At the age of one Vasily with his parents arrived in Russia; the family settled in Krondshtadt, where the boy's father was engaged in timber trade and where Vasily started his education. From the age of 9 Vasily Carrick lived in St. Petersburg, first studying at the English School, and then at the Architecture Department of the Imperial Arts Academy. After graduation he moved to Rome and enhanced his water color painting technique there till 1856. Having returned to St. Petersburg, Vasily Carrick shortly worked as an assistant in a photo studio of his friend, artist I. A. Goh.

In 1856-1857 Vasily Carrick with his family travelled to Scotland, where he studied photo technology and got acquainted with its latest achievements. In the spring of 1859 he founded a photo studio in the Malaya Morskaya Street, St. Petersburg and worked there jointly with his friend and partner, Scot John McGregor. The same year Carrick's pictures under the title "rural life" were displayed at the annual exhibition of the Arts Academy.

In the 1860s Vasily Carrick's studio was located in the 5th Line of Vasilyevsky Islaind. Along with custom portraits he took models' pictures, which were widely used by many artists as etudes for their paintings. Besides, the studio produced photographic reproductions of paintings for massive sales.

For the photo series Russian Types made in the "visit card" format, Vasily Carrick was awarded a diamond ring by the heir Crown Prince Nikolay (the son of the Russin emperor Alexander II) in December, 1862. The photographer was one of the first to leave the pavilion and  go in for outdoor photography. He took genre pictures in St. Petersburg and its vicinities, in the Novgorod Province and Finland.

Vasily Carrick participated in the All-Russian Manufactory Exhibition in St. Petersburg (1870, a bronze medal "for excellent photos of folk life") and the Polytechnical Exhibition in Moscow (1872, a big silver medal).

In the 1870s he paid  a lot of attention to photoreproduction of paintings and graphic art works. In 1871, 1875 and 1878 the photo artist made trips to the Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Kazan and Simbirsk Provinces, visited the cities and the villages of the Volga region, and participated in the Nizhny Novgorod fair, having created about 700 photos of "chamber" format in ethnographic, landscape and still life genres.

From 1876 Vasily Carrick had the rank of the  "Photographer of Imperial Academy of Arts". In 1878 his works from the L.V Varnerke collection were presented at the International Photo Exhibition in London.  In 1879 photos by Vasily Carrick (without specifying his name) were displayed at the Anthropological Exhibition in Moscow. The year 1880 saw Exhibition of Vasily Carrick's Photoreproductions of Paintings by the Court Artist Prof. M. Zichi in St. Petersburg.