For the last few weeks Connor Macleod and I have been labouring away in a new spot. It’s in Squamish, up the Squamish River. There’s no gate to get there… Feel free to track it down and have a ride. Just be a nice guy and don’t shoot it… yet, we need to get our stuff together first, ie: we have a pretty sweet project planned that will be popping up on Pinkbike starting December. I’ll do a post on all that once we start picking up steam, proposal’s just got wrapped up and are starting to go out to gather funding to keep us going. For now you can check out some building shots. In a few days I’ll do a post on the branding and proposal design I did up for this.

Connor under the rock line – pre-soil:

Rock line with soil:

View of line, into gap before it funnels back into singletrack:

Standing above the Rock line, plagued with flies:

Looking down the first steep, onto the ledge, then drops into the roll:

Mossy run-in:

Dirty hands:

Old volcanic peak. Nobody has been to the summit according to trusty wikipedia.

Just did an update following up the Romstad photos I shot back at the end of July. There is now a new section with a gallery of 15 images to go with the series, all available as prints. Have a look here:

http://derekdix.com/romstad.html

Also over the last month I’ve had the pleasure of helping out Alterna Films with their intro for 13 o’clock, which is coming out this fall. I’ve shot a bunch of behind the scenes stuff that is up on push.ca:

Part I
Part II

Here’s a couple of my favorite shots:

That’s that. 4 years wrapped up at ACAD. Got my degree, convocation is Thursday the 19th. Grad Show runs May 18 – 28. Stop by at the opening if you can!

May 18 – 28, 2011
ACAD | Main Mall, 3rd floors and Illingworth Kerr Gallery
Opening reception | May 18, 2011 | 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

ACAD is at the core of Calgary’s creative community and each year our graduates go on to transform their fields of endeavor through their creative process, becoming important voices in the worlds of art and design in Calgary and beyond. We are proud to celebrate the remarkable work of this year’s graduating class here, at the 2011 ACAD Grad Show. This year, ACAD’s Illingworth Kerr Gallery is proud to present work by nearly 200 graduating students, including eleven recipients of ACAD’s prestigious Board of Governor Awards. We have planned a unique and extensive exhibition staged throughout our College – prepare to be surprised, awed and inspired by these talented and energetic creators. We hope you enjoy the show!

Just a quick update with some visuals, trying to keep the blog flowing more now. This shot is from the final project for my photo illustration class. The concept that we had to work with was one of the 7 sins… I was given the sin of sloth, despite it being photo illustration class nothings composited, that sloth head is a giant foam-core head.

Click for full-res.

After last year I came out with a heavily processed based project titled Animalia Canadiana.

Huge ups to Jordan Manley for taking home first place for the Saint Deep Summer Photo Challenge. If you never have heard of Jordan before I would take a poke around his website to see what this man can do… This is of course after you climb out from under your rock. It was unreal to be part of his team during this contest.

Also the party shots from Jordie Lunns Grilled Cheeze Party and the Cove Bikes Party are both up in the events section of the site… AND there also is a new page in my still life section of the last project I shot, which was mentioned in the previous post.

Last week I did a quick product shoot with Colin Poon for a project concept he had of a store called Stockroom. We combined items we personally own to get the styling all put together. Things turned out well, here’s a preview:

For the past little while Ross, a few others and I have been working on a few lines in our zone known as MTBville, for some shooting/filming.  The whole project has been a huge load of work but we finished up two of the hits today and they are looking unreal.

All the stuff built is for Gully, Lorny and Ross to film on with Anthill and, Me and Harookz will be shooting some stills like bawses. Peep it… maybe puppets can pick up a few tricks on how to build proper stuff in their local MTBville.

The hit I’m most stoked on has to be the curved wall to gap. It’s not something absoloutly nuts when it comes to size but the building of it had Ross and I stoked the whole way through. We worked like god-damn child prodigies at the puzzle section in Dad’s Sunday Paper. When we framed everything up we made sure not to nail into any live trees… This worked out perfectly and there are only two sections where the stringers are anchored down to the ground for support. The rest of the support comes from the stringers being pressure-fit between the two live trees we framed against. Best part is though, we winged the whole thing.

Here’s three shots showing the progression of the pressure fit stringers.

Once we got all the sringers together I missed out on a couple building days while Ross and Harookz sent it with the gas axe. Last night at Jordie’s birthday all I heard about were these unreal cedar rungs they got out of this log that were about 5’6” long, 8” wide and 2.5” thick and straight, without knots. Apparently they just came from Ikea and they didn’t mill them… Realistically though, they found a burried long with a diameter of about 3 feet that was left from when the mountain was originally logged at the start of the 1900′s.

With it being burried that allowed the wood to stay moist over the hundred something years the tree has been fallen for allowing it to split easily and straight seeing as there was plenty of moisture in the grain of the wood. This also prevent the rungs from splitting once they get hammered into.  To split them all that was needed was one sharp axe head and a hammer, with two hits they would pop from the section cut out of the log. Once I saw what they had made I was stoked!

Here is a quick gander at the slats starting the wallride (the ones at the lip are shaped far better):

There also is the fact that the dirtwork leading up to the ladder is absolutly top-notch aswell.  We framed in all the gold soil with the rungs that didn’t split off perfectly just to create a nice box to hold everything in and look better than Kate Moss on the cover of Vogue (sheeiiiiittt).

The landing still has to be buffed out and packed but that’s also looking unreal. For now though take a gander at some more sweet cell phone pics, beucase as a photographer I aim for nothing but the highest quality images.

Ross fine-tuning some slats on the entrance:

Connor and Ross jumping around like some sickiwicki froggys:

Slats still need cutting for everything to look level:

One dark shot looking from the lip of the step-down into the wall:

Hope you enjoy not riding this shit beucase once it’s polished up there will be a chain going up aswell.

Cheers.

-Derek

Hope to see everyone out there tonight for the release party of MTBville.

Just got back from setting up and this is our favorite photobooth to date. We’re also giving away a Rocky Mountain Flow frame courtesy of Rocky. There’s also tons of other goodies that will be handed out, you know… just to make a super sweet party more sweet.

Doors are at 9 tonight and there is a decent chance of a big line, so arrive early.

Check some pics of the booth.