I don't take good photos of cars. I have a phone with a cracked screen and a tendency to chop off the front bumper. My action shots look like a before picture in a focus group for motion sickness medication. So when I say the images in this post are something special, I need you to understand that I had nothing to do with them.
This is Nico Reyes. He's 38, a former test driver for a CTCC team, and the only person I've ever met who can lie in the grass at 7:45 PM with a telephoto lens and not get chigger bites. He shoots golden hour car photography the way some people write letters — slowly, deliberately, and with a kind of quiet respect for the subject. He doesn't use filters. He doesn't bracket exposures and blend them in Lightroom for three hours. He waits for the light to do the work, and when it does, he presses the shutter exactly once.
Nico and I met at a Barber track day three years ago. I was struggling with a brake bleed; he was shooting a GT3 RS from a spot in the grass I'd never noticed existed. He didn't introduce himself. He just nodded, looked at my Miata, and said: "The light hits the roll bar at 7:30. Don't move it until then." I didn't. The photo he took that evening still hangs in my garage.
This is his debut post on Hood & Pod. Eight cars, one evening, zero filters. Nico picked the shots. I wrote the words. Together, this is "Through the Lens."
1. The Miata That Started It All
You know this car. 1994 NA, 1.8L, no radio, a roll bar that's saved my life zero times but makes me feel better, and a paint job that looks best from about twenty feet away. Nico shot this from the inside of Turn 5, crouched so low his elbows were in the grass. The car is at full lean, the outside front tire visibly loaded, the sidewall wrinkling in a way that my data logs say is fine but my mechanic's intuition says is expensive. The sun is behind the car, rim-lighting the roll bar and turning the windshield into a sheet of gold. It's the most flattering photo ever taken of a car that once had a wasp nest in its door mirror.
"The car is saying something," Nico told me later. "I'm just writing it down."
2. The GT3 RS That Needed No Introduction
Porsche 991.2 GT3 RS. Lizard Green. A color so loud it should require a permit. The owner is a cardiologist from Mountain Brook named Dr. Alistair Chen who owns three Porsches and tracks all of them. Nico caught the RS at the exit of Turn 14, just as the rear end was taking a set and the driver was feeding in throttle. The rear wing is in perfect focus. The background is a wash of amber and green. The car looks like it's doing 140 mph standing still.
Dr. Chen bought a print. It hangs in his waiting room. I imagine it's either very reassuring or very alarming for his patients.
3. The S2000 With 180,000 Miles
AP1 Honda S2000. Silverstone Metallic. The clear coat on the front bumper is failing in a pattern that looks like a topographical map of Arizona. The owner, a software developer named Jamie, bought it in college and has put every single one of those 180,000 miles on it herself. Nico shot this from above, standing on the pedestrian bridge near Turn 8, capturing the S2000 mid-corner with the setting sun reflecting off the hood. The failing clear coat catches the light in a way that looks intentional, like patina on a vintage guitar. Jamie cried when she saw the photo. "I didn't know my car could look like that," she said. Nico shrugged. "It already did. You just needed the right hour."
4. The E36 M3 That Refuses to Die
1998 BMW M3 sedan. Estoril Blue. Five owners, one of whom attempted to install a turbocharger and gave up halfway through, leaving behind an intercooler-shaped hole in the front bumper and a fascinating collection of unused silicone couplers in the trunk. The current owner, a high school physics teacher named Marcus, bought it for $6,000 and has been slowly un-ruining it for three years.
Nico shot the E36 from the grass at Turn 2, at an angle that hides the bumper hole and emphasizes the car's stance. The Estoril Blue paint, in golden-hour light, looks like it costs three times what the car is worth. Marcus uses this photo as his phone wallpaper. His students think he's cool. He is cool.
5. The GR Corolla That Showed Up Stock
Toyota GR Corolla. Morizo Edition. Completely stock, right down to the factory tires. The owner, a woman named Priya, had owned the car for six days and had never been on a track before. She spent the morning doing lead-follow laps with an instructor. By the afternoon session, she was passing people. Nico caught her car at the exit of Turn 11, three wheels loaded, the rear inside tire just barely kissing the curbing. The matte gray paint and the red Morizo accents look spectacular in warm light.
Priya's husband, who drives a modified Focus RS, was parked in the paddock watching. His expression, captured incidentally in another frame, is best described as "proud but also slightly concerned about the family track-day budget."
6. The C5 Corvette That Sounds Like Thunder
Chevrolet Corvette C5 Z06. Torch Red. The owner installed a cam so aggressive the car idles like it's having a medical event. At full throttle down Barber's back straight, it registers on local seismographs. Nico shot this car from the flag station at Turn 1, panning at 1/30th of a second to blur the background into streaks of gold and green. The car is tack-sharp. The wheels are frozen. The exhaust pipes are visibly vibrating — a detail I didn't know a camera could capture.
The owner, a retired Marine named Big Mike, looked at the photo and said, "That's the sound." Nico nodded. He'd somehow photographed a noise.
7. The BRZ With a Story
Subaru BRZ. World Rally Blue. Mildly modified: coilovers, wheels, tires, a tasteful lip spoiler. The owner is a 22-year-old named Tyler who saved for three years working at a warehouse to buy this car. He drove down from Nashville that morning, slept in the car at a rest stop the night before, and was on track by 8 AM with a cooler full of sandwiches and a tire pressure gauge his dad gave him.
Nico shot Tyler's BRZ from a spot near Turn 13, where the track dips and the cars get light. The BRZ is just cresting the rise, the suspension unloading, a tiny gap opening between the tire and the pavement. The light is perfect — low, golden, wrapping around the car's rear quarter. Tyler's face, visible through the windshield, is a mix of concentration and pure joy. That photo is now his profile picture on every platform.
8. The Sienna That Didn't Belong (And Totally Did)
I need to close with this one because it's the most Nico image in the set. Around 7:15 PM, as the track day was winding down and the last cars were loading onto trailers, a silver Toyota Sienna pulled into the paddock. It was Jenn. She'd brought the kids to pick me up because the Miata had boiled its brake fluid in the afternoon heat and I'd texted her asking for a ride.
Nico shot the Sienna through the paddock fence, parked next to a row of race-prepped Miatas and a trailer with a tire rack. The sliding door is open. Max's car seat is visible. The sun is setting behind it, turning the minivan's silhouette into something that, against all logic, looks heroic. This is the photo I'm going to print largest. Not the Miata at full lean. Not the GT3 RS. The minivan that picked me up when the sports car broke.
"The car is saying something," Nico said when I asked him about this shot. "You were just listening to the wrong one."
What Nico Sees That I Don't
I've stood next to Nico while he works. He doesn't talk much. He watches the light move across the track. He checks his watch, then the sky, then the cars. Sometimes he raises the camera, waits five seconds, and lowers it without taking a shot. "Not yet," he'll say. Then, a minute later, he raises it again, presses the shutter once, and that's it. One frame. That's the one.
I asked him once what he was waiting for. He said: "The moment the car stops being a car and starts being a shape. When the light does that, you don't need anything else. No filters. No tricks. Just the truth."
That's what "Through the Lens" is going to be. Once a month, Nico will share a set of photos from Barber, or Gridlife, or a random Wednesday night at Reg's shop. I'll write the words. He'll provide the truth.
What's the best photo ever taken of your car — and who took it? Reply and share the story. And if you've got a Nico in your life, a photographer who sees something in your car that you didn't, buy them a coffee. Or at least give them a ride.
No letters yet — pray write the first.