Tennessee is one of my favorite states to visit for car shows. Just last fall, a few friends and I went to a SlammedEnuff event in Gatlinburg. Before that, the last Tennessee show I was at was in 2017 for an Import Alliance Summer Meet. This year, 2022, is the year where I am going to try and challenge myself to do some unique photography with cars. As a preface, this was my first attempt at working towards this goal! Let’s jump into and see what we think!
It seems like all of my stories on here always start with “my friend Brandon” but it’s true and here is another one! We were chatting back in February and sort of joked about going to this show in Chattanooga Tennessee called Riverside. A couple days passed and it definitely stopped being a joke. We picked a place to stay and took off of work to make it happen!
As we started to get closer to the date we were talking about who was going to drive down, as we were not entering our cars for this show. We were mainly interested in going just for the chill vibes and to see some interesting builds while our cars were still tucked in their winter hibernating spots.
Brandon’s very generous girlfriend said we could take her 2018 Individual F80 M3.. we couldn’t refuse.
March 31st, travel day, came and we took off at 2:30am for the mountains. Of course we had to stop and gather a couple photos on the way with the amazing scenery.
Remember how I said I wanted to try a couple new things with photography at the beginning?? Everything so far has been all iPhone photos!! I picked up this case from Moment and it has a small CPL attachment – definitely a cool gadget for when getting out the big camera is a little bit too much. ALSO! Peep that Daytona Violet Individual color – the metallic is beautiful!
After we arrived at our Hotel, we had to get the car washed as it was filthy with road grime after our 11 hour drive. We found the only self wash we could and started cleaning the car up.
Now, I should mention, this story won’t only be about this F80! I just can’t get enough of this color so I have to include it!
We didn’t really know anyone in town when we arrived but we heard there was going to be a pre-meet thursday evening! We had to show up – we grabbed some food, our cameras, and took off for the pre-meet. Here’s just a few from what we saw before the sun went down!
We were pretty spent from driving all day so we decided to call it an early night and head back to the hotel. The official pre-meet was on friday and we had some friends coming to town that we were going to meet up with! We ran around all day on friday looking for a few photo shoot locations for after the show on saturday. We shot some photos of the F80 again but the real photos were the ones we got at the pre-meet friday afternoon!
We were starting to run out of daylight again but were determined to get some really good shots during golden hour!
Our friends from Custom Offsets/Fitment Industries showed up just in time to grab a few shots before the sun was gone!
Friday night came to a close pretty quickly because we were super excited for the show in the morning – and we needed to charge batteries. We woke up early saturday morning and get into the show as early as we could so there were as little amount of people as possible.
This is where some of the more unique shots are going to come in! Shooting around people and trying to get details of specific parts of cars, I challenged myself to shoot with a 135mm and a 70-200mm lens! For those that might not know what that means, you have to stand extra far away from the subject – you let me know if you think it was worth it! These are some of my favorite shots.
The downside, people don’t see you trying to take the shot so you’re left with a lot of images like these – I LOVE that the camera was still able to catch focus on the wheel.
Something I haven’t said just yet – I love F80’s! Even more than that, TE37’s are in my “Top 5” for wheels ever made.. so of course I’m going to gather lots of shots of both of them. When I saw this car, I pretty much stopped and stared for at least 10 minutes.
No car show is complete without coffee or food from somewhere local! We stopped by the brewery that was attached to the show and got a bite to eat with some friends.
Alright.. back to the automotive stuff! This show was in such a cool location. It was right in the middle of Downtown Chattanooga in an open Pavilion. The lighting was incredible giving this soft glow inside – honestly some of the best automotive lighting I’ve had the please of shoot in!
Riverside 7 Chattanooga was one of my favorite shows ever! The quality of the builds, the venue, and the scenery are absolutely gorgeous. This is one for the memory books! I will be back; who will I see next year!!
-Ben
