Blakeway's panoramic view comes to NASCAR

In NASCAR racing, a picture is worth much more than a thousand words. Now, photographer James Blakeway, founder and CEO of Blakeway Worldwide Panoramas, has set out to prove that.

Blakeway's prints now are available in the NASCAR.COM Superstore and feature both aerial panoramas of race tracks and "at-speed" shots of individual cars. Framed and unframed versions are offered.

The line-up of speedways includes all of NASCAR's most storied venues: Daytona, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Kansas, California, Texas, Talladega, Homestead, Pocono, Michigan, Martinsville, Lowe's, Richmond, Bristol, Phoenix, Chicagoland, Darlington, Indianapolis, Infineon, Watkins Glen, and New Hampshire.

The driver roster includes many of the sport's heavy-hitters: Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin, Jimmie Johnson, Kasey Kahne, to name a few.

Vivid four-color printing on art stock paper make these prints the ultimate complement for home or office.

Blakeway started his company nearly 20 years ago -- and his early days included selling posters out of a garage.

"My first job out of college was a sales position with Procter and Gamble," Blakeway recalls. "In 1988, I was going through the interview process for sales management positions with several different companies. As I got closer to the point of actually having to say yes or no to several job offers, I started to question whether a company sales position was really what I wanted to do.

"As I thought back over my life to that point, I realized my most fulfilling experiences were connected to the entrepreneurial ventures I had pursued in college. Several of these that had turned out quite profitably and were extremely fun and rewarding."

It was during an extended trip to Australia that Blakeway -- almost by accident-- came up with the idea of creating and marketing panoramic posters. After testing the waters down under, he returned to the U.S. and put the program into full swing.

"I eventually teamed up with a guy in California who was building his own rotational camera and we came up with six or seven photographs we thought were pretty good. I found a place on the beach to live, I found a printer, and I started shipping posters out of my garage and selling them out of the trunk of a Honda Prelude.

"One of our first panoramas was a Marina Del Rey shot that we promoted with some PRr stories that carried the headline: 'Smile Marina Del Rey, you've been chosen as one of four U.S. cities...' The story was picked up by several newspapers. That's basically how the business got started."

Blakeway Worldwide Panoramas moved to Minneapolis in 1991. A series of shots of the Minneapolis skyline and the ice palace at the St. Paul winter carnival hit the market in January 1992 -- just as the Twin Cities were hosting the Super Bowl-and effectively put the company on the road to success.

In the years since, Blakeway Worldwide Panoramas has been a leader in the panoramic print and poster industry, capturing a cornucopia of images from around the world. As the business grew, so did the Blakeway portfolio -- and that diversification eventually led to NASCAR.