By Mike Blake

A while back I had stopped at a cafe near San Ysidro, which is about as south as you can get in California before stepping into Mexico. I was walking out the door when I spotted three guys rolling up on ATV bikes dressed like they had just come out from one of my son’s Xbox games.

They were U.S. Border Patrol, grabbing a coffee, on a break from the dust of their patrols. I said to myself “Okay, I have to come back here and look into what these guys do.”

After a bunch of phone calls, emails and changing schedules (even a hard drive crash) I found my way back – this time I was in the game. I was in their dust, surrounded by their hills and trails and stepping into their real life cat-and-mouse game.

Except it’s not a game. It’s real life on so many opposing levels; from the agents who leave home for work every day and head off into the darkness of night, to the people that will take a chance at crossing for a better life, or a life of crime. The border is one of this country’s sticking points on immigration reform and it will most likely be the foundation of any solution that comes in the future. Politicians and political parties will spin the story to fit their needs, but the reality is that the border is never going to go away.

That’s why I’m just going to talk about how damn good the new Canon DX cameras are in low light. There is no way you would be able to see what you are seeing in these pictures if not for the technology in the camera. I’m still blown away that I was able to take these pictures in pretty much moon light.

For instance, this image was shoot at 1/10th of a second, f2.8, ISO 2500 using a 16-35mm lens.

This on ISO 1280, at 1/40th, f2.8, using a 70-200mm lens.

ISO 6400, 1/125th, f2.8, 400mm lens.

ISO 2000, 1/500th, f2.8, 400mm lens.

For any camera gear fan, the picture at the bottom of the post was the first picture I took after meeting up with the crew. It was shot with a magic arm clamped to the front of the ATV, a 5DMKll camera and triggered by a pocket wizard.

(I’m on the left)

I had no idea how fast these guys go, and I originally set the camera to 640th of a second, ISO 400 at f4. But I needed to punch the shutter speed way up after I took a quick look at all the motion I was getting – even after that I only had a few sharp ones.

Taken with a Canon 5DMK11, 14mm lens, f2.8.

By Mike Blake

Red rocks, pink jeeps, vortex tours, pan flute music and UFO tours: Welcome to Sedona, Arizona.

You can see when arriving why for hundreds of years the Native Americans considered Sedona a sacred place; it is stunningly beautiful. But like most beautiful things on this planet we humans find ways to monetize the experience. From parking passes to tours through the desert in pink jeeps, businesses are created and a micro economy sprouts up next to the vortexes. But back to UFO’s…

If you ever get an opportunity to go on a UFO tour, take it. I took my camera along, out into the blackness of the winter desert just south of Sedona where we met up with Kim Carlsberg, who happens to be a well known UFO author and speaker on the subject of UFOs.

From our meeting point we traveled a dirt road to a location that gave use an amazing view of the night sky. Kim had a truck full of lawn chairs and we set them up in rows like we would be ordering pop corn and watching a movie. She also had five sets of military night vision goggles.

After a friendly introduction we were given instructions on UFO viewing etiquette, what we may or may not see, and how the night vision goggles operated. Quite frankly, after dusk dropped into the blackness of night I was pretty sure my picture taking would be over. It was a crystal clear night and the view of the sky was amazing. Slap on some military grade night vision goggles and the millions of stars I was seeing became billions. It was shocking to see all the stars that are behind all the stars.

Now, UFO viewing etiquette frowns on you yelling out “Satellite” but that was pretty much what I saw. I think we spotted 29 in less than an hour. There was discussion later about all the moving objects in the night sky, the planes and helicopters were very easy to distinguish and with the night vision goggles it was amazing to view all the satellites going in different directions, at different speeds and reflecting different amounts of light due to their size.

Extra Terrestrial life, ya, I’m pretty sure out in the universe there is other life. If you consider the age of our planet earth and how long we as humans have been in existence, the likelihood of other intelligent life starting somewhere else a million or more years before us is highly probable. I think about how technology has advanced, just in my lifetime, and imagine how it will all play out ten thousand years from now. But then I ask myself, if I was that intelligent why the heck would I want to come here?

Looking up into the night sky with night vision goggles is completely mesmerizing and worth the price of admission. The UFO I got to see was really us as a planet, floating through time, unable to identify the meaning of all of this.

The ability to take a number of pictures all on the same frame was simple in the days of film cameras.

You would find a situation where the background would drop off enough to accommodate a number of exposures on the same frame of film. After that, it was a matter of how many exposures and how do they all fit next to each other on the same frame.

GALLERY: MULTIPLE EXPOSURES

We have never been able to do that with the Canon camera system until the release of their new DX camera. And of course, being at the Olympics, what better place to use this new technology? Paired with the world’s best gymnasts and a camera that can take 14 pictures a second, it’s amazing.

To create a multiple exposure you first have to have a subject that is lit, and a background that is not. The background will not blend into the subject, however the subject will overlap the background. The rest is just about thinking visually into the future.

To be honest, we just got these new cameras before coming to the Olympics, so there is still a learning curve to get a feel for what they are capable of doing. So far it’s been a blast to push them into new territory, not only technically, but to be able to show our clients and the public what these athletes actually do.

The cameras are getting better, much like the athletes are getting better. Seeing what is possible is the first step in advancing, just like the gymnasts who see someone do something that was never thought possible. They set that mark as a place to ascend from.

Photographers are here being pushed by technology and the athletes as well.

It’s a blast!

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.

Cement technology advances, architecture advances, communication technology advances and we arrive at a place where a guy creates his living with his skateboard much like a painter paints, or a writer writes. He creates his art on the things we drive and walk past every day, on the bench you sit on, on the stairs you walk down. He rides around our urban and suburban environments looking for places to skate, creating new tricks. He has a style, he wears a logo, pictures are taken and videos are made; information is posted with instagram, tweets are tweeted, facebook, youtube – the social network is fed and the art is displayed.

Jordan is a street skater. His job is to skate, his life is skating, his dream is happening in real time…… and you can watch. www.jordanhoffart.com/blog

Read more about Jordan Hoffatt here. See a wider selection of Mike Blake’s photos of Hoffatt here. And check out his site here.

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.

There are three tape marks on the stage and the stars stop to pose at each mark, each time controlling the flow of data in the photographers cameras by the turn of their head or the wave of their arm. The flashes go off faster than banks of strobe lights, they’re bombarded with requests and then it’s all over. They are whisked off to another room where there are no cameras, but a room full of reporters and their questions and we await the next winner.

I remember a few years back setting up lights on a Saturday before the awards, actor Robin Williams was just sitting in the room taking a break from doing rehearsals for the show. We chatted a bit about cycling and baseball and then a little about the room. I had photographed him the previous year after he had won an Oscar, he said something I will never forget: This is a scary room.

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.

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.

David Ake from UPI had arrived and we set up our darkroom in the basement of the taxidermist home, next to a recently stuffed lynx or bobcat. It was surreal. The rest of the story seems a bit of a blur. We pooled our resources. AP managed to get a float plane in from down south and the coast guard gave me a call letter that would let us into the air space. We took turns taking flights out each day to the tanker and followed the oil as it washed up on the rocky coastline. I remember you had to open the back door of the plane, step down onto an oil covered pontoon and wedge your back into the side of the plane to keep from slipping off into the frigid ocean; all while hand holding a 300mm lens as the plane rocked back and forth with the swells.

The oil soaked animals began arriving at a local school where rescue workers had set up a facility to wash the oil off in an effort to save them. I remember making some key images there and then David Ake arrived from his turn in the plane having made an amazing picture of two coastguard pilots dressed in their orange flight suits and shaded flight helmets carrying dead oil-soaked birds from a small island.