About

I started photo and video like most, as a hobby. I had a few friends who were graffiti artists and they most were pretty awesome at what they did, but not often we’re they any good at getting photos of their work. Long before digital cameras were affordable, I went through hundreds of disposable cameras, developed and scanned the photos and manually merged the photos into a panoramic in a bootleg copy of Photoshop. Today, Photoshop merges panoramic photos for you, even your phone can do a pretty decent job.

My interest in cars didn’t come until after I began driving, even though my dad tried to teach me some of the maintenance basics, if for no other reason than to save me a little money, not having to pay anyone else to do it. He once made me buy a Ford Tempo his buddy had, something cheap that I could put a few bucks in and have transportation. I never touched the thing, it just sat there and at some point, he sold it, I guess. my grandfather left me an early 90s Silverado. Single cab, step side, 4.3L non-vortec ,4 speed with 5th gear overdrive and that hideous red interior. But let me tell ya, I rocked that thing like nobody’s business. The stories with that thing will stay with me forever. It was around that time that I joined a local racing forum, Midsouth Street Racing, I think, was the first version, it ended up changing names a few times and still has a presence in the Memphis Racing community. When deciding on a screen name for the forum, I wanted to mix a little of my interest in comic books in, so I took a little inspiration from the Silver Surfer and because I drove Silverado, I went with Silver Racer (Silverado Racer)

Josh at Import Alliance Nashville – 2008

Eventually, I found myself hanging around graffiti artists less and my car friends more. Fortunately there were a few that shared both interests. I still enjoyed taking photos, so I started taking photos of friends cars, at car shows and eventually have video a try. DSLRs hadn’t started offering video yet, but a few decent point and shoot cameras did. After a while, I was posting photos and an occasional video to local and regional forums. Today I look back and am somewhat embarrassed at those, but while it wasn’t the greatest work, there wasn’t a ton of people shooting cars then. I remember watching Teckademics/Mischief videos on vhs because no one had bandwidth.and I don’t think YouTube had really taken off yet.
I eventually came across the dubaudi gruppe and soon after, Wagenwerks. In my opinion, JJ Larsen, Matt Crane and Steven Campbell were pioneers for what we all do today.

The wedding video that JJ and Matt did for JJ’s brother even inspired me to film my friend Wes’s wedding, which at the time, I knew NOTHING about weddings. Up to that point, I had filmed a few OK videos, 3 or 4 for SoWo (Southern Worthersee). And a few small business videos. I had no idea that filming Wes’s wedding would lead to me filming weddings full time, but not to get off topic, maybe more on that another time.

Why “sr83”?

I was never a big fan of people’s names for their photography business (no offense to anyone who uses their name, just not my thing. So when I decided that my portfolio site needed a better name than “Josh Gilmore Photography”, I looked back to my forum screen name. By this point, I had joined several more forums with the same username, so I was known by it.
“Silver Racer Photography” wasn’t going to work, so I shortened it to just SR and added my birth year – 83 = sr83.

In 2006, I became the administrator for the Tennessee VW enthusiast at the time –TnDubs.com. I met some amazing people and learned so much during those 3-4 years.
The most memorable events I curated were the 2007 Tennessee Statewide G2G (get together) and the Goofball Rally to SoWo, which was a caravan beginning in Memphis, stopping in Nashville, then Chattanooga, where the Knoxville to Chattanooga leg would join us and then to Helen, Georgia (where SoWo) was hosted. As the Goofball Rally grew over the years (drawing over 120 cars in the caravan one year!), several sponsors came aboard, allowing some fantastic prizes to be given away and some awesome memories to be made.

TnEuros.com was founded by a few members of TnDubs and eventually the user base migrated and TnDubs subsequently died. A few years later, the staff at TnEuros asked me to join the administration team and I’m still on the administration board today. Of course thanks to Facebook, most of the forums out there are pretty much gone, but we still have a great Facebook group!

In 2009, I left my job at Hilton Hotels corporate office to go full time as a creative professional and aside from a few years working for a local independent VW shop as there performance and parts manager (I also wore the marketing/advertising and event coordinator hats there as well), art, photo and video have been by bread and butter.

Working as a freelancer in some situations and full time film crew lead at a local production company much of the rest of that time.
During this time, I’ve filmed more than 100 weddings, various sports events,. commercials, seminars, presentations, several cheerleading World championships, and a few music videos.

In 2015, I founded my own production company that focused on wedding video and commercial content creation. Over these last 10 years, ice still built and drive Volkswagens with my friends, but the automotive content that originally gave me reason to even have a portfolio in the first place was barely scattered throughout my current body of work. shooting an occasional car for a friend, filming a few drift events if for no other reason than to smell.the burnt tires and getting to capture some amazing driving.

Even so, I felt that I had let sr83 die. New stuff went up maybe once a year and that just wasn’t enough for me

Fast forward to may 2019, when I was invited to travel Europe for 17 days capturing content for Volkswagen of America and their first ever VW enthusiast brand ambassador, Jamie Orr.

The trip definitely reignited my enthusiasm for creating automotive content, especially VW/Audi. This is where Rennspired comes in. Please check out the next section below.

As this spark returns, I feel like the “sr83” name has run its course and it’s now time for something new. While there’s a lot more to cars than just racing, I feel that racing inspires where cars are today. The research and development that goes into racing is why we have the technological advancements as well as luxuries we have in cars today.
Racing inspires us to modify our own vehicles, to build machines to race ourselves. Race styling and livery inspire the aesthetics of our own cars, from daily drivers to show cars and from race cars to RC cars and to decorate our garages and our homes (for the heavy enthusiasts!).
This same inspiration is where the new name for my “channel” (for lack of a better term coming to mind), comes from.

With all of that said, I’m extremely proud to present Rennspired.

While the majority of my content is VW Group focused (VW, Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Ducati, Lamborghini, Seat, Skoda), there will still be some non VW (maybe even non-euro!) content that I post occasionally. My goal now is to create some awesome content for businesses who need it for their websites and social media, as well as build and capture some great stuff for my own projects, social media and website.