Hankook Road Trip - Mojave Road 2020
I’ve had a great opportunity that has had me excited for several months now. Coincidentally or by the law of attraction, I would be photographing a campaign for Hankook Tires in exchange for a set of tires for me and two friends. I was conveniently in need of tires for a set of wheels I had ordered months ago and tires have been on my mind constantly. My buddy Ayo who is a talented photographer and a content creator for many brands spanning from Hyundai to Wienerschnitzel, had reached out to me to document what he called the Hankook Tire Road Trip. Perfect. Our group of friends had been planning a second trip to Mojave, this time with more trucks, more friends, and more miles. I sent him photos I had shot of our previous trips and he sent my blog post to his team, and after some talk - boom - tires at our front door one week before leaving.
It was a difficult shoot to say the least trying to capture all I wanted to shoot in November. We were a few weeks away from the winter solstice; the shortest day and longest night of the year. That meant golden hour was around four and the sunset around five, so thee plan was to get to camp by 2:30 to prevent setting up in the dark. Inconveniently, we ran into several overlanding caravans, one group taking up miles of trail with 60+ vehicles in their group, many dragging trailers and driving slow due to the dust clouds each vehicle would leave behind. Trying to make up time we were flying through some of the faster sections, but with some rocks in the trail we inevitably encountered a flat from Brandon’s Tacoma - Falken Wildpeak AT3W; a catastrophic bend in the inner barrel of his wheels due to a rock. A couple hours later as we were traveling through the Joshua Tree Forest, we got another flat from Stephen’s Raptor - BF Goodrich KO2; a slice to the tire sidewall. Needless to say, we set up camp in the dark both nights but as upsetting as it is to blow a tire, but by no means was anyone upset or let the mood get down. We had an amazing group of trucks, everyone with a ton of mechanical knowhow. Christian, a previous Toyota Master Tech, and now a at Tesla, brought his Pro Eagle jack and very quickly was able to lift the trucks - usually a precarious scenario in the dirt with factory bottle jacks so it was great to have this on hand.
This trip was somewhat focused around allowing me to capture content. Our group of 8 vehicles waited for me as I shot rollers and agreed to drive to locations simply for the sake of grabbing more photos. I feel at the moment of editing these photos, they’re some of the greatest photos of my career. Although I’ve worked in the automotive community with aftermarket manufacturers, as well as automotive marketing agencies; I never considered myself an automotive photographer. I’ve managed hundreds of automotive campaigns with other photographer’s photographs, but I’ve shot fewer than 5 cars personally. When I say greatest photos, I don’t mean that in terms of the monetary value but more so from the feel good factor. I’m doing everything I enjoy - shooting photos, building trucks, going camping, this time for Hankook Tire. Also allowing my friends to share the experience with me by sponsoring their vehicles with tires is something I can’t really put a dollar amount on. As automotive enthusiasts, it’s exciting and special to have the opportunity. I have a sense of great gratitude to Ayo as well as my friends for enabling me to take these photos and build my career as a photographer - I definitely couldn’t do it alone. It feels special to capture photographs with vehicles in them since they’re so era specific. When I look back at the photographs taken in the 90’s and the vehicles people drove, it’s like listening to an old song, it really takes you back to that moment in time. Although it’s not my first tire sponsorship, I want to give a fat fist bump to my younger automotive enthusiast self.
I’ve been thinking a lot of how I wanted the sequence of these photos - what would look best, what would make more sense, what would tell a better story. I decided against ordering them by time taken but rather by vehicle photo sets, you can find the rest of the photos at the bottom.
