Fast Cars, Fast Cards

Craving for all things automotive, Larry Chen dedicated his life to capturing the culture that surrounds it.

It all started with a love for cars. I like working on cars and driving them fast, but I am not skilled enough in those departments to make a living. I also love photography and I grew up taking photos. I figured if there was a way I could still be around cars by taking photos of them then it's a win-win situation

However, taking racing photos is not easy, there are many variable situations.

The weather, the lack of sleep, traveling, even finding a good meal after it's all done. It seems like the world is against us and everything can go wrong to prevent us from getting the pictures we want. Luckily, I have a great team behind me and we have enough experience to tackle most of the challenges we face. But the most important thing is having the tools that can match the difficulties of capturing these speed demons in the field.

As one of the first appointed Canon Explorer of Light, Larry Chen brought the latest camera technology to take advantage of the battle of Velocity Invitational.

We helped Canon launch the new EOS R3 and as you can imagine with those cameras shooting up to 30 RAW files per second they take quite a toll on the memory usage. Also, you can shoot 6K RAW video so you need a card fast enough to capture all of those assets that you create,” said Larry. “For this project we took the R3 all over the world and we put 110K images on them without a break.

Time is money, and when we are using Wise Advanced cards we are able to transfer at incredible speeds that we have never seen before. During mid-day card dumps, or long video shoots we are able to save hours just from decreasing our card transferring times. Before we were only seeing transfer speeds up to 300 MB per second, now we are almost seeing three times that! On top of that, running out of buffer when shooting with the R3 is not an issue at all when going flat out at 30 frames per second at 24 MP RAW.

With the time saved, he can be an artist and play with different ways of showcasing these beautiful machines.

I think there are so many ways for me to convey speed. I can freeze the action, I can blur it, and I can stitch photos together. The possibilities are endless. I just do my absolute best to tell the story that I see through the viewfinder. With the EOS R3 I've had to get used to the EVF, but in all honesty it's the best camera I have ever used for action photography and I've been shooting racing for 17 years.

Great tools can help speed up your creation, but passion is the fuel that will drive you.

As Larry puts it, Shoot what you love, and dedicate your time to what you want to shoot. I've given my life to my job and I love every moment of it.

About Larry Chen

Larry Chen is a Canon Explorer of Light and world-renowned car culture & commercial automotive photographer from Los Angeles. His work has graced the covers of magazines like Hot Rod, 000 and SuperStreet to name a few, and he is most known for his work with the Hoonigans. When Larry is not covering editorial he also shoots for major brands like Toyota, Ford and Nissan. He is also the official series photographer for the Formula Drift series and the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. You can also find his automotive Vlog at Hoonigan where he has his own web series called AutoFocus. Larry continues to travel the world to document car culture as he has an innate ability to connect with his audience, be it in his writing, his photography or his videos and that comes from his passion for anything automotive.

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