FORMULA DRIFT SEATTLE - THE ART OF MOTION

Words and Photos from Michael “Jori” Ericson

As photography digitized, we lost a sense of individuality, an intent, a feeling of scarcity. As Motorsport

became dependent on technology, it became clinical, conservative, impersonal. Both have lost a

significant portion of their traditional identity as they've become more standardized, however there is one

difference. Motorsport has become less accessible for the common man, while photography has become

infinitely more accessible to all. These vital differences have caused vastly different phenomena between

the two. Certain motorsports are regarded as royalty, F1 for example, the pinnacle of technology, skill, and

engineering. Whereas photography is regarded so often as effortless, simple, and uninvolved. Due to

these similar but vitally different experiences brought on by the technologification of the respective

mediums, a yearning to go back to the "good ol' days" has become increasingly apparent amongst both.

Classic race series and obscure film cameras are turned to, but neither completely succeed in rekindling

the magic of old. My theory is that the past's racers and photographers weren't chasing nostalgia, they

were passionate about their present.

It's difficult to find a motorsports series that singularly chases pure passion more than Formula Drift. So

that was easy, but that leaves photography. I don't believe that the gear dictates the user, so I'm

specifically not interested in using film cameras to force myself to "feel", instead I want to utilize the

present technology to understand the passion we mistake as nostalgia. We, or at least I, often forget that

nostalgia doesn't equal quality, we romanticize the past and willfully forget the issues that came along with

it, instead, let's romanticize the present a little, blend the passion we felt we lost with the engineering of

today. This is what sparked my intrigue in capturing Formula Drift Seattle in a way that I normally wouldn't.

I'm usually so worried about ensuring I capture everything with clinical perfection, I forget about capturing

emotion. So at FDSea 2025, I spent my time trying to freeze a memory, treat each photo like it's limited, a

weight to the shots that the accessibility of terabytes in our pockets have all but erased. Normally an

expectation is set with motorsports photography, be editorial, cover the event, take perfect photos, take a

lot of photos, but I wanted to focus a little more on capturing what I felt, and the first step to that was

finding out exactly what that was.

Excitement, speed, passion, noise, tire debris, cheering, heat, sweat, muscle fatigue, nerves. But how do I

capture that in an image? I think intrinsically I decided to try to find the base sense behind it all, and

embody that in images. That resulted in ultra slow motion pans to showcase a feeling of speed, they

aren't perfect, far from it, but they feel fast, and that was the goal. It also resulted in images of the drivers,

focusing on what harnesses the speed, what controls the machine. And finally, arguably the most clinical

of the photos, moments frozen in time, specifically moments I felt were exciting, indicative of the pure

essence of "drift" and capitalizing on the evocative nature and pure grit that Formula Drift exudes. With

that, I hope you enjoy the photos I managed to capture.