn heads (in fact, as we were taking photos, passerbys would stop and look at the car; it seems no matter where we go at least two or three people stop to take a look at the car). In fact, when it comes to potential, Tanner has thought about boosting it, as well as add a Rocket Bunny kit someday. You can bet when that day comes there will be more photos. Until then, keep an eye out for this amazing looking FRS prowling the Tempe streets.

I also met Griffin, a business management major, through Street Refined. Griffin's ride of choice is this bug-eye Subaru Impreza WRX. As I've said before, Imprezas are a popular choice of car for those who want to have some fun, and for good reason, since there are so many Subaru owners and cars floating around. For Griffin, he chose this car as a daily that would be fun both out in the canyons and the track. With this in mind, Griffin's WRX has been modified for sportier purposes than just city street driving. It has an Injen Performance Intake, HKS catback exhaust, Cusco top mount intercooler, and an open source ECU tune, all of which sits on Megan Racing coilovers and 17x9 Konig integrams wrapped in Falken Ziex tires. That beautiful color comes from the 3M Matte Blue Metallic coating the bodywork. However, he has bigger plans in terms of performance, whih is an EJ25 STi JDM swap sometime in the future.

The two cars made for excellent subjects in the city night. We originally wanted to take most of our shots on the Mill Avenue Bridge over Tempe Town Lake, but a cop passing by changed those plans. But still, nothing an stand in the way of art.

After leaving the bridge, we headed for a parking garage to take some more shots to wrap up the night.

I have to say, these two wrapped cars, headlights glowing in the dark, were as striking in person as they were in real life. So, if you're ever around ASU, see if you can find these awesome vehicles.

Starting to publish and share my photography has been interesting and exciting. You can meet so many cool people by doing so and find new opportunities. For example, I published my picture from my earlier blog post, "My Car", to my Instagram page, and the Cars of ASU (@carsofasu) page commented on it, with one of the admins saying he owns an Accord, too. And by "Accord", I mean identical Accord: 2008 Honda Accord sedan in the EX-L trim line with White Pearl Metallic paint and sand/beige/tan interior. So, we decided to have a photoshoot together with our Accords at Tempe Town Lake.

Both of us regularly go out to shoot supercars/exotic cars/expensive cars, but it was nice shooting our cars. After all, these are what we drive everyday. For me, it was especially exciting to meet another Accord owner who both loves cars and likes the car he drives. It felt good appreciating our cars for what they had to offer, including an actually-pretty-decent amount of power and pull (hey, 268hp and 244 lb-ft of torque, especially in the era when V6 muscle cars could barely make above 200 with larger V6 engines, is pretty good). It was also cool talking about the small details of the car that only comes from long ownership, such as the leather on the center armrest peeling off or being able to feel exactly when VTEC kicks in (yo).

But, the sun was setting and we already got yelled at by the people who patrol the lake for parking in front of the boat-launching area, so we decided to relocate and try some more photography.

We ended up going onto the Mill Avenue bridge that crosses over Tempe Town Lake and parking on the side. Oh, the things that you feel safer about doing when someone is with you. Neither of us would do this alone, after all. Since it was dark, i decided to try some long exposures, not only to help overcome the darkness, but to also create light streams past our cars.

It's fun shooting with other people, not only because you feel more emboldened to try new shots, but also because you can talk about photography with them. As we waited for the exposures to finish, we talked about long exposures and other photography styles, continuing our conversations from Tempe Town Lake.

Eventually, we came to the point where we agreed that we've taken "enough" pictures, since we both know how it is: we plan for some time to take photos, spend double the amount of time planned taking photos, and still feel disappointed in how all the images are coming out. So, with photos taken, information exchanged, and each other better known, we left the bridge in our cars. (And also the photos did come out pretty well.)

Thanks to Hemang at Cars of ASU for the shoot!

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