Since the year 2013, us local Subaru owners have had a longstanding tradition of meeting every Thursday night at a petrol station situated in Umhlanga Rocks - an area north of Durban. The evenings usually involve heading inside the shop for a coffee / smoothie, shooting the breeze with other fellow petrolheads, and an occasional 'brisk' late night drive sometimes following.

20 second exposure, front of the car lightpainted with a white light, and the rear using a blue light to match the car.

Last night, we had an unexpected visitor in the form of this Mitsubishi Evo 10 - the historical nemesis of the Subaru Impreza. Now, many people with a knowledge of the rivalry between Mitsubishi and Subaru would probably expect us to shun away this visitor, but we're not like that. All cars are welcome, no matter whether they house a flat-four engine, an old-school V8, or even a straight six.

Got downforce? Also, I really need to work on making my lightpainting technique neater - look at those dodgy lines.

This particular car is owned by someone who actually used to have a 2005 Subaru STi many years ago, so he wasn't a complete stranger to the world of Subaru. And besides, the Mitsubishi Evo 10 is actually a pretty rare car in South Africa, so it was a treat to see one close up in the flesh. As far as I know, a handful of Evo 9's were sold locally before the Evo 10 was offered, but before that, Mitsubishi had never sold any form of the Evo locally. The JDM guru @nelkeljdm will be able to provide more insight here.

Just in case you had any doubt as to what car this is.

As I had just come from a test photoshoot with a particular Mazda RX7, all of my camera equipment was still in my car. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance to take photos of yet another rare car. We usually just overtake the entire parking area in the petrol station anyway, so the owner had left his car out in the open, which made it easier to shoot.

All of the photos followed a standard formula: 20 second exposure, f22, ISO 100, all shot on my Canon 6D using a Yongnuo YN360 light wand for "light painting". The artificial lighting of the petrol station isn't the best, so I was happy to be able to overpower it using my YN360. Being an entirely unexpected shoot, some of the photos came out a bit rough, some photos were ok, some photos had the light wand intentionally visible etc. Variety is the spice of life.

This one came out with a slightly warmer tone, and I haven't been able to figure out why.

During the course of the night, the weather had been less than desirable, with random rainshowers starting every now and then. I shot for just over 10 minutes in total, and came away with 12 photos - not a bad haul, considering they all had 20 second exposures. As per usual, I had shot everything in .RAW format, but even that didn't make much of a dent in my memory card storage. Still, a few photos is better than no photos.

A similar style to the first image, but I decided against using the blue portion of the lightwand to paint here.

With another raincloud looming, I decided to pack away before having my camera unintentionally cleaned. Fortunately, the owner is a friendly guy, who is interested to do a more formal shoot once he's finished adding a few more pieces to his car - the main one being the addition of the APR Carbon front lip - so make sure to stay tuned for that. This car is already far from standard, so I'm sure it will make for a great shoot.

All photos and writing are my own original work

Settings	20 second exposure / f22 / ISO 100 on all photos
Camera	Canon 6D
Lens	Canon 24-105 f4 L Series
Additional Equipment	Manfrotto tripod / Yongnuo YN360 Lightwand
Processing	Lightroom CC
Location	Umhlanga Rocks, South Africa

But wait, there's more!

A friend of mine loves using my images for his wallpapers. He sent me this picture earlier of his triple monitor setup at home, each screen housing a photo I've taken. It's pretty cool to see your photos set up like this by another person!

And no, I'm not making this up - I've been on an iMac for over a decade now, so it's clearly not my computer.