Lost In the Details: A Chance Lowrider Encounter
I’ve always appreciated lowriders. Being from the south, they weren’t something I got to see with any degree of regularity. Their rarity was matched only by that of legendary classic cars. Often times you’d only get mere glimpses of them as you were on the way to something else; blink and you miss em’, kind of deal. Ever since I’ve moved to Vegas, the lowrider culture here is something I’ve wanted to explore, but have yet to fully find that opportunity, that is until a couple weeks ago. On the way home from work one lowrider after another passed me going the opposite direction. I figured there must be something going on close by and as fate would have it I pulled up along side one at a light. It was on my way home so I thought to myself, “why not follow him for a bit and see if he’s heading where they were coming from.” Sure enough, he was.
So there I was with my work camera, my trusty Sigma 35mm and a lowriders taking up every inch of my sight. I’m not going to lie, the work camera, a Canon 7D, has it’s foibles. I felt like it wasn’t pulling focus with the lens correctly, but man did I quickly begin to understand why people like Canon cameras so much. In a field of colorful cars with intricate designs this little crop sensor camera shined. I won’t pretend I know much about what I’m looking at, I mean how could I? All I know is, that in this moment I was more excited to shoot these lowriders than I had been excited to do anything else in months. Each one of these machines had so much heart poured into them; it was effortlessly apparent even if you only had the briefest look at them.
My excitement in the moment and my lack of knowledge of what I was shooting lead me to create a rather disorganized mess of anything that I thought was cool and had good lighting. As a result I don’t think this is the usual offering of catalog style shooting, but it still something I’m happy to have created. I can’t wait until the next opportunity to get out and document more of the local lowrider scene. I hope you enjoy what little glimpse I can give today. Thanks.
