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.

Thirsty, Chuck?

Bryan and I went for a quick mountain bike ride at the Dump today. Bry brings water for Charlie the Safety Dog so she doesn't get thirsty. Charlie is probably the antithesis of 'safety,' however. Yes, she's great at retrieving either one of us if we get too far apart, but she also likes to come rescue me when I'm picking my way down a gnarly section of trail, or about the jump off of something. I think I'll now refer to her as Chucky (due to her murderous tendencies.)

Anyway, this is a one shot post:

Failblog.

A group of skier girls have decided to get together and make a fundraising ski calendar to raise money for breast cancer research. Each month will feature one ski girl, with a lifestyle shot plus one or two ski action shots. We went out shooting tonight for lifestyles, and since we're trying to keep it on the down-low, here are some out-takes!

The calendar is coming to a ski-resort or ski shop near you, so keep your eyes open for them in the fall. We'll also be traveling around to various resorts to distribute the calendars and offer ski clinics in exchange for donations toward breast cancer research.

Featured in the following failures are Tessa Treadway, Kirsten Lyle, Sarah Frood, and yours truly.

We came, we gapered, we conquered, we spiral fractured our tibias.

Hey all, remember how I went climbing 2 days ago with the Treadways? Dave broke his tibia today, spiral fracture, ouch. Over fifty amazingly outfitted individuals gave'er on Blackcomb today after a leisurely 11:00am meeting time at the Longhorn.

There were mullets, skullets, skinny skis, and even figure skating uniforms. The pictures really speak for themselves. I'm pleased to announce I won Gaper Day 2009 Female Best Trick for some fun pond skimming action on Zig Zag in the afternoon. It's just like waterskiing... I made sure not to drown my cellphone again.

By the way, I'm pretty sure the chairlift takes only 4 people, oops. Oh, and I blew up a picture of my boyfriend and had him silk screened on the back of my vest. Just saying...

Baloo the Adventure Cat

The littlest Treadways are trying to convince me to move to Pemberton. It won't take much convincing, because the place is amazing. We went climbing yesterday somewhere in the valley near the train tracks, and of course the Treadways brought their cat, Baloo. He had a good time chillin in the bushes watching everyone try to be spiders.

That was Product-ive.

We had an assignment to do some product shots for school. Our instructor had this really epic/fancy setup that he showed us, complete with a fancy black synthetic surface to shoot on, and a table-top mini studio... OR a massive scrim tilted 45 degrees away from a big window, all of which I don't have at home.

So, being the thrifty daughter of a home economist that I am, I got creative. I stopped by Home Hardware to buy some veneer (wood, black or otherwise) to shoot on. They had none. They did, however, have white sticky drawer liner. It was sold in a 9' roll for $6. How could I resist?

I had to move fast because the assignment was due the next day and I was quickly running out of daylight. I figured I could use the drawer liner as both a scrim and surface to shoot on. I ended up sticking one half to a table that I placed in front of my window, and stuck the long end up the window (so it ended up like a studio backdrop would look, but miniature sized.)

Thank heavens for photoshop, because I was getting raindrop shadows on my background and tiny bubbles on the 'ground,' as it were.

Here they are:

A necklace, shot with daylight


My Grandpa's (my) 1955 Leica M3



I won't quit my day job, but if I need to sell stuff on Ebay, I may use that again.

Fresh (prince of Bel) Air.

I spent Thursday evening and all afternoon Saturday snapping photos at Jordie Lunn's fantastic new dj course. He held a rider-judged competition called Fresh Air, sponsored by Blackbox Labs.

There were lots of other photographers there, including Adrian Marcoux, Ian Hylands, Dan Barham, Baxter Redfern, Reuben Krabbe, Mike Reid, and many more. Check out their sites if you get the chance.

Jordie and the boys.


The winner, Brandon Semeniuk



Some other snaps





Okay that was fun. Again, again!