KevinKeeganPro.com Blog

Ash and I started out on Hollywood Blvd. for some morning Mc D’s. We continued shopping in that area and also East and West Melrose Ave. We met up with some friends at the Grove and got some lunch at the Cheesecake factory there. I know our choice in food isn’t very great…everything we ate pretty much we could easily get here in Atlanta but oh well, maybe next time we’ll research some more.

After that we drove up to the Hollywood Trail to check out the view and escape all the noise of the busling city below. Very romantical. We went back to the hotel after that cleaned up and headed to Universal CityWalk for some more shopping and dinner. We hit this great store called “It’s Sugar,” and I think the total purchase was $40 of candy. We had dinner at Wasabi, a not so good sushi joint at CityWalk. The only good thing was a big bottle of Asahi and also we saw John Stamos eating there as well. The sideburns gave him away.

Ashley and I are engaged!

Details are private…so if you see me, I’ll fill you in.

But I’m very excited to begin a new stage in my relationship with this beautiful girl.

It was a great day!

The championship for the Formula D 2008 season was today. The morning started out trying to setup some interviews for later that night and getting some pre-event interviews out of the way. After that I was let go for the afternoon as I wasn’t technically being paid for any shooting on Saturday. I stuck around and shot some stills of various things going on throughout pit row as well as some of the top 32 drift practice.

In addition to seeing an awesome drift event today, I found time to hit the Hollyridge Trail. A great way to see the Hollywood sign and take some great pics. I was also able to drive by some other great sights like the Disney Music Hall and the Chinese Theater. Both we’re found inadvertently by a simple re-route by my GPS unit…I was simply trying to avoid traffic and ended up seeing some cool stuff.

After my brief tour of LA I picked up some In-and-Out Burger and headed back to the track for the top 16 finals. Vaughn Gittin JR. ended up with the event win while Tanner Foust took home his second series win making him the first back to back series point winner. Oh and Rhys Millen won the coveted? tires.com triple crown title.

We hit up a high end restaurant to wrap up the season’s work on Wrecked Magazine. Denny’s…oh well, it was still fun and good food.

Jayke and I just got to the Radisson Hotel at LAX to stay the night. He has an early flight and I have to pick up Ashley aswell.

K, bed time.

Woke up, had breakfast downstairs in the hotel. It was pretty good. Freshly made waffle’s are yum yums.

We got to the track and I was on my own. Joey left to go pick up Jayke, Wrecked’s sales guy. So I was left to video and tweet (twitter) everything I saw. There we’re a few wrecks during practice. Hiro Sumida, McNamara, Pat Attack, and Bill Sherman all ended up in the wall at one point or another.

Overall the day went well. We headed into Pasadena again to grab dinner and drinks with Joey’s friend Crispin tonight. Then I decided to head back to the hotel for some rest while Joey and Jayke headed to little tokyo for a J-pop concert.

Day #1: I’m still overwhelmed when I see the smog in this city, regardless I’m ecstatic to be here.

We’re staying in Baldwin Park at the Courtyard by Marriott, which is about 5-10min south of Irwindale Speedway where the Formula D championship is being held.

Stay tuned for qualifying tomorrow. It’ll be an early morning with the mandatory media meeting at 9am.

The rest of the day after arriving at LAX included getting stuck in lots of LA traffic, a late lunch at Louise’s Tratoria in Pasadena, a trip down the street to the apple store to get Joey an iPod USB charger cable, Thai dinner with Antonio Alvendia, and now…bed.

I love this town!

Running a little late on posting this. This issue turned out great and in record time for me. We got started a little later than usual but we only had to push back the release two days (Aug 27 vs Aug 25th as planned).

The cover piece on Tanner Foust interview is the highlight of the issue…as it should be. It was the first to come to me when I started to get some traction on this issue. I played around with some textures to add grit and depth to the layout along with some very thin cross-hairs and digital interlacing overlays to complete the “digital grunge” look I wanted. I tried to stay away from doing the same image treatment I used for the Ryuji Interview in Issue #5, while maintaining my typical style. It turned out well.

On the third pic below, Joey requested a spread that showed more of a history of the cars Tanner has driven in the past. I used three images with similar angles to create a tandem drift of the three cars to achieve that goal. Add some smoke, cloudy sky, and try and match the lighting on all three cars and there you have it – minus my hidden photoshop secrets (the “easy” button).

Three weeks have flown by and it is finally out, Wrecked Issue #5. I’m very happy with it and in my opinion, it’s a bit better than issue #4, but it is usually my goal to out do my previous efforts. Forty nine and a half spreads, all with varied levels of content and nearly all with completely different designs and layouts. And we were once able to release on time once again, a fact I’m very proud of. I really don’t like it unless there’s some pressure involved in getting it done. It gives the process of creating the issue a little bit of an edge that is very enticing to work on for hours straight. The end result is very satisfying aswell…to see all the hard work and late nights form into a finished project and go live.

Working on this magazine has been a really great experience thus far. I want to thank Joey Redmond and Jason Small for giving me the chance to do this kind of work for once and get paid for it. I really love graphic design and this has been an incredible outlet for that facet of my career. I look forward to doing more work with you guys.

I’d love to get some honest feedback on the issue, so post up!

Work has started again…well, after my day job at least. Time to burn the midnight oil and get cracking on wrecked issue #5. I’d expect a release date sometime around the beginning of July.

That is all for now.

Round 2 of Formula D ’08 is tomorrow at Road Atlanta in Braselton, GA. I’m going to be shooting video for Wrecked Magazine again and I can’t wait to get out there. I have never actually been to Road Atlanta in all the years I’ve been shooting motorsports video. I always seem to miss an event or have decided to skip it for one reason or another. I do somehow make it to Nopi Nationals almost every year though …anyways, that’s the latest news.