Silver Shark: RentJDM’s Kenmeri

Apr 7

It was August 2021, my friend Colton was in town and with my help we organized a bunch of shoots during the week he was here. In the course of the week we shot with a handful of people I knew, and some he had met through his Instagram, but this shoot is one he surprised me the most with. I remember him nonchalantly asking “Do you want to shoot with a Kenmeri?” As you can tell, my answer was a very enthusiastic yes. We talked locations, but we struggled to come up with something given the strict limitations there were around shooting it.

I began to feel like it wasn’t going to happen due to the challenges surrounding it, but Colton came through with an unorthodox choice: shooting in front of Mandalay Bay. During 2020 that wouldn’t have been a stretch, but now that everything was up and running again I didn’t think it was going to be possible. As you can tell, I was fortunately proven wrong. The end result was a very happy me that felt fortunate enough to finally capture a piece of unobtanium with my own lens outside of a museum or within the confines of some higher-end shop. Even though it was a fast and unorthodox shoot, I attempted to soak in as much detail as I could of one of the icons of Japanese automotive design, and by my own metrics I believe I succeeded.