A penguin’s quest
When the lockdown started in 2020 most of us took advantage of the extra free time to binge all the content on Netflix but other more ambitious people decided to actually carry out projects. Scott McDermott (LGB, 1993) is one of those people.
Scott likes movement. After graduating from Ecolint, he took a gap year to backpack in the USA and trekked the Himalayas. This is when he discovered photography and decided to make a career out of it. He initially wanted to be a nature photographer but he quickly realised that New York City is not the ideal spot for this so he specialised in sports photography. One thing leading to another he is now a successful commercial photographer and has worked with the most influential figures in cinema, politics, and the music industry. He also ventured into production and his documentary “Danica Driven” won several awards. So when he had to stay indoors because of Covid, he found himself restless. After building a guitar and re-arranging all the furniture, Scott decided to write a children’s book based on a story he told his son, Aksel, when putting him to bed.
The story started when the family went on holiday to Lake Placid, upstate New York. The town has a ski-jumping complex, an intriguing object for a kid and full of possibilities for inventive minds. Scott and Aksel agreed that a penguin, a bird that cannot fly, is a perfect animal to slide a ski-jumping slope but how does one end up there? Scott would make up different alternatives, often falling asleep with his son in the middle of the story. This was their favourite and if Scott wrote it, Aksel is credited as an author as they imagined it together. A year and a half after the lockdown, Scott is a published author and the story of Ingrid, the penguin who wanted to learn to fly, is very popular in Lake Placid. The penguin is named after Aksel’s sister. A Penguin’s quest is available on Barnes&Noble, Bookshop.org, Amazon and IPG.
Father and son do signings together and Scott is also developing music-based photography as another medium for his artistic fibre. He has two other children's books ready and we will hopefully not have to wait until the next lockdown to see them published.
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