It was a little sketchy with the weather reports calling for nearly 40mm of rain as late as Thursday afternoon, but the weather gods chose to favour Scotia Speedworld and the 19th Annual Shriner’s Classic Sportsman race and we were spared any downpour. We only had to deal with a little fog and mist. Which was great for the racers, but made focusing on racing cars in a sometimes thick mist, very difficult for yours truly. 😉

 That said, there were some fantastic moments during the racing from all five classes that hit the track on Friday including the Bandoleros, Trucks, Legends, Thunder and Sportsman classes.

The Bandoleros seem to be getting more aggressive and are making for some spectacular racing this season and the #51 Bando driven by Braden Langille came home for the checkered flag.
In the Strictly Hydraulics Legends class, Matt Moore brought the #1 home for a win and in the Coors Light Trucks it was the #80 of Vernon Brown in victory lane. The Thunder class win was taken by the #99 of Dave Matthews.

And presented with the Shriner’s Classic trophy for the 19th annual sportsman race was the #3 of Darren Wallage.

You can find the complete galleries right here.

See you next Friday under the lights at Scotia!

It was an awesome day for racing at Riverside International Speedway for the IWK 250 presented by Steve Lewis Auto Body.

The infield pit area was packed full of Pro Stock Tour regulars and favorites but there were a few new faces here as well. Reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski and his development driver Austin Theriault were also in the house and fixin’ to show the regulars how NASCAR works. Both drivers were actually very humble and friendly which the 10,000 fans who funnelled through the autograph sessions found out in pretty short order. Originally scheduled for 60 minutes, the session took nearly 2 hours for everyone to get through and get their shirts, die cast and programs signed by the NASCAR Champ.

During the pre-race festivities, the owner of Riverside Speedway presented a cheque for $1,000,000 to the IWK Foundation representatives in an emotional presentation in front of the capacity crowd didn’t hesitate to show it’s appreciation as well.

The main feature 250 lap race was action packed but relatively wreck free with only a few minor incidents on-track.

Keselowski lead 152 laps in total to take home the Linde Most Laps Led Award, but Shawn Tucker in the Rockico Equipment Chevy Impala lead the most important lap and took home the prestigious IWK 250 trophy.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the photos and memories of the 2013 IWK 250 in our gallery found here.

Here are a few more samples from the IWK 250. The tour heads to it’s only PEI appearance in two weeks after a rare weekend off. See you at Oyster Bed! 🙂

About a month or so ago, I was travelling through the eastern shore area of New Brunswick and was looking for an excuse to photograph something. Although I enjoy a good landscape, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked as a great image and thought “Wouldn’t that be amazing if there was a person right in that spot?”

I absolutely love the curves of a female body and how they mimic so many things in nature. So much so that I feel compelled to photograph them. 🙂

So… I’ve been practicing over the last year or so photographing nudes in outdoor locations. I’d like to think I’m getting at least competent at it, but I am certainly no expert yet. For the record, I also plan to continues practicing as long as i can use a camera and can find people willing to pose for me.

Once in awhile, I stumble across a really cool location and even more rarely, just the right model.

In this case, I looked into my usual resources and found there really weren’t any models around the Miramichi/Bathurst area who would be interested in shooting outdoor nudes, but I do have a photographer friend who is from the area. So I called him up and he introduced me to Jessica. Originally from Halifax and having modeled in Europe for a number of years as a commercial and runway model, we discussed a few ideas by email and agreed to meet. We chatted about some ideas and when the shoot day arrived, I happened to stumble across the old Morrisey Bridge in what was once a vibrant downtown Miramichi.

Now I used to travel to this area often for work years ago. I haven’t been there in a while and was shocked by the number of abandoned shops and homes now that the three paper mills in the area have all closed. The downtown is not so vibrant today. It probably doesn’t help this particular spot very much that a new full size concrete bridge was built a few years ago and the old Morrisey Bridge – which was once the main way to cross the Miramichi River – has been closed, condemned and abandoned.

With only an occasional pedestrian, we surveyed the location and decided it would make an awesome background.

With a special thanks to my helpers – Colleen and Stephen – we took over the bridge and surrounding area and spend a few hours shooting.

Personally, I think the results are some of my best to date. Jessica was incredible, comfortable and obviously beautiful.

The set as submitted a few weeks ago to Andivero Magazine and they were selected today to be included in their Facebook timeline and potentially for future publication. Fingers crossed. 🙂

In the meantime, here is a sample of the results. Hope you like them.

I am always looking for exciting new products to offer our fans and customers here at McCarthy Photographic and I just wanted to let you all know that we’ve added two new options that will be available trackside and through our web galleries.

The first is actually just a new idea for an old offering.

We’ve offered CDs of digital files from an entire season for a single car but for some reason, we’ve always made you wait until the end of the year. Using DropBox, you can now purchase the “Entire Season CD” option in the gallery from any image of the car you want and you will have a custom DropBox folder made available with photos immediately after each race and a CD will be mailed to you at the end of the year. All for the very reasonable price of just $149 plus shipping and handling.

A new option that will be available for the full season CDs is for those sponsors (and parents) who have multiple cars / drivers in their stable.

When you purchase a second CD for a second car, we can now offer you a 25% discount on the second CD making it only $111.75 plus shipping and handling. If you go so far as to have a third car, the third CD will receive a 50% discount, making that CD only $74.50 plus shipping and handling. Great deal if you are in a position to take advantage of it and if you pre-order, you will also receive the photos via a personal DropBox folder immediately after every race. 🙂

Also, as a brand new offering, we now offer custom licenses plates with your car from any photo in the galleries! We can add a web site and car number or logo or simply use the image file you select from the gallery. Delivery is also awesome as we have partnered with a supplier right in Halifax so we don’t have to wait 2-3 weeks for someone in Montreal or Toronto to do the work for us. I like local. 🙂

These custom plates are infused into a 1/8″ heavy duty, scratch resistant high gloss substrate and should last for years. They use standard mounting hardware and will fit any vehicle.

Have your delivered to your pit for the very next race for only $29.95 plus shipping/handling. You’ll see this option in the drop down box in the galleries starting this week and will be added to previous galleries over the next few days.

I had a couple of sample plates made up and will have one at the track for you to preview starting tonight. Here is a photo of the sample as a teaser. 🙂

If you have any thoughts on something custom you would like to see us offer, just contact us using the Contact Us form and let us know. We’d love to hear from you. 🙂

Well, it turned out to be a record breaking weekend on a number of fronts in Geary, NB…

Not only was it one of the hottest July weekends in recent memory, and apparently they breed some of the biggest darn mosquitoes I’ve ever seen in my life, but we had some of the most unusual track activities I’ve ever seen as well!

Including humidity, at least according to The Weather Network, the temperature topped at 48 degrees and I’m pretty sure it was even hotter in the infield.

There were more wrecks that I’ve ever seen at a Pro Stock race making for some incredible racing action until a breaker failed and the lights on the infield shut off at around lap 50 leading to an immediate red flag condition lasting nearly 30 minutes. A second red flag occurred after a terrible crash involving nearly 25% of the remaining field.

By the time things finally wrapped up, it was nearly midnight but the crowd never got tired and stayed right to the end to see John Flemming (#97) win his third race this year bringing him to second place for MPST all time wins with 20 wins under his belt.

The main gallery is here. Hope you enjoy the photos!

Way back… Many moons ago… Sometime last winter, in fact…

I was chatting with Miss Sasky? at the Halifax – Everything To Do With Sex Show and we talked about doing some very sexy pin-up sort of stuff similar to prints that burlesque super start Roxi d’Lite had on display.

I loved the style and found it very similar to the technique used by Robert Alvarado. A technique that I’ve been trying to figure out since late last year.

I’ve had some very successful attempts including this shoot with Chere and this one with Katelyn

Not that it’s terribly difficult to light or even to retouch, but there is something about the images that I couldn’t quite put my finger on…

Until now. 🙂

Nicole and I got together a couple of weeks ago – and somewhat unfortunately – I’ve been on the road ever since following the Pro Stock Tour racing series around the Maritimes and hadn’t been able to do much beyond take a quick browse through the rough shots. Keeping caught up with over 2000 photos from weekly races as well as the tour galleries has been a learning experience. But we gotta pay the bills around here. 😉

So I finally had some time over the past few days to dig out the ole Wacom tablet and get up to my elbows in the images from our shoot and have to say, working with Miss Sasky was a genuine pleasure and she was absolutely committed to the concept no matter how painful or uncomfortable the poses were. And that’s what I finally realized was the missing piece from with Alvarado’s images.

The attitude.

We ended up with a handful of awesome images from the shoot, but I think this is my favorite. I don’t think I’m quite finished with this style yet and since I love this image so much I think now I have to try to out do it. 🙂

Thanks to Miss Sasky for putting up with me and to Bryana Doyscher Mua? for the doing MU.

When I left Halifax at 10AM on Sunday morning to drive to Petticodiac, I thought the Maritime Pro Stock Organizers were certifiably nuts. It was raining buckets as I packed my gear and truck, fully expecting to get a call part way there to say the race was cancelled. But lo and behold, once I crossed into NB the clouds broke up, the pavement dried and eventually even this mysterious round orb in the sky appeared. 🙂

It’s been raining in Halifax now for nearly 5 straight days and I cannot tell you how excited I was to get back to the track and see some racing action. Unfortunately, I left my sunscreen at home and I am paying for that today, let me tell you…

Although this is officially my second trip to Petty International Raceway – last time the racing was called due to thunderstorms during the driver’s meeting and rainfall so hard that I had to pull over to the side of the highway on my way back to Moncton because I couldn’t see the road. See a theme starting to form here? – I was my first time to actually get infield and photograph the racing action. I have to say, I love the track and the accessibility. You’ll notice from some of the images you’ll find in the galleries that I was nearly climbing the light standards in the corners and the view was incredible. I brought home some of my favorite images so far this season from Petty and I look forward to going back a couple more times this year.

My only suggestion to the track owners…. Please have a porta potty on the infield! 🙂 Once I cross the track, that’s in until the end and with 28 degrees, and sunshine, I had to pound back three bottles of sport drink to keep hydrated and… well.. After nearly 4-1/2 hours of on-track racing it was a mad dash to the restroom after the on-track activity. LOL!

The Bandoleros seemed faster than I am used to at this track and were a lot of fun to watch. There were two features for the Leisure Days RV Twin 25s and congrats to Cory Hall on his win in the first race and Drew Greenlaw for the win in the second race! Nice drifting as well Drew. You’d almost think you had that planned. 😉

Congrats to Jordan Smith for his definitive win in the Mister Transmission Mini Stock class as well. Great race with lots of action too!

And finally, a big high 5 and congrats to Dylan Gosbee for pulling his first ever Maritime Pro Stock win out of the hat with his Wendell Taylor’s Garage/Hillside Chevrolet on the last lap of the Lucas Oil 150 passing Shawn Tucker’s Rockico Equipment # 52 Chev in the final turns to win by only 0.144 seconds. Great job!

Next week we are off to Speedway 660 in Geary, NB near Fredericton. Lets hope this weather holds and we get another round of MPST racing under our belts.

Browse through the galleries right here.

See you at the track!