TwentyFourteen was a great year – I feel that pushed myself as much as I could and squeezed as many events in my calendar as possible and tried my very best to push my work out to as many people as I could via social media. It ended up being a very successful year, not only did I get offered a kick-start at the beginning by joining the Wangan Warriors team – Eyedea Media gathered a lot of attention from Europe and the rest of the world.
I made it no secret in my Wangan Warriors articles that the European events I attended felt far more exciting than the competitions that the UK had to offer. After attending King of Europe when they visited my local track Lydden Hill, I knew that I would want to return to another round of the competition before the year was up.
Struggling to squeeze KOE into my calendar whilst also keeping my UK interests was proving difficult. It would ultimately fall down to a big question – do I attend the final round of the British Drift Championship in Wales, or do I go all-in and head out to Valencia for the King of Europe final?
Obvious attractions of Valencia aside, I felt like following BDC wasn’t really for me, so it was time to see what KOE had to offer away from home. Having the opportunity to head out to the MotoGP track with in the midst of the summer heat was undoubtedly the highlight of my year. Had I made a mistake by not heading to Wales? Certainly not!
With the addition of Vaughn Gittin Jr, there were also many other drivers which I had anxiously hoped to see perform again which made for an amazing weekend – I can personally say that I think some of my best work from last year came at these events.
It just so happened after Valencia that I would be asked if I would mind having my work on display on KOE’s stand at Essen Motorshow – how could any photographer turn down the offer to have their work featured covering near enough an entire stand at one of the biggest Motorshows on the planet?!
It was amazing to see my work blown up and being appreciated to it’s full extent, sadly I didn’t make it out to Essen, however Rens from Wangan Warriors was able to put a huge smile on my face by firing me over these shots to show how it looked.
After various talks with KOE during the pre-season, we decided to go into discussions regarding the coming year. It was clear that they wanted me to cover their competition – at the same time I was eager to travel Europe and have opportunities to shoot crazy events in awesome places.
That brings me to the present day, where I can finally announce that this year it will be an absolute pleasure to have the chance to concentrate on covering a competition which I have always had a keen interest in! I have absolutely no doubt that this will be a fantastic season, and I very much look forward to coming on board as part of the KOE team.
With their recent expansion out to Asia, and with names such as Keiichi Tsuchiya and Naoki Nakamura heading over to Europe – I’m extremely optimistic that the future is very bright for KOE!
