Stateline Drift Day

 Stateline is a town in norther Idaho between Spokane and Coure d'alene. This little town happens to have a pretty cool speedway in it... among other entertainment outlets. This past weekend I headed up to the speedway to shoot some photos of the locals shredding the track at an open drift hosted by Stateline Drift.

 This was the second open drift and third event on their events calendar. If it wasn't for a busy first half of the year I would have been at more of their events but life happens... even to the best of them.

 My main goal in going up was to get some guys stoked on pictures of their cars and as always stretch myself as a photographer. Both of these goals I think I accomplished. One because most of the photos turned out, or at least enough of them and second, I finally got a shutter speed slower than an eighth of a second to be in focus. This one above was shot at 1/5th. If your any kind of a photography buff I hope you know those aren't easy to pull off. I was more than pleased with how this one turned out.

 I was absolutely loving the looks of this old corolla. He had a lot of understeer at some times, but when he did get some oversteer you could count on my camera capturing all it could of it. 

 One thing I think is so awesome about Statline Speedway is how beginner friendly it is. As long as you follow the basic safety spec rules for your car and have a full faced helmet you are set to take any rear wheel drive car out there you like. Aside from the stock Corolla there was this lightly modified 240sx along with some other pretty low budget pumps out there and they were having just as much fun as the rest of them.

 Some of the cars that show up at Stateline are pretty mint too.. This 240sx is now far from stock and was, in my opinion the best looking at the event. Consequently, I took the most photos of this red beauty... I mean when a photographer has an eye for pretty things he takes more pictures of those pretty things. In this case the pretty thing was this red 240..

 This is another slow shutter speed shot. 1/8th. The funny thing about this one is it was almost an accident. I just kinda shot from the hip and followed the car.. the three or four shots surrounding this shot were extremely blurry though, sometimes it works.. most times it doesn't.

 This was another pretty good looking Pumper of Air out on track that day. Unfortunately it didn't have front fenders or a hood... or a front bumper, so I kindly framed this photo to leave out that fact. I mean I understand not having a hood on if you need to keep the engine cooler, but side skirts, fenders, and a bumper kinda go without saying. And at this track there is very little to bust up your kit besides another car or like.. a wall. And if your car looks mint it will get more pictures taken of it.

This last shot gets me pretty excited. This is a shot of one of the locals who has been with Stateline for a while now. The reason I'm stoked is that not only does this guy know how to drift but he also just set up this car for this season after retiring (I hope) his old 240... The first three photos of the post in that link are of his old car.. Its great to see someone with the talent to slide a car go from something which looks that munched to something that looks pretty awesome in comparison. I wonder if he is planning to paint this one.. Austin are you there? Either way I'm hoping to see it at the Independence Matsuri and I'm banking on some other rad rides to show up there too.

Joshua Sewell

Instagram: josh_sewell_photo