As we begin our 2012 adventures, I thought it would be worth looking over our first year, seeing how we’ve progressed and if anything needs to be reevaluated. We learned a lot for sure, and for sure there’s a lot more to learn.
As many of you already know, Geoff and I came up with the concept while driving through Yosemite on the way to Las Vegas last year. He was shooting for Works Magazine and I was shooting for OMGDrift, but we had no outlet for our non-drifting photography, which was a lot. Enter Life Blasters, a place to post road trips, parties, interesting people, and whatever the hell else we encountered either while following Formula D around the country or just staying home. We didn’t care if other people liked the content or not. It was just finally a place to put it all.
We launched the site in January, and by February we were seeking out stories specifically for the site. Tom Tang’s interview brought us international recognition.
Joe and Justin loved the concept so we brought them on board too. They were shooting for MotorMavens, and also had no place to post their non-car photography. As we tinkered with the site’s style, we gradually stabilized on the “personal, sometimes humorous, account of an adventure” model, rather than strict, objective, news reporting. People seemed to like it, so we kept at it.
Geoff’s brother Graeme was competing in the Sea Otter Classic at Laguna Seca, so went to blast it and that was our first non-drifting sporting event coverage.
There were so many different kinds of interesting things happening all the time, it became difficult to keep up with it all. Even without “primary content” like Formula D coverage, we gained more and more viewers each month!
Shooting Formula D gave us the opportunities to travel a lot. We wouldn’t have even gone to a quarter of the places we went in 2011 if it wasn’t for drifting.
In July we decided we needed to have way bigger photos, so we were the first drifting-related blog site to go 1000 pixels wide.
Everything looks better bigger doesn’t it? Geoff’s series from his tour with Jameson was popular with viewers.
And my Yosemite set got the attention of BorrowLenses. Not bad for a couple of guys who didn’t care if anyone liked their stuff or not.
Eventually we couldn’t stand it anymore. We had to include Formula D coverage!
We stumbled across this incredible graffiti project in Oakland and decided it’d be cool to blast. One reader thought it was our best story ever! I’ll admit, it does feel good that so many people were digging our stuff.
Joe and Justin went to China for the World Drift Championship and blasted their whole trip.
I’m glad we decided to include Formula D in our coverage, because our October views after Irwindale blew away our previous months.
We had enough of a following by then to start selling merchandise. We hired Puerto Rican artist Sam Mercado of AttackWorks to come up with a tee shirt design for us, and people loved it! We’ve shipped LB merch all over the US and to Canada, Ireland, Germany, Denmark, the UK, Japan, Australia, and Indonesia! The proceeds go toward maintaining the site (which isn’t a lot) and travel expenses (which is a lot).
After the Formula D season ended, we wanted to keep shooting motorsports. Some of our readers preferred time attack and racing over drifting, so this turned out not to be a bad idea at all.
As such a new and relatively small site, I wasn’t sure SEMA would grant us media passes, especially since we cover so much more than the automotive industry, but they did! Jarod DeAnda was happy to see us in Vegas. He’s one of our biggest supporters! Thanks Jarod!
Joe wasn’t able to make it to SEMA, but that meant he was available to go to Occupy Oakland as the tensions was rising and shoot one of his best images of the year. This was our first widely relevant and serious coverage.
Our coverage of the 25 Hours of Thunderhill was our most popular story ever, and helped make December our biggest month ever. In 2012 we’ll bring you the 25 again and the full Formula D season, but we’ve also got our sights set on Rally America and American Le Mans too, and whatever other adventures we can get into along the way.
What are your thoughts? Is Life Blasters awesome or not? What do we need to improve and what should we leave alone? We’d love to hear from you!
Here’s to a blastacious 2012!
.:Bohan
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