My earliest recollection was 2 or 3 yrs old and being at the race track called Speedway Park.
You can see reminisce of the track still on the corner of mud st and centennial parkway in Stoneycreek Ont. 40 yrs later .
A friend of the family raced there ,have been hooked ever since.
I was a big Indy car fan and Nascar and watched motocross whenever it was on "wide world of sports".
Spent some time at Flambourgh Speedway too when I was younger.
In the mid 80's started going to dirt tracks like Merrittville ,Humberstone and Ransomville ,when I was old enough I started pit crewing .
Started with Al Moffat who drove the #15 sportsman still my favourite number today.
Then my school friend Frank Plazek,Joe Plazek,Steve Devos,Jamie Turner,Jeff beamer and Don Martin.
I did that for 15yrs and got burnt out ,had enough of the Friday to Sunday racing and stopped cold turkey.
I also got to race a little in a Mod stock but spent 4 years racing Karts in Mount Hope, like the road course stuff better then the circle track stuff.
But in 86 I got my first camera a fugica and was hooked on taking pictures did that allot ,got some cool shots of dirt cars .
The film started to cost too much and put that on the shelf and did video for awhile.
When Digital camera's came out ,I thought you would have to be nuts to spend that much money.
So I had bought a couple cheap ones.
My family members had been racing motocross and the cheap camera's just didn't work so well.
So a friend of the family let me borrow there Canon XS and took some shots at a motocross race .
I showed some of the riders my shots ,and they asked how much they could buy them for and that got
me really hooked.
Went out the next week and bought a Canon XSI and 2 lenses and a laptop .
Went to Supercross in Toronto 4 yrs ago shot some stuff with the new camera,thought they were pretty good so I thought I would see if Mxp magazine could use them but when i finally got to talk to someone from the Magazine I found out time constraints it was to late.
That person happen to be Ryan Gauld senior Editor at the magazine,he was riding at GopherDunes for a CMRC race and got to talking about using some of my pictures and he told me to shoot some that day and he would use them on there web-site.
After that got more and more pictures on the site and he got me into a Nationals event to shoot and I thought this much cooler to be on the other side of the fence.
A few months later I got to shoot and write a feature on ATV's racing at Walton ,my first time being published that was really cool.
Started to travel more on weekends and got to meet some really cool people and other photographers.
My family raced SteelCityRiders and I shot allot of there stuff and did the plaque pictures .
I also got allot of practise ,for what was to come.
2010 I got the chance to shoot in Montreal at the Big O ,my first indoor race ,was allot harder then I thought it would be .
I also did 3 outdoor Canadian Nationals which was allot of fun.
I got lucky that year too and got a pass to shoot a Toronto Motorsports park shooting drag cars was allot of fun and met some really cool photographers that taught me allot .
Best year so far was 2011 , I got to shoot a Rogers Centre for AMA Supercross race thanks to Ryan and MXP ,only few years earlier i was in the stands now I was on the floor shooting the pros's.
Did the 3 Canadian Nationals and Montreal again but even better i got to shoot at 2 AMA outdoor Nationals Unidilla and Steelcity ,It was way different then shooting Canada but the experience was definitely worth it.
I also went back to dirt racing and got a pass to shoot at Ohsweken Speedway ,that was a huge learning curve shooting sprint cars at night and unbelievable speeds.
The crashes were crazy.
I would say some of it was luck,but hope most of it was skill that got me to be able to do the stuff i have done so far.
So it is 2012 and hoping there will be some new things to learn and do this year.
