Jumping right into it this week rather than going on about office doldrums or the inspirational qualities of pretty pictures, here are the five Instagrammers we’ve been looking at lately—they represent Australia to the UAE to Southern California, Land Rover surf rigs to photoshopped Porsches.
Whoever is behind the lens for ns_images, they are doing an excellent job of sharing the car scene down in Australia through photography. Whether its a troupe of pearlescent Paganis on a road trip or a local track day shot under the high-noon sun, the resulting shots are crisp, well composed, and the page as a whole is chock-full of different locations and cars to challenge the notion of a country that’s mostly sand and burnout contests. Far from it. The portfolio has a good deal of candid scenes in it, which tend to be more compelling than staged shoots when they’re done right, as they are here.
Najeeb Khalid shoots a lot on film by the looks of his Instagram page, and his work takes on a decidedly more nostalgic tone because of his chosen materials, but also by way of his location. Once you’ve shot the glitzy storefronts there’s not a lot in the way of non-sand scenery in the UAE, and outside of the city centers the desolate look of the dunes and the occasional structures built among them lend themselves to the grainy emotion of film cameras. Of course, there are plenty of opportunities to create scenes using a minimal amount of subject matter, and Najeeb’s done so to great effect.
Bryce Barnard’s Instagram account, Prismatic Innovations, sounds more like a no-meaning name for a new I.T. consultancy than a place to find epic scenes of sports cars. The word “epic” lost just about the entirety of its seriousness when it was adopted by tweens and then co-opted by every ham-fisted advertiser trying to sell to them back in the early 2000s, but it’s definitionally appropriate here. In large part because many of these images are heavily manipulated. Many of the automotive subjects in his account have been shot in studio or elsewhere before he works his magic to create the scenes like those above. It’s a perpetual debate as to when a photograph becomes purely CG, but we can agree these are stunning examples of the mix, no?
I’m not sure what Ted7’s last name is but I’m guessing it’s not a numeral. Regardless of what it says on his mail, you can send him anywhere and he’ll come back with a set of photos to make you wish you’d gone in his place. Based in Southern California, he’s just about ubiquitous when it comes to the meets, shows, drives, track days, and everything else that goes on out here on a daily basis. He works a lot, and as they say, practice makes perfect. Rolling shots of gaudy Gold Rush Veyrons share space with ’60s OEM elegance here, and both are treated with the same talented eye.
Daniel Santo is in this week’s fifth spot because while there are plenty of VW Buses, 356s, and all manner of Land Rover on his Instagram page, he’s first and foremost a surfing photographer. I’ve never stood on one or tried to for that matter, but damn do these photos make it look like I’ve been missing out. Heat-bleached sand, the brushy foliage of coastal cliffs, the post-surf skate sessions, an impromptu BBQ—he captures the draw of the surfing lifestyle and then some. It all looks too cool and “catalog” to be true, but these images came from a finger pressing a shutter button, so perhaps some people do live in a Billabong lookbook.
The Petrolicious Instagram page is added to multiple times daily, and we’re always digging up shots from talented photographers around the world, so if you’re looking for more to follow starting here isn’t a bad idea.
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