Hasta La Ideas

La Wheelie Flight Deck è il giusto compromesso tra capienza/dimensione senza rinunciare al bagaglio a mano. Da sempre la mia preferita, ovviamente BRTN.

Zoom zoom. David Speranza will go from two wheels to four as he moves from Rodale’s Bicycling to Hearst’s Road & Track, where he has been named design director by editor-in-chief Larry Webster. Speranza will take over from departing design director Richard Baron and be responsible for all of the visuals across the car-obsessed brand’s platforms, including print, digital, and video. As design director at Bicycling since 2002, he helped the magazine broaden its readership beyond hard-core cyclists with a redesign and a snappy new logo. Speranza also produced photo shoots, oversaw photo research and editing, and art-directed its Mountain Bike quarterly. His previous experience includes roles at Elle, Golf for Women, and TV Guide. News of the appointment comes as Road & Track prepares for a road trip of its own (in a convoy of loaner Range Rovers, no doubt). This fall, the magazine will relocate its offices from Newport Beach, California to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Hearst-owned Car and Driver is also based.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Lessons in racing with Ford’s resurrected model

Ford invited me to spend the day at their Ford Racing High Performance Driving School at Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, Utah. The “Boss Track Attack” was the featured program—an opportunity to push the new Mustang Boss 302 on a professional raceway was something hard to pass up.

Reintroduced in 2012, the Mustang Boss 302 is the company’s second fastest production Mustang (behind the lust-worthy Shelby GT500). Its namesake is an upgraded model produced in 1969 and 1970 to compete with the Camaro that featured a new engine dubbed the “Boss” along with a spoilers, window treatments and a rear deck. Likewise, today’s Boss 302 features performance-based upgrades including a Hi-Po 302 Ti-VCT V8 engine, a 6-speed manual transmission, Brembo front rotors and calipers, adjustable shocks, a roll cage and Safecraft 6-point belts as well as cosmetic upgrades.

The full day course—free to owners of the Boss 302—starts with some classroom time focusing on proper technique, theory and vehicle dynamics. A visit to the skid pad in a car that sits in a wheeled frame that partially lifts the body to simulate slip conditions provides instruction in how to control the car during an unintentional corner taken too fast. Properly schooled, we headed out to the course with a driving instructor to hone our skills. My group of four cars did lead and follow exercises with our instructor, followed by a ride with the instructor (individual track time with an instructor is typically included as well, though we ran out of time).

Miller Motorsports Park’s 4.5-mile, 24-turn circuit is the longest in North America, with a 3,500-foot straightaway on which the beastliest of engines can reach speeds of 200 MPH. It’s a blast to drive, and the views of a pristine stretch of the Rocky Mountains on the horizon add a scenic touch.

The Boss 302 also includes TracKey, an alternate key that enables track performance by adjusting 200 parameters for optimal performance. Using the TracKey all day we reaped the benefit of enhanced cam timing, engine braking, fuel control and a second set of power train control modules.

We also had the chance to drive the Boss 302 Laguna Seca edition, a further souped-up version with racing seats, Torsen limited-slip rear differential and a rigid cross-car x-brace among other features.

The Ford Racing High Performance Driving School offers a number of courses for Ford owners and enthusiasts, and is a great way to get to know your wheels. Visiting the track also gives one an excuse to fawn over the Larry Miller’s personal vintage racecar collection at the Larry H. Miller Total Performance Auto Museum.

Images by Evan Orensten and Jeremy Henrie

Wieden + Kennedy New York and director Errol Morris have shot this unusual and engaging documentary for ESPN, which features stories of superfans who take their love of sports all the way to the grave with them…

The film, titled Team Spirit, features friends, family, tombstone makers and undertakers talking about real fans who requested that their fandom be reflected in their funerals, alongside one living fan who discusses plans of what she’d like when she dies. Morris tackles what could be a sad or potentially mawkish subject with a sensitive and confident hand, creating a film that is full of fascinating stories of the lengths that people will go to for the love of sport.

Credits:
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy New York
ECDs: Ian Reichenthal, Scott Vitrone
Creative directors: Brandon Henderson, Stuart Jennings
Creatives: Cyrus Coulter, Dave Canning
Director: Errol Morris
Production company: Moxie Pictures

CR for the iPad
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CR in Print
The August Olympic Special issue of Creative Review contains a series of features that explore the past and present of the Games to mark the opening of London 2012: Adrian Shaughnessy reappraises Wolff Olins’ 2012 logo, Patrick Burgoyne talks to LOCOG’s Greg Nugent about how Wolff Olins’ original brand identity has been transformed into one consistent look for 2012, Eliza Williams investigates the role of sponsorship by global brands of the Games, Mark Sinclair asks Ian McLaren what it was like working with Otl Aicher as a member of his 1972 Munich Olympics design studio, Swiss designer Markus Osterwalder shows off some of his prize Olympic items from his vast archive, and much more. Plus, Rick Poynor’s assessment of this year’s Recontres d’Arles photography festival, and Michael Evamy on the genius of Yusaku Kamekura’s emblem for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

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Photographer Jacob Aue Sobol captures an emotional trip through Russia in black and white

by Warren Rubin

For the release of the newest Leica M-System camera, the black-and-white only M-Monochrom, Magnum photographer Jacob Aue Sobol journeyed across the Trans-Siberian Railway, stopping in Moscow, Ulan Bataar and Beijing with the camera and a 50 mm APO-Summicron-M lens.

The Leica M-Monochrom is the first 35mm-format commercial digital camera built exclusively for black-and-white photography. With a design based on the M9 and a sleek all-black exterior sans the typical red Leica logo, the Monochrom stands apart with its custom-designed CCD sensor that lacks the typical red, green and blue filters over the pixels. Rather than collecting color data, the camera captures luminance data—the amount of light striking each pixel—which allows it to resolve extreme detail and fine tonality.

Any photographer can make an image black-and-white in post-production, but the Monochrom’s 16-bit capture can detect roughly 65,000 different tones of gray compared to the M9, a 14-bit capture capable of only 16,000 tones. The Monochrom provides a much greater range of tone so that the base data used in post-processing, starts higher. “You have twice as much light reaching the sensor because you don’t have the color filter,” says Sobol, “so there were a lot of tones to work with in the post processing.”

Arrivals and Departures marked not only Sobol’s first time using a Leica, but the first time with a digital camera as well. Artists can go a lifetime without changing their medium, but as he relates, “It was a great experience. If people look at my prints with the Monochrom and you look at my prints taken with film, it’s pretty close.” He typically does high-contrast developing to create his prints, so his aim was to replicate this with the Monochrom. “The reaction I get is that people feel it is my voice and you can see it has my signature.”

On this trip he took close to 1,000 images a day, investing emotion in each one. He says, “I use the camera very much as a mirror, so I feel that with the people I photograph I am photographing a piece of myself. That’s my ambition for people who look at my pictures, that they can relate to some of these emotions and things they experience from their own life.”

As emotionally invested as Sobol is, no laughing or crying appears in any of his images. He feels these emotions would make his images too obvious. Instead, they remain emotionally open to him because, “it always happens to be that there is some emotion that seems stronger. Something that is really vibrating.”

Sobol, an award-winning photographer, plans to go back to the Trans-Siberian Railway to finalize this project. He is also planning a project to photograph twins, as he is a twin himself. He became an associate at Magnum in 2010 and when asked if being a part of Magnum influenced his work Jacob said, “Not really. I don’t think so. Maybe, but then I realized I had to be myself. I am grateful for the relationship with Magnum.”

Visit the website to find out more information and locate a dealer to purchase the Leica M-Monochrom.