Peace, Serenity & Style at DxN Invitational
You can file the @dxninvitational event last weekend as the first time about 8 months that I took photos of cars that I was happy with, photographing cars had admittedly, gone very stale to me. For no apparent reason other than I wasn’t thinking about what I was shooting. It was just rinse & repeat and when you factor in the mental taxation of filming/editing and extensive video worthy of making an event, photography just fell to the wayside.
Thats not something I’m proud to admit. I cut my teeth on photography and writing about my adventures, long before I thought about making videos so to recapture some of that love is something that made me incredibly happy. I didn’t realise how much of a hole it had left until I started going through these photos. Thankfully, @dori_zero @doryoku.streetworks @northridesorangeville put on an event at such a cool and unique location and with the great weather to boot(my knees are still sunburnt, sorry mam).
@zen.illes hit the nail on the head when he said it felt more like a meet than it did a show, super chill atmosphere and everyone in attendance was there for the right reasons. Low foot traffic(by Toronto standards) and a more rural location comes with many benefits here in Canada. One such benefit is the knowledge and appreciation of those in attendance with most people understanding that if you’re pointing a camera a car, you should wait or avoid walking across the shot. This was hugely evident at a previous event I attended in the city where, people of the general public, will fail to see your camera and walk into or stop in the shot. Shit happens and I get that but not having to deal with it is something I’ll never complain about.
This event, if you haven’t seen my initial photos, was literally a treasure trove of cool parts/cars, from a ‘59 with a 2JZ stuffed into to numerous time attack cars, more 86s than I’ve seen in Canada in one place(it was 6 according to @mouldy_buds). The two R32 GTRs you see here had eye-watering spec lists! Look at the f*ckin’ window loeuvres below for example, an optional extra from factory and about as rare as rocking-horse sh*t.
Getting to meet people here is always a far easier affair than back home given how out there and friendly Canadians tend to be. People will just ask you straight out for your Instagram, name or what you’re doing walking around rural hamilton with a camera rig and no suncream. But like I said before, you should really put a face to those instagram handles so meeting Youssef and his brother from @gaslight.life and securing some of their beautiful merch was also a nice way to round off my day.
Even a selection of nice Hondas for me to drool over. Allegedly some of them were deceptively fast, with a famous local supposedly having the ‘secret sauce‘ setup for a B16. Something I might haave to enquire about….maybe. I’m always delighted to see a tasteful engine swap in a car. Everybody lumps RBs, JZs, V8s into all sorts of chassis and fair play to the people that do but my opinion is that engine swaps should take the original characteristics of the car and improve upon them. Billys 86 pictured above is the perfect example of such(Brians S12 is also up there but you haven’t seen that on here…..yet.). An SR20 on carbs, the small of petrol off it was glorious. There’s a 20 minute video coming your way soon so keep your ear to the ground next week but for now enjoy a small selection of some captured images from a great time 🤍
