The June 30th edition of this weekly article was all about using Instagram as a way to travel the world without budging from the couch/bed/desk chair/toilet/wherever the insatiable desire to opt out of the everything else to browse car photos may strike, and this week is aimed to be a continuation of that kind of vicarious experience afforded us by a simple photo sharing app. Instead of using it to hop around the continents for some car spotting though, this time let’s frame it as a way to experience the multiple perspectives of automotive photography: why it’s done, how it’s done, and what it’s aimed at.
Of course there is the obvious profession of “automotive photographer,” and there are two included in this week’s five, but there is also the niche hobbyist, the engine builder, and the online magazine. The distinctions between some of these is a bit amorphous (to run an online publication are you not also a car photographer?), but that’s unavoidable, because after all, if these were photos of manufacturers’ financial departments, marketing meetings, or pictures of people writing books about cars, there wouldn’t be much point in sharing those images.
So from the US to Scandinavia, from rusted husks to pristine Porsche flat-sixes, there is (hopefully) enough here for everyone to add at least one new account to the feed while also giving a bit of an inside look at the various vehicular trades and interests that Instagram gives us a peek into.
To make things a bit neater, I’ll start and end with the pure photographers, beginning with Thrill Of Speed. Based in France, the person behind this account has a healthy amount of both car and moto photographs to sort through, and all of it has a consistent feel. The images all have a sense of drama added to them by the choice to keep the lighting flat and the colors desaturated but still rich and easily identifiable. Providing stills from all kinds of events and in settings from race track to concours lawn, this page is a great view into the work of a photographer who is genuinely interested in capturing all facets of the classic motor-powered world.
Now moving slightly sideways to the hobbyist (the label is not meant to be any comment on aptitude) who shoots only a specific subject. This page is not the work of a single person, but a collective made up of barn-hunters that submit their neglected findings to this central display, and Cars Abandoned is a name that doesn’t skirt the account’s purpose, as you can plainly see in the deep well of deeply neglected cars that feature here. Spending some time looking at the bygone cars and trucks (and some of them are particularly painful to look at, as this account isn’t just the typical junkyard cars that more or less belong there), one is able to have all the wistfulness of poking around in an eclectic scrap heap and none of the poison ivy and prickers.
Getting into the opposite side of car care, we come to Scott Kinder and his Instagram page dedicated to the work he’s dedicated to: working on Porsche engines. In a reversal of the previous account’s displays of forsakenness, this one is full of gleaming precision and the satisfying sense of thoroughness gained from looking at things built with care. Maybe it’s inspiring for your own motor build, or maybe it’s an intimidating reminder of how much left there is to spend/do on said build, but either way there is no denying the power held over our attention by a pristine collection of manifolds, pistons, carbs, fans, throttle bodies, and everything else that when intricately combined make the air-cooled Porsche engine such a special thing.
High Velocity, or if you prefer to read them in Swedish, Högsta Växeln, is a worldwide but primarily Scandinavian team of young car enthusiasts who are producing some excellent work in a space usually populated by sterility and banality. Primarily reviewing and editorializing about new cars, this group is able to lend a youthful tone to the typically staid task of making impressions of a mid-range sedan seem like something worth reading. Of course, they also get into the GT-Rs and R8s and other “R means racing means fast”-types too, so don’t think of this as just a fun version of Consumer Reports. Besides the fresh and funny insights, it doesn’t hurt that they can take some nice photos too!
Bringing things back to the start, we’ll wrap up this week’s five profiled accounts with another photographer, this time from Canada. Andrew Holliday has a honed talent for working with urban locations in his photos; though it’s nothing new to set cars in front of something industrial or else far-removed from nature, this type of background can be used to complement the mechanical nature of the car, or it can also detract from the subject by being too overbearing to even be a background. These aren’t the only settings Holliday uses of course, but they are to me the most stand out in the way he’s handled them.
I won’t include the Marketplace each week since it doesn’t move as quickly as our official Petrolicious page does. There is a consistent seep of new cars for sale in that account, but this one has a torrent of all the things that you come here to find in the first place.
