David Walter Smith

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David W. Smith (born March 11th, 1958) is a Canadian born journalist, a native of Kingston, Ontario, and a photojournalist since 1987. After a wandering career as a bartender, waiter, bankruptcy liquidator, vacuum cleaner salesman and steel factory worker that encompassed North America, he went back to school in Western Canada and earned his diploma in Print Journalism from MacEwan College in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was primarily a writing program but Smith rekindled an earlier interest in photography there and even found he could get paid doing it. He worked for newspapers starting with the Fort McMurray Today in Northern Alberta and then moved south to the warmer (only slightly warmer) St. Albert Gazette chain just outside Edmonton. While attending a Western Canadian News Photographer seminar, he heard legendary educator and author of the “Great Picture Hunt” Dave Labelle speak. After talking to Labelle, Smith, who had a good staff job and had won several top awards for his pictures, decided to return to school at highly-acclaimed Western Kentucky University, to “get better” and get a degree. He graduated with a double major in Photojournalism and Anthropology. After graduating he packed his bags again and headed to Asia. He had a friend in Taiwan so he went there first. He didn’t plan on staying but ended up liking Taipei so much he settled there. Smith started out as a copy editor at the China News, an English daily and progressed from Sports Editor to Director of Photography. He was there when the paper changed its name to the Taiwan News and covered such monumental events as the 921 earthquake and watershed 2000 presidential election. One of his pictures from the quake won awards from both the World Press Photo foundation and the POY (Pictures of the Year) in the USA. After the 2000 election, wanderlust reared its head again and Smith packed his camera bags and headed to Hong Kong for a short stay and then moved to Bangkok, Thailand for a couple of years. While in Thailand besides doing freelance photography, writing, teaching and editing, he traveled many times to the neighboring country of Laos for photographic forays. In 2003, Smith was recruited by the start-up Apple Daily and moved back to Taiwan. He managed to travel to the Turkish-Iraq border for the start of the war and covered such events as the SARS outbreak for the paper. Smith is presently an accredited foreign journalist based in Taiwan and is represented by the OnAsia Images photo agency. He is finishing up a photo book on Taipei’s streets called Little Green Men. In January he will be returning to his Kentucky roots and has accepted a staff photographer position at the Bowling Green Daily News.