WAP Graduation

It's finished. In the past 10 months I schoolworked, homeworked, starbucksed (worked), seattled, oregoned, calgaryed, whistlered (x 1 million), revelstoked, trout laked, lake louised, omahaed, tofinoed, jordan rivered, and maybe some more.

All of that fun and not so fun culminated in a diploma in journalism and photography from the Western Academy of Photography.

The hard work paid off, too, and I was fortunate to win some awards for my work. In my program, called Written Image, I won Best Feature Editorial Photo, for a shot of a roadblock in Squamish where a young man was pulled over for drunk driving. In an open category amongst all of the students I won Best Photo Essay, titled "Joey: Age 2.5" (the one in the video of the little boy, all photos are black and white.)

Finally, in my program I won both Best Portfolio and Best Photojournalist. All in all the year paid off! Phew!

Enjoy my book:

Amy McDermid Photojournalism Portfolio from Amy McDermid on Vimeo.

I love dirt.

This weekend the Off-Road Rebels rally association put on an amazing rally event in between Pemberton and Whistler, right by the motocross track. Some guy saw my camera and said "hey, come with me," in a husky smokes too much and drinks too much voice, and I followed, knowing that nothing bad could come of following a stranger.

He brought me and another fellow with a video camera out onto Sunday's course and brought us up in a Genie hydraulic lift, which he suspended out above the final - and might I add massive - mud pit at the finish of the course.

I ran into a friend later that afternoon who said "hey ames, I saw you at the rally, you were up in the genie with a guy who recently got off house arrest!" Ummmm... awesome.

I love the smell of hot garbage...

In Victoria the best place to ride a bike is at the Hartland Land Fill. Most riders lovingly refer to it as 'the Dump,' and that's exactly how it smells, especially when it's 30 degrees C even at 5pm.

The other day Bryan and I went out for a ride and I brought my camera. Here are the results, I don't shoot a ton of XC, and only had a 50mm and fisheye, so... yeah. There's a little self-portrait action in there too:

World Badminton Championships of the World.

Redundant? Perhaps. Hitting a shuttlecock back and forth over a lo-budg net for 4 hours? Surprisingly not redundant. So un-redundant, in fact, that we didn't even notice how much time had passed until Nicole and I (team pasty white) were burnt to a crisp. Oops.

After the championships were tied by all, we went camping at Jordan River for the night. No complaints here.