“To introduce my photography collection, we would have to go back to the beginning – where my passion for cars began.

I’ve always been in love with cars. Going back to my first memory, that’s actually all I’ve ever been able to focus on for more than a few minutes.

I was born in ’89 and grew up in the Philippines. We were a middle class family living just outside of Manila. My parents say that as soon as I could talk, I would point out and even name most of the cars that drove down the road. Growing up in Asia through the 90s meant I saw the cars America didn’t get. A lot of the cool stuff had to be imported from Japan, but it was still way more common to see a Lancer Evo or R32 Skyline at a car show in the Philippines compared to the States.

In the neighborhood I lived in, there was a body shop right next to the corner grocery store. Besides the typical collision repairs, this shop would also build custom project cars. Custom, but maybe not what you’re thinking of. In the Philippines at the time, it wasn’t very common for someone to modify a WRX or an Evo. Cars like those were way too expensive and on top of that, there weren’t any other ‘entry level’ sports cars. People modified their run-of-the-mill Corollas, Lancers, and Sentras. Even Civics were way too “coño” (rich kid) as Filipinos would call it and this body shop definitely wasn’t cranking out high budget builds. To me, they were making gold out of straw. A base model corolla would roll in and a sweet, brightly colored, slammed iteration of a corolla would come out.

As a kid, I spent a lot of time on my bike. I had a sweet blue and green (I think? I’m colorblind) Kona 18 speed mountain bike. It had a Shimano gear system and handle bar ends. The thing was definitely the coolest fucking bike in the neighborhood. I loved that bike and spent so many days riding it, but looking back I think it was just about where it got me. I’d ride down to the corner store almost every day, just to see if the body shop gates were open. On the days they were, I’d walk in and forget I even owned a bike.

I met the shop owners at church a few times, so they were happy to let me walk in and ask about the cars they were working on. I stopped in there one day and they were working on a car that I thought was a modified base model Lancer from far away. But something about it looked different when I started walking closer… It had a wider, more aggressive body kit and a large spoiler sitting on the back of it, that somehow still fit the body of the car. Up close, it actually didn’t even look like something built in that body shop – and it wasn’t. Turns out, it was a Lancer Evo III and they were fixing a little collision damage on it. It wasn’t even custom and it still looked super rad. When they turned it on, it sounded incredible. It gave me such a different feeling when seeing and hearing this car compared to the others that rolled through that shop. I knew this car was special, although I didn’t fully understand what I was looking at. I’ll never forget that moment. This little body shop and moments like this were most likely to blame for my obsession and constant need to modify every car I own.

There was no access to internet back then and frankly I was too young to be on the internet anyway. The only time I would ever see an Evo again was when they had them at the body shop. One day, my brother won a PlayStation through a raffle at a local Toyota dealership. The first racing game I ever knew of was on the demo disc that came with the console. It was called ‘Rally Cross’. To my surprise, some of the cars in the game even looked like the cars from the shop! Being able to play with cars in a game changed my life. For a long time, video games were just Sonic and Mario. They didn’t really excite me. Being able to drive a car on a video game completely changed that. I loved being able to drive these cool cars and improve my track times. A few weeks later, I was at a family party when one of my dad’s buddies was talking about this racing game I would really like. He said “There’s a bunch of different cars and you get to drive them on actual race tracks in the game!”. It sounded amazing to me. The game he was referring to was called ‘Gran Turismo’ and he ended up gifting it to me a few days later. Sweet!

Unfortunately for me, my brother was a huge gaming addict and since he technically won the raffle for the game, he got dibs on it most of the time. When I did get to play, I was glued to Gran Turismo. In the game, you had to start from the bottom so I started off using a Kei car called a Mazda Demio. It was really slow and small, but I raced and raced until I was able to finally afford an Evo. This is when the real fun started.

To this day, the Evo is my favorite car to use in the latest iteration of Gran Turismo. Besides the game and very rarely, the shop; the only other place I could get my Evo fix was on TV. There was a channel back then called “Star Sports” and guess what they covered: F1 and WRC. WRC totally mesmerized me. Watching these cars fly through narrow country roads was amazing, and they all sounded like the Evo that was at the shop. Looking back, this is what planted the real Evo addiction in me. I loved cars, but I especially loved the Evo.

Fast forward to 1999 where I stayed with my grandparents in Chicago for 6 months. During that time is when I first experienced car culture in America.

My ‘tita Cookie’ (aunt) was dating this dude who was really into cars so they would always take me with them to all the local spots and shows. It was completely different compared to the Philippines. Over here, entry level sports cars are abundant and you won’t break the bank owning one. Acura Integras weren’t even a thing in the Philippines and here they were, a bunch of them all in one parking lot. Plus, the owners didn’t have to be millionaires to own them!

Hondas ruled the import world at the time. Every import show we went to had a boat load of Hondas. Preludes, Del Sols, CRXs, and of course Civics of all shapes and sizes. But one car from that scene truly stuck out to me. The Mitsubishi Eclipse. You would see a few of them at car shows but where you really saw them were at the street races and drag strip. They were smoking Hondas and they sounded incredible. I was hooked. 

We come back to the Philippines after 6 months and the only place I could see the Eclipse again was in Gran Turismo. In the game it was front wheel drive and when you maxed out the performance upgrades, it would just spin the tires and handle like shit. But it was so cool looking! I got really into the Eclipse platform and started researching what makes this car special. It turns out it uses the same engine as an Evo and there was an AWD version, the GSX. In my eyes, it was like a baby Evo. There was even a convertible version called the Spyder, which I thought was crazy.

Side note: For a while, the Eclipse actually replaced the Evo as the car I had to one day own. To this day, I’ve never owned an Eclipse but I will one day.

In 2001, my whole family and I migrated to the States for good. We lived with my grandparents and all 6 of us shared a 12×10 room. Most nights I actually ended up sleeping in the hallway. I remember my mom and I staying up late in the summer watching Dukes of Hazard when my dad worked nights. I built model cars and my mom always stayed up late with me while I put them together. We really had nothing, my parents worked endlessly to provide the bare essentials for us. We had one car, a 2000 Corolla and we would all fit in that little car if we went somewhere without my aunt or grandparents.

Being new in America was hard for me. The first day of school was such a culture shock. In the Philippines, we wore uniforms with our last name on the shirts. ‘Zshornack, Justo G’ was what mine said. In the States, you had to go up to a kid and ask “hey what’s your name?” It’s never been hard for me to make friends before, but all I knew to talk about was cars. It made it difficult to relate to the kids around me who had so many things they could be into as far as hobbies. It seemed like I was the only kid aware of what sports cars even were. I’ve always played basketball so I joined the team. Honestly, it was to make more friends. But still, no one was really into cars.

My family spent about a year in that house. My grandparents, aunt, and parents then decided to get a bigger house together; a house that we can all fit in. My parents had a room, my sisters had a room they shared with my cousin, and my brother and I got the basement to ourselves. At this point, our family had a little more than before but still only enough for the necessities. If we wanted anything outside of that, we worked for it.

I was an avid model car builder at the time. It was the only way I was able to physically build cars on my budget as a 14 year old. I mowed lawns, shoveled snow, washed cars and did all of my family’s oil changes. Anything to make some money for supplies and model kits. If I wasn’t building models, I’d be reading magazines. I had full access to the internet at this point so I spent a lot of time researching cars, looking up specs, track times and options. Cardomain.com was a frequently visited site for me. So many modified cars on one website… I was pretty obsessed. 

Fast forward to my 16th birthday and my parents handed down my dads 2000 Galant to me. It was automatic, silver, and very slow. But it was okay, because it was mine and I figured it would just be a stepping stone until I could afford an Eclipse or maybe an Evo. I thought to myself “wheels, a drop and tints will get me through high school”.

Back then, if you needed to do research you looked for a forum for that specific vehicle. I was only looking for what wheel size works or what suspension to get but boy, did I fall into a rabbit hole. TheGalantCenter.net. had so. much. information. There was this one user, his name was ‘Stewi’ and he had an Evo 7 4G63T motor in his. It wasn’t a ‘looker’ but man it had the most important bits a true Evo enthusiast would appreciate. At about this time is when I start to get more involved on the online forums. I ended up having over 5,000 posts on that forum alone. My car ended up being one of the few manual swapped Galants in the country. At the same time, I was starting to delve into automotive photography to track my car builds.

At first I used a 3 megapixel camera or if I could, I’d borrow a camera from my journalism class. I had a buddy who used to take photos for a clothing company and he showed me how DSLRs worked. He taught me about aperture, shutter speed, exposure, and a ton more. Gran Turismo 4 just came out at the time and it had “photo mode” which helped me play with the basic mechanics of photography and different angles I wanted to achieve in my shots.

During my senior year of high school my brother attended a photography class and got a Canon Rebel XS for his birthday. I may or may not have commandeered it for a while after he was done with his classes. I’m not sure if he knows about that – sorry Jason – but this helped me explore photography even further.

There was a local import car forum I ended up joining and being active in called JDM Chicago. There were a bunch of local automotive photographers there who took some awesome shots. AJ Gillett, Darian Duchan, and Jeremy Cliff to name a few. At this point in my life, I was married and was about to graduate from automotive school. I kept researching and finally decided to take the plunge and started the process of turbo charging my Galant in my in-laws garage. Photography took a back seat as I was trying to get my Galant up to par with my automotive goals, which always tends to take longer than expected. Once the car was boosted and running good again, the itch to take photos came rushing back.

Through the years I do photoshoots for myself, my friends, paying clients and car clubs. I start working as a field engineer to advance my career and save up as much as I can. In 2015, I ended up having the opportunity to buy my dream car. A 2005 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution. It is my absolute dream car and I wanted to take photos of it all. the. time. I was obsessed and my life was changed forever.

Around the same time, I ended up buying the lens that would change my photography forever as well. A friend of my brothers posted a Canon 50mm 1.8f fixed lens on facebook for $50! At the time, I was only using the kit lens that came with the camera. The low aperture feature in the 50mm enabled me to explore different shots. Up close detail shots became so much easier for me to compose. This is still my favorite lens and is one of the lenses I use in most shots today.

In 2017 my first son was born and my life was changed yet again. I ended up “parting out” my Galant after a transmission failure, thinking I needed to grow up and save some money. I figured the Evo would keep me satisfied until I can afford to rebuild the car and race it. Little did I know, things worked out well and I’d end up with two more Evos after that. Yes, a total of 3 Evos. Again, to say I’m obsessed with Evos is an understatement.

Thinking back, I could have definitely kept the Galant running if I didn’t race it full time. I still have it, but it’s sitting under a car cover in my driveway. I hope to bring it back and go 8s with it one day. I ended up getting an Evo X for my wife in 2017, and then another Evo 8 in 2019 that was dubbed my ‘daily beater Evo’ on my YouTube channel. She’s earned her name, as she has almost 300k miles on the chassis but she’s holding better than others with half her mileage.

Through the years, I’ve kept taking photos and exploring with my photography. It was my form of escapism. In 2020, covid kept most people inside. Thankfully, my line of work was deemed essential so I kept working. The roads were empty for the most part and it was surreal to be able to stop in the middle of the road to just take photos. Being away from everyone made me realize that the time we have on this planet is short and we should use it to pursue our passions.

At first, I used photography to capture the changes I made to my cars. As I grew as a person, photography became my outlet. Because I’ve always loved cars and the building of their character, photography has been the perfect way for me to capture the spirit I see in these machines. Some cars just have more soul than others and nothing excites me more than to seize those moments that take me back to being a little kid, excited to see and hear a custom car in person. These intimate photoshoots let me appreciate all the little details in a car build and the emotion they invoke. Not everyone understands, but to those true car enthusiasts that get the same feeling when they see an incredibly built custom machine… these moments are priceless.”