Luftgekuhlt (German for air cooled), the legendary all Porsche event, does not disappoint. The brain child of co founders Patrick Long and Howie Idelson lived up to the hype it has generated. Luft usually sells out within a few days after it is announced and 2023 was no different.

It’s technically a car show, but it’s done to the next level. It’s more of a Car Experience then a car show. Creative director Jeff Zwart does a masterful job of laying out the cars. Jeff is a Porsche Racer, commercial film director and a photographer and his honed eye sets all these cars in perfect photographic settings. His use of color, placement for lighting, positioning against the venues atmosphere, with its textures, color, and spots to isolate cars for its own backdrop are a photographers dream.

The venue changes every year and this year it was held at the semi retired shipyard, Mare Island in Vallejo California. Its the perfect backdrop to have an event like this. It’s a 3.5 mile island of industrial cranes, warehouses and incredible architecture. And it has new businesses emerging within these great structures. Luft used about a 1.5 miles of it dispersing the P-Cars along its waterfront and within and around the various industrial buildings. Again, a photographers dream.

Porsche has a long storied history. Luft Air & Water is the perfect place to display all the different varieties, colors and customizations that happen with the brand. Luft had 900 Porsches on display and over 10,000 spectators taking in the sights.

The venues huge windows and skylights produced some amazing light as well as some staged by Zwart and his crew. It was fun to walk around seeing how the light was falling on the cars.

The reflections of the structures in the Porsches were fun to capture as well.

One of the displays brought me back to my childhood. As there was a life sized model kit of a Porsche as if it was pulled out of the box. All the pieces of the car, wheels, fenders, etc, were hung as if they were in the plastic pull apart grid you’d get in a model kit. Very creative and well done.

I know the Porsche brand can stand for adventure. And now that means off-roading more too. I saw a bunch of them with camper tops, full on Offroad suspensions and they look like fun.

Probably my favorites are the Porsche race cars that were all over the event. It was great to see so many in one place.

A couple cool Porsches from Rocs Motorsports. Patina-ed to look like they just came off the track or an adventure. It looks like we might do a story on them in the near future at their facility. We can’t wait for that!

Unfortunately I had a battery charger not work sat night after Luft 9 Air and I wasnt able to use my mirrorless camera for the Air & Water show. So I used what I had, which was my iPhone 13. So everything you see here was done with my iPhone. Not ideal, but I was able to at least capture the feel of the event.

Keep an eye out for my short film on the Luft 9 Air show, which was done on a proper camera. Thanks for viewing!