By Mike Blake

Recording how we as a society advance and decline amid a changing world is pretty much what being a journalist is all about. The changes are mostly man made, sometimes nature, but humanity rolls along and each new generation brings with it change. Put a camera in your hand and record the events with images and you have a better idea of my job for the past 26 years as a staff photographer for Reuters.

That may be a strange introduction to a piece about a kid from Canada who follows his dream to be a professional skateboarder in California, but not really.

Skateboarding got started in the 60’s with clay wheels and surfers looking out at a flat ocean. But nothing really happened with skateboarding until polymer technology advanced and created urethane. Then along comes a guy named Frank Nasworthy and the skateboard wheel clicks in his head. From that point on technology has advanced, and along with it, skateboarding. To the point where you have a little story about Jordan Hoffart, who follows his dream.

You’ve just won your Oscar, given your acceptance speech to the world and are whisked off stage. The world watching on television goes to a commercial break as you are escorted off to meet the press, first stop “The Photo Room”.

You come around a corner and step up onto a 60-foot long low-rise stage. Behind you are three 10-foot golden Oscar statuettes, each surrounded by a bouquet of colorful flowers. In front of you is a grandstand of 60 well-dressed photographers who all want you to hold up your award and look at them, and no one says cheese.

In actuality “The Photo Room” has very little to do with the art of photography on Oscar night. We have all come in days prior and hung strobe lights, tested power packs, synced our data feeds out of our digital cameras, inputed IPTC codes, selected the IP addresses back to our editors and tweaked our lighting from edge to edge. On Oscar night it’s all about the winner looking at you.

So the photographers yell: “to your left,” “to your right,” “over here,” “kiss the trophy,” “look up,” “look down” and “it’s me.”

They yell, I yell, “put the Oscars together” and “get closer.” We are all trying to compose a picture as if we are the only photographer in the room and have the undivided attention of the winner and their magical award.

The biggest cheer at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards came when DJ Deadmau5 played Led Zeppelin during a commercial break.

Oh yeah, the Meat Dress…

The only thing going through my head when Cher announced Lady Gaga had won Video of the year was… where is the boom camera?

The shooting position was extremely far away inside the theater (I had to shoot with a 600mm on a Canon MK4 which is X 1.3 chip ASA1250@ 200th sec… even then the stage was still head to toe vertical). The boom camera had been taking me out all night long and I was constantly moving my position trying to second guess where it would go. Obviously, the picture was going to be her in her dress with Cher in her dress. The infamous Meat Dress… I had no idea it was a meat dress until I made my way out of the theater and across the street to where colleagues Sam Mircovich and Fred Prouser were editing the images from the show. Sam said, “Nice meat dress stuff” I answered, “What?” I had no idea! She was changing her dress after every commercial break and looking at her through long glass in low light I though it was some type of “Flintstones” outfit.

Our edit area was close to the photo room so after I got my gear together I went over to add an extra angle to fellow photographer Mario who was in the room after having done red carpet arrivals. I took a side angle as Mario was head on. Lady Gaga came into the room and the usual yelling and flashes were going off. She hit all her marks on the stage… walk, stop, pose and then she blew a kiss and walked off with all the photographers booing her because she would not pose with any of her moon man awards. Even with the knowledge that she was wearing a meat dress as I photographed her in the photo room, I have to say it was not dripping, nor was it smelly or sticking to her skin. It was however coming apart at the rear…. so of course I made a frame of that.

It was shortly after midnight on March 24, 1989 that the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef in Prince Edward Sound and began leaking millions of gallons of North Slope crude oil. I was sound asleep in Toronto, Canada when that happened.

Reuters was still taking a feed of pictures from UPI (United Press International) from the United States. But I remember hearing the news that morning and packing my gear (which at that time was film, powder chemicals, portable darkroom, 16S color transmitter and of course.. some cold weather clothing). I sat in Toronto as the politics of the news business played out in Washington between Reuters and UPI. Finally, it was decided that we would both cover the story. So, David Ake, a UPI staffer from Denver, and I made our way there. I remember landing in Anchorage, Alaska, and hauling my gear into a rental car at midnight, then driving six hours to Valdez in the dead of night. About 4 hours into the drive I was held up by a few hundred caribou, who decided to cross the two lane highway, they were just mingling so I still have vivid memories of being in the middle of nowhere honking my horn to help speed up the process.

I rolled into Valdez at first light and it didn’t take long to realize that most of the town’s people did not want the media there. The few media that had found rooms at the only hotel in town were all having to checkout as rumor had it that Exxon had bought the hotel. With help from our desk in Washington and the chamber of commerce in Valdez I found a place to stay at the home of the local taxidermist.

The leaking tanker was some 50 miles away from Valdez and the only way to get a picture was to fly. Chris Wilkins, a fellow photographer from AFP, was now on the ground and we hooked up to try and help one another sort out the situation. All the planes and helicopters were now on 24 hr booking by Exxon. We were dead in the water to get pictures of the ship. Chris started tracking down a plane outside the area and I went looking for the coast guard. Little did we know that the coast guard was planning on closing down the air space around the now widening environmental disaster.

Chris found a plane from an Indian reservation and made plans to meet the pilot at first light the next morning at a gravel runway outside of town. I made some pictures around town, but there was very little to shoot. Chris and I went out to the air strip the next morning and sat waiting. Sure enough a small black spec in the sky circled down around the glacier-covered mountains and landed on the gravel air strip. The pilot jumped out, he looked no older than 15. Chris and I looked at each other, then we looked at the plane, then we climbed in and looked at each other again.

The pilot took us up and we were tossed around pretty good in the wind. In about 20 minutes we were over the top of the ship, we circled the tanker, made our pictures and headed back to file.