Japfest Silverstone is now in it's fourth year at the home of British Motorsport. PistonClick went along to take some photos, check out the cars and give you the low down on what you can expect to see. If you are planning a trip to the next Japfest at Donington on the 13 July or Silverstone in 2020 this report will give you a head start. 

If you are not familiar with the Japfest concept, the basic idea is to gather as many people as possible who have Japanese cars in one safe location. These cars must be Japanese and can be original or modified, for the most part they are heavily modified, this is not a show for the restoration purist. 

The gathering of modified cars goes on all over the UK most nights from the low level; a few guys in dimly lit corner of a supermarket car park to high end meets at posh cafés, stately homes or executive garages. The things they all have in common is the love of cars and the need of the owner to show off their car to all. 

Japfest gives them the opportunity to put their cars on display for others to enjoy, but on a much grander scale. You have a wide range of cars attending, from the classic Skylines, Supras, and Subarus of the 1990s to the latest Nissan R35 GTR and Toyota GT86. Every year Japfest celebrates a milestone in Japanese car culture. This year it was the 30th anniversary of the Mazda MX5 and the fans of this two seat sports car turned up in huge numbers.

The other milestone being celebrated this year is 50 years of the Nissan GTR. First appearing in 1969 with a detuned R380 inline six cylinder race engine pushing out 160bhp, I don’t think anyone back then would appreciate how long the name of the GTR would run for and what it would represent. 

These days it is not uncommon for the latest R35 to be pushing well over 1000bhp; the fastest GTR in the world runs 2500bhp. On the GTR Cartel stand there was a reveal of a customer's 1500bhp GT-R by Kream Developments . I did turn up for it but it was packed, so returned later to grab a few pictures only to find the owner was so happy with it he couldn’t contain himself and had gone home in it. So, pictures of the by Kream Developments Bull GTR will have to do.

Next to the GTR Cartel was the GTR Owners Club. Both had impressive displays of GTR and Skylines but it was the Silver Hakosuka on the GTROC that captured my attention. 

These are rare cars and you don’t get to see them much. They are quite difficult to find and when you do, are expensive to buy, so most stay locked away. While looking round this beautiful piece of automotive history there was a discussion about what a GTR says about it's owner.  

Without a doubt, a Hakosuka owner will be super cool with money to burn and was this was reflected by Steve chilling out on the floor next to his 2000 GT-R smoking a tab and stroking his massive beard. An R35 GTR owner was summed up by being someone who is doing all right in the world but isn't super rich; the R35 is seen as the working man's sports car.

To round off the Skyline stands the Skyline Owners Forum also had a strong turnout with some extreamly nice cars. So nice that they won the Best Club Stand at Japfest! It would have been super cool to put all of the Skyline and GTR clubs side by side. The next big Japanese car meeting is Donington I'm sure the Japfest guys could sort it out if the Admins from the various clubs were in agreement. 

After missing the reveal and with up to 20000 people attending this show, you can tell it can be difficult for the spectator photographer to get any good crowd free shots of the cars. I did find that on the whole people are aware that you have a camera and will step aside or wait for you to get that shot, probably because they have been doing the same all day with their phones. 

On the other hand there are those special people that are not spacially aware who just seem to stand in the wrong place oblivious to what is going on around them. You know the ones that stand at the bottom of an escalator deciding where to go, getting in everyone's way? There were a few of those types out. 

One thing I did notice was there were a lot of people with photographic equipment. Everyone has a phone these days to take some snaps but there were loads of cameras about. Ranging from entry level to pro and video (digital media) recorders of various descriptions being pointed in all directions. A quick look though the social media sites this morning - and yes loads and loads of pictures from Japfest. I have also noticed an increase in the number of photographers track side as well. Photography as a hobby appears to be on the up.

One question I do have is why ? Grabbing a cup of tea I had a scan through the social media sites looking for Japfest. I didn’t have to try to hard, I had been tagged in loads of photos so had a look at some of the people's profiles who took the pictures. Most of the younger photographers are doing it for likes!

I get that you can make money on YouTube and other social media outlets from having loads of followers. But of the hundreds of pictures I looked at, and the ones I and had been tagged in not one stood out, some were better than others but all of them were standard 3/4 car shots.

So why go to a big car show as a photographer? In the digital age it's easy to take a photo. You can keep snapping until you get something good, or if you find an angle you and your followers like, keep taking the same thing. But for most of the digital generation it seems to be if it is sharp, exposed well and then a free pre-set filter is run over it, then that will do. If all you want to do is drive people to your Instagram or Flicker page looking for their cars that will work, you will get lots of likes and traffic and might make a few quid but your photo isn't the Kiss in Time Square.

So is the artistic side of photography going to die under the relentless drive of getting the like button pressed? I don’t think it will but it is a little disappointing not seeing anything super creative from the masses of people that attended Japfest as the opportunities were there. 

I put it down to like being in a rock band back in the 80s. You had do a lot of crap clubs and play songs the crowd wanted to hear to get noticed. Today with millions of digital images posted daily, how are you going to get seen by anyone important that can open that door for you? Well, having a large following is one way and to get those followers you have to play those cover songs, they may not be great but eventually you might build up a following that can take you where you want to go. 

So Japfest is a good if an overly large meeting. It is well spread out and requires some planning and some leg work to get the most out of it. A programme, and for this year a cap, was included in the entry fee. We reviewed the time table while getting breakfast in the Silverstone Café. I for one would have liked to see the time table on-line before the event.

But we had plenty of time on our hands to sort out where to be as one of our travelling companions wanted to leave PistonClick HQ very, very early; he had arranged to meet some friends on the way down. I had no problem with the early departure time as travelling with a group of like minded friends in loud cars and meeting up with others on the way is all part of the experience.

Besides the static club stands there were a large number of trade stalls with some good exclusive show prices and loads of side events like radio controlled car racing. Ideal to practice your panning photography if the big cars are too fast for you. For me, the live highlight was the Drift Kings, they were taking on the Luffield complex.  

The drift cars were arriving at Brooklands at over 100mph, you can get a great view of the cars as they take on this fast left corner from the British Racing Drivers' Club Grandstand, which was open for the event. The best view is from the highest seats as it gets you a view over the fencing.

I would recommend getting there early as this is a popular viewing point. Before the Drifting there will be the public track time so you will still get to watch some interesting cars out on the track while you are waiting for the main event. 

The other area to get some great drift shots from are on the inside of Brooklands and the Luffield terraced area. To get close to the action you will need a lens that can reach out to 500mm but a short lens at 200mm can be used in a few locations. A detailed guide of where to take photos from at Silverstone can be found in our PistonClick Circuit Guide area. 

The Drift Kings were out for three runs so you can get a few different angles during the day. One thing I will say is try and get your best shots of the first few cars. As you can see from the pictures on a dry day they will generate a lot of smoke. If there is no wind the smoke will linger and grey out your images.

I hope you have enjoyed our report from Japfest Silverstone 2019. As always I don’t claim to be an expert. I'm just a guy out with my friends carrying a camera and hopefully giving you some tips and trick for you to capture that great photo from Japfest.

Please feel free to like and share this article. Apparently I need loads of likes to progress as a photographer.