Forming my love for all things photography, videography, art direction, design, and of course cars, Freshly Whipped was my blog that ran for over 3 years. It taught me the foundations for all that I do now and took me around the world.

I had a crush on this girl. She was pretty, arty, a bit different, and was into photography. I always liked photos but didn’t really understand the depth of photography. I guess by some way-shape-form she introduced me to photography. Through some short-lived crush, she got me hooked on what would later become my full-time job and the beginning of my creative career.

I saved up some money and waited till the boxing day sales. Surely enough the Canon 1000D that I had my eye on came on sale. I bought the camera. It was little, but still a DSLR, enough to get me started on taking real pictures.

A week later the Four and Rotary Nationals were taking place at Auckland’s Greenlane Showgrounds. This is the premier event for all hotted-up boy-racer cars. I was introduced to a drifter named Sky Zhao, he took me under his wing and said “hey why don’t you come to my buddies track day tomorrow in Pukekohe? Take some photos?”. I immediately went running back to my friends’ house, eager to tell him the news of this private track day. I got there early, took some photos, met some people and had fun.

It was after these events that I maybe I should start a little blog, write about these cars, and put my photos up. I guess as some form of creative outlet?

I came up with ‘Freshly Whipped’, some people called cars ‘fresh’, others as ‘whips’, the two just came together easily. Given the name sounded so closely related to ‘freshly whipped cream’ I wanted to create a logo that was synonymous with ice cream. A somewhat 50’s milk bar vibe, with a hint of Kiwiana.

As the blog developed, so did the logo. After a few years of the initial logo, I phased it out in favour of something I thought was a little more on-brand, still maintaining the original vintage look, but with a slight graffiti appeal.

I started the blog on Tumblr. It was clunky, and really not the most ideal platform to use, but at the time it was something I was familiar with. Every time I wrote a new piece I’d make a whole new page, link it to the front page, then work it like a blog. My world changed when my brother and I converted the website over to WordPress. I wasn’t happy with Tumblr’s image quality either so I managed to host all of the files offsite.

Freshly Whipped became a full-time job quite quickly and meant I was working on the project every bit of spare time I had available. I wanted to market the brand but didn’t understand how to, the first thing that came to mind was stickers. I had designed my logo and managed to get it made into die-cut vinyl stickers that people could put on their cars. Demand quickly grew and the stickers would sell out in an hour. I couldn’t keep up the supply and would often do ‘limited edition’ colours to charge more, decrease supply, and sell out fast. I think this helped pay my way through university.

From there the tee shirts arrived, I did a first few initial runs with different graphics I had come up with and found some minor success. I went on to do a full line of shirts that then sold out within a few days. I still get photos of people wearing the tees to this day.

I managed to get sent all across New Zealand following the D1NZ Drifting Championship, then onto the World Time Attack Championship in Sydney, then further abroad to Fuji Speedway in Japan.

As mediums changed, I wanted to gain access to videography as well. I sought out ways to mount and fit DSLR’s to cars, try and get better angles, and better quality footage. At the time Go-Pro’s were fine, but not really cutting it. It became quite common to see me running around with cases full of weird arms and gear, mounting cameras to places they shouldn’t be and hoping for the best. My Honda Civic had its fair share of suction cup moments - chasing race cars around tracks all over the country. With the right driver behind the wheel, somehow this car can keep up.

Freshly Whipped lead me onto becoming one of the editors for New Zealand’s largest men’s magazine - NZ Performance Car. To this day I continue to pay for the server and domain subscriptions to keep Freshly Whipped alive. It was a huge part of my life, and one that I’m incredibly grateful to have been through. At its peak Freshly Whipped was hitting close to 50,000 views a month, and 13,000 Facebook fans.

Special thanks to Jarrod McCallum, Cameron Vernon, Mad Mike Whiddett, Sky Zhao, Keisuke Nagashima, and the many others that helped along the way.