The man behind the lens
I’m Dustin. I’ve been running Elektrik Media since November 1st 2020.
How did I get here?
I’ve had a passion for photography since high school, and have constantly been finding ways to challenge myself and improve on my skill set. I consider myself mostly a freelance photographer / videographer.
Back in high school, I’d taken Communications Technologies classes all three years I was a student at M.E. LaZerte High School in Edmonton. Those classes provided basic knowledge on photo editing, manipulation and printing, video production in a mock television studio environment with professional grade products including Avid and Adobe.
Several years later…
In 2019 I’d turned to the car scene and picked up the camera once more after a long break, and got back into the roots of who I was. I would spend most evenings after work attending car meets or car shows on weekends. One weekend, there was a car show on for a very young gentleman whom unfortunately (if my memory serves me right at the time of writing this) had terminal cancer. “Cars for Ryken” was held by a few car groups in the area at Ultra Car Wash on the north side of Edmonton just for him. There was all sorts of different cars spanning the entire lot. I have a soft spot for BMW’s, and of course crossed paths with a bunch of BMW’s in a parking lot and unbeknownst to me, the owners of those cars were all into drifting. It slightly rained that day and I took a few photos of their cars around near the ground with what few puddles had what I thought were cool reflections. Few days go by after that car show, after photos are uploaded online, I get a message from one of those drivers (Dustin Neubauer of Team Tandemic) telling me I should come out to drift events at Castrol Raceway… I’ve been there ever since.
Summarizing the above, I can safely say those skills evolved into me being a homelab nerd, as my computer skills evolved along with my google-fu to teach myself quite a few cool things over the years. Everything about my media (obviously besides what is on social media) is self hosted at home, on a custom home built server. This ranges from my website, my gallery and the other web services I’ve grown to provide over the last 3-4 years.
What do you do now?
Spec-D
In the 2023 season I was named head of media for @specddriftseries, a Canadian Pro-Spec licensing series based out of Canada. Being involved in the drift community has grown from showing up on Thursday evenings snapping photos and running home to edit them, into socializing with the staff, drivers and spectators – in some cases helping with the organization and coordination of events, ranging from home turf out to Mission BC. I couldn’t have been happier to have fallen in love with one of the most exciting and adrenaline filled motorsports.
This year I have made / managed many of the social media posts / digital content that goes up on the Spec-D Instagram. I have also been heavily involved in organizing the live streams we are trying to bring into the events that are going on in the future. We had sort of test run a live stream of the 2023 Round 3 Pro Drift Event but suffered live audio issues and for the most part were also unfortunately locked to a drone camera for the entire event. These were hardware issues on the day of stream which were somewhat unavoidable due to certain event logistics. We will be working as a team to resolve these issues and also enhance the quality of our next streams.. Which brings us to the next part..
Assetto Corsa
Winter 2022, I’d heard many drivers and friends own some pretty decked out sim rigs, so I looked into setting up some servers for them to practice or just plain have fun on. This evolved into us now running some events – 2023 to 2024 we’ve decided to give an Assetto Corsa Virtual drifting Competition a go, and have a 5 event series taking place over the winter off-season to give drivers and players a challenge if they wish. More information on these events can be found on the Spec-D discord.
I currently host some tracks we frequent 24/7, such as Stratotech Park (which was custom built for us – shoutout to those involved who got the ball rolling on this), Rad Torque Raceway as well as Mission Raceway Park. All of these servers can be found in content manager by searching “Spec-D” and run free car packs hosted on Vosan.
We have also been live streaming these events on YouTube. Part of the reasoning for this is for the judging of the event, to narrow down tricks and shortcuts in OBS for when the events in real life occur, and we would like to engage with the online communities to expand what we do and grow the drift communities in Canada as well.
Publications / Prints
Since 2020 I have self-made / published 3 magazines interviewing various drivers involved in the Spec-D drift circuit, and pushed out 2 calendars covering the 2022-2023 seasons. Physical Media just has a touch that social media can’t beat.
Contact:
Best way to reach me are any of the methods below
@elektrikg33k
@elektrikmedia
or elektrik.media@outlook.com
