Photographer Larry Chen Stars in the New Forza Horizon Racing Game

Canon Explorer of Light and famed car and car culture photographer Larry Chen is a major character in the brand-new racing video game, Forza Horizon 6.

Shockingly enough, this isn’t actually the first time a Canon ambassador photographer has been in a video game. Skateboard photographer and Canon Explorer of Light Atiba Jefferson was in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 back in the day. However, unlike Jefferson, whose voice lines were infamously replaced by an actor, Chen himself has a major speaking role in Forza Horizon 6 (FH6).

“The voice thing is crazy,” Chen laughs, referring to Jefferson’s voice lines being replaced. Chen and Jefferson are friends in real life, so there’s no doubt this will be a point of lighthearted contention among them.

Turning Photographer Larry Chen Into a Video Game Character

Chen tells PetaPixel he recorded over 300 speaking lines for the game across two voiceover sessions. He also had to undergo motion capture so the team at Playground Games and its development partners could realistically recreate Chen in-game.

Chen says the mo-cap was in July 2025, so the development process for his in-game missions was super fast. More on those missions in a bit.

“It actually looks like a horror movie because they made me put a bald cap on and they made me put this thing in that spreads my lips so it’s just like my teeth exposed,” Chen laughs. “I wore that for quite a long time for them to scan my teeth.”

“It was hilarious. But the rig they used to scan me was super interesting. It was 250 Canon consumer DSLR cameras, so it was funny. It was unintentional that it was Canon, but it was Canon.”

The 250 white DSLR cameras are Canon EOS 250D DSLRs, known as the Rebel SL3 in North America.

A Celebration of Car Culture

Full disclosure, I’m a massive Forza fan and, more broadly, racing video game enthusiast. I’ve played every Forza Motorsport and every Forza Horizon game. I’m such a big fan of the Forza games that I don’t watch the pre-release videos or read too much, as I don’t want any spoilers about which cars and locations are featured in the game.

Had I been paying closer attention, I would have seen the promotional series, “The Art of Driving.” It’s a three-part documentary series hosted by Larry Chen himself that explores Japan’s real-life car culture, scenery, and history.

However, since I put on blinders and waited until FH6 released in early access last week, I had no clue that Chen was involved at all. Shortly after booting up the game for the first time, I briefly saw a photographer with a Canon t-shirt holding a massive RF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM lens in an intro cutscene.

“That looks like Larry Chen,” I thought. I immediately opened up my email and sent a late-night message to one of our contacts at Canon to ask if that was really Larry.

Sure enough, it was.

“Through our long-standing relationship with Larry Chen as a Canon Explorer of Light, Canon is excited to be featured in Forza Horizon 6. Having trusted Canon gear to document the soul of Japanese car culture for decades, Larry’s transition from behind the lens to an in-game character is the ultimate tribute to his craft,” Canon U.S.A. tells PetaPixel.

Chen’s inclusion in Forza Horizon 6 makes so much sense, I can hardly believe I was surprised to see him. Chen, who is based in California, spends a lot of time in Japan. I met him when I went to Tokyo to tour Canon’s headquarters, and learned that he keeps some of his cars in Japan. He lives and breathes global automotive culture, and few countries have as tight a relationship with cars as Japan.

Arguably, no one on Earth is as closely associated with capturing the entire scene surrounding cars, the people who drive them, and what cars mean as Larry Chen. And of any racing video game series available today, none celebrate all aspects of cars as much as Forza Horizon. Driving around, embracing history, learning about the places you’re driving, and taking photos have been significant parts of Forza Horizon since the very first game launched on Xbox 360 in 2012.

In the nearly 14 years since, Forza Horizon fans like me have been clamoring for the series to finally make its way to Japan. It has made pitstops along the way in Colorado, the French and Italian Rivieras, the Australian Gold Coast, Scotland, Mexico, and now, finally, Japan. It was worth the wait.

As Chen says, the car culture scene in Japan is absolutely booming right now. People with disposable income are traveling to Japan just for automotive tourism.

But the globe-trotting photographer knows he’s fortunate to be able to go to Japan at a moment’s notice on a job and take incredible photos of rare, historic cars in beautiful locations.

With Forza Horizon 6, everyone gets to have a taste of that experience. The game features famous Japanese locations, like a surprisingly faithful recreation of Tokyo, Japan’s rocky coastlines, dense forests, and snow-covered mountains. Futuristic metropolises flank ancient villages. It looks incredible, thanks in large part to how seriously FH6’s developer, Playground Games, takes realism and, more importantly, respects a location and its culture. As Chen says, Forza Horizon 6 is not a perfect 1:1 replica of Japan, but it undeniably captures the feel.

“Not everybody can do what I do,” Chen says. “I mean, a lot of people do. A lot of people do end up going to the same places that I go to and they can photograph these cars in real life. That’s great. I love that.”

“But if you’re just a casual photographer who doesn’t want to spend thousands of dollars to go to Europe or Japan or whatever, then you could do it from home and it kind of gives you the same feeling, that same essence. And I think that’s really important because it gives them even just a chance to do it at all versus nothing.”

Forza Horizon 6’s Photography Missions

That love for cars and Japan is on full display in Larry Chen’s side missions inside Forza Horizon 6. The player is tasked with completing six quests to help virtual Chen nail a shot for an in-game, fictional automotive culture magazine, “Moto Auto Zine.”

Throughout these missions, an eerily realistic Chen walks you through a specific shot he wants help capturing and explains the significance of the subject, the car, and the locations you drive through.

Virtual Chen also dishes on photography, including tips on shutter speed, that you don’t need the latest and greatest gear, and that photography is an incredible way to connect with other people who love cars.

Having spent time with Larry in person, I was particularly impressed by how well Playground Games captured his overall look and aesthetic. I mean, sure, he doesn’t actually go around wearing a t-shirt with Canon’s logo on it, at least not that I’ve seen, but his virtual persona got his trademark cap, neck gaiter, joggers, and sneakers.

The developers also gave him one of his favorite lenses for shooting cars, the Canon RF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM.

“I think so much of that comes from just what I’m known for, what I like to shoot with. I famously like to shoot with the big white lenses trackside or even when it’s just regular car photography, I like to shoot with these huge lenses just because it just gives a different look. It’s not so much about the length. I’m not using the length. I’m using the look, the fact that I could shoot at f/2.8, but I’m further away. And then all of a sudden you see a tiny subject, but it’s still blurred in the background, which you can’t achieve that any other way except for using big lenses,” Chen tells PetaPixel.

He says Canon sent Playground Games references to help them nail the look. Although he notes they didn’t put the hood on it, which he often uses. It may have looked “ridiculous,” Chen muses.

During the six Larry Chen photography missions, one prevailing theme emerges: timing.

Whether it’s chasing the light on a beach in a classic Porsche rally car, nailing a drift shot so that the tire smoke and grit are in an optimal spot in the frame, or getting the perfect timing on a supercar jumping over a certain famous location in Japan, Chen in FH6 is all about finding the exact right moment.

“Really the thing about car photography, and I say this all the time, the hardest part is not actually shooting the cars. That’s the easy part,” real-life Chen says. “Once you have the car in front of you, just so ham and just most competent photographers, if they know how to use a camera, they can end up with usable content. The hardest part is to get the car in front of you in the right location, in the right light.”

Speaking of the smoke and grit when photographing a car burning rubber, in-game Chen notes that he often tapes his lens to the camera to prevent small particles from getting inside. He notes you don’t want any dust getting on your sensor. This is a really fun detail, as I distinctly recall asking Chen about why he had taped an old adapted EF ultra-wide lens to his Canon mirrorless camera last year in Japan.

Real-Life Car Photography Dreams

Although I don’t want to spoil the big final mission in Larry Chen’s Forza Horizon 6 storyline, I will note that the player helps the virtual Chen achieve one of his photographic dreams. It’s a great moment, and very well acted, I may add.

Chen is no stranger to virtual photography, as he tells PetaPixel he used to do it all the time in older racing games. But what about his real-life dreams? Although he has done a lot and photographed some of the world’s rarest cars in the most stunning locations, he still has unrealized photographic goals.

“I think a lot about the ‘halo cars’ of my era,” Chen says. “Especially the early 90s era, even late 90s, early 2000s, race cars.” 

The first car that came to mind for Chen was the legendary Mercedes CLK GTR. Even counting variations and drivable prototypes, fewer than 30 of these have ever existed.

“I finally had a chance to see a couple of them together this last trip that I took to Germany, but they were just available for everybody to shoot, which is fine, which is great. I feel like I got some good shots of them, but I would love to put them in an awkward place where it’s kind of out of place or on the street just on a canyon road. I mean, the dream would be to drive something like that in a downtown square.”

For those of you who get to play Forza Horizon 6 and do Chen’s missions, that real-life answer will prove quite interesting. Although, sadly, there’s no CLK GTR in the game yet, you can help the photographer achieve part of his real-world goal.

Chen remains hopeful he’ll be able to realize his CLK GTR dreams.

“A lot of people say that I am able to play Forza in real life when it comes to these photo modes because there’s really no limit now when I think about something to shoot where I can take it or what background I can get for these photos or for these cars,” Chen says.

He says it’s always worth a shot to ask someone about photo opportunities with their cars.

“These manufacturers and these individuals that have these cars, they actually want to see [these photos] too,” Chen says.

“I haven’t convinced anybody yet to let me actually photograph one,” Chen says of the CLK GTR. But there’s still hope.

Car Culture Meets Real-Life Photography

As Chen says, he has played many racing video games over the years. For so many young, up-and-coming car enthusiasts, virtual worlds are where they first fall in love with cars. You can “drive” and look at so many rare cars that most people are never lucky enough to see in real life. Games like Forza Horizon 6 channel and grow that passion. FH6 celebrates cars and why they’re special. It also embraces Japan and what makes its car culture so magnetic. It’s Chen’s favorite place to photograph cars for a reason, after all.

The new game, thanks in large part to Chen’s involvement, also celebrates photography in ways very few games ever have before. I have spent nearly as much time tinkering with my in-game virtual camera in Forza Horizon 6 as I have racing.

“You can just really push the limits of what’s possible in terms of car photography because you’re not limited by the physical world and you have so many different cars to choose from,” Chen says of the camera in Forza Horizon 6. “It’s such a great tool and it’s something that’s why naturally there’s such a huge community surrounding this movement.”

“I get tagged all the time when people tell me that they like to shoot in the game or more recently people have been recreating my real life photos,” the photographer adds.

So go out there, take some photo lessons from Chen inside Forza Horizon 6, and put your virtual photography skills to the test. Capture something share-worthy.

Forza Horizon 6 officially launches today on Xbox Series S/X and PC. It is coming to PlayStation 5 later this year.

Image credits: In-game photos and screenshots captured by Jeremy Gray inside Forza Horizon 6. Behind-the-scenes photos of Larry Chen provided courtesy of Larry Chen.