Homage to Mr. Awesome... AKA Mike Calabro

Occasionally you cross paths with characters that seem larger than life - interactions with these individuals border on the surreal and near impossible... As I grow older, I really enjoy and am entertained by how others engage the world, especially when interactions tend to the extreme and improbable.

Adventure photographers/storytellers definitely fit that extreme model. One day I would like to do a book profiling some of these wonderfully extreme personalities... (Please no one steal my idea...) I will start here with a short homage to Mr. Awesome...

Australia and New Zealand are special places. I have spent several months there during three different trips and am always ready to go back the minute I return. This last trip was significant as it was definitely a real "work" trip. I went with the infamous adventure photographer Mike Calabro as his assistant to profile several boats for a few different manufacturers. Here is a link to one of the features that has run so far with SeaRay Living Magazine. Some "real" work did happen...

Mike and I have had a few editorial (mis)adventures together. Hawaii with freedivers and leaky scuba tanks, an East Coast blitz with sharks and feeding frenzy blackouts... This trip down under was definitely a standout. And for some reason I am looking forward to the next one...

It started innocuously enough with lazy sunburnt shoots with me biding my time till we actually got to climb...Secretly that was my primary reason for going...

But ultimately the trip brought much more than just a serious amount of somewhat edgy vertical mileage on a rope that was retired 7 years ago - a rope that even as follower Mike didn't even want to weight... 

For being so borderline Mike can really turn on the charm and pretty soon we had an invite to camp on this client's luxury recreational boat...

Mike enjoying the role of surrogate son...

This is a bit more typical of Mr. Awesome - and there were no illicit or even legal drugs involved  (that I knew about anyway). "Dude, did you get the shot?! I don't believe you, take another!"

Mike and our wheeled coffin - yes we both had sleep in there (head to toe) for nearly two weeks... our budget was a little on the lean side. I think we managed a few speeding camera tickets which made any real monetary compensation a wash... At least that is what Mike claims...

Mike had a flair for getting us in hot water with the locals, once I am pretty sure we would have been killed if they caught us - but to his credit, he did manage to apply some serious diplomacy too...

I also admire Mike for his desire for authentic perspective... 

The Exploration Institute

Q and A with Armin T. Ellis Ph.D. of the Exploration Institute

A new non-profit is emerging called the Exploration Institute and it has me quite inspired… Its scope and reach, when fully realized, promise to be quite impressive. I interviewed the founder to get a deeper sense of what exactly was being birthed and offered...

“The story of exploration involves every one of us. Every time we explore we nurture our spirit, and when we share our experiences we make the world better.” Armin T. Ellis Ph.D.

1.     Will you share the reason that you created Exploration Institute?

I think we live in an amazing world, at an amazing time. I’m excited about the future and I think it’s about time that we nurtured the best in us - I think it’s really important to have a healthy relationship with our world. Instead of thinking about the earth as a sick, and polluted lump of rock with excess people crawling around on it, we should see it as it really is - a stunning world full of frontiers and mysteries waiting to be understood. We are surrounded by sheer awesomeness which is relevant and exciting. We just have to learn to be able to see these things.

I define exploration as what happens at the edge of your comfort zone. The more we push that comfort zone the more we grow and the more we become. That’s a wonderful thing, because personal growth is tied to our happiness and the wellness of society. Imagine what happens if our exploration was a highly valued trait in our society. I’m sure we could solve so many issues without a lot of hassle.

I’d like Exploration Institute to become the resource that people go to, at all ends of the spectrum, from pioneering expeditions to personal journeys, with tips on safety and connecting with others. Exploration is for everyone. Not just scientists, not just daredevils, but anyone who is willing to take the next step.

2.     Can you name some heroes/luminaries past and present that really speak to the mission that you have for EI.

It’s hard to imagine growing up in the UK, as I did, and not be inspired by the polar and ocean explorers. Shackleton and Scott were personally very inspiring to me.

I was also grabbed by the Space Race. From the early days of Gagarin and Leonov’s spacewalk, to Apollo 8 astronauts circling the moon on Christmas eve of 1968, taking that famous Earth Rise image, and changing the whole mindset of humanity. The feeling I have looking at that image is what continues to drive me today.

3. How do you envision utilizing storytelling to maximize the reach of EI’s professional expeditions of land, sea and space?   

Before answering, let me define storytelling as I understand it in the context of your question; We are not talking about fiction, we’re talking about real human experiences. Not just the facts and numbers, but the adventure, excitement, and emotions that everyone faces when they are pushing boundaries and learning to grow.

This powerful kind of storytelling is how we will share our expeditions and progress at Exploration Institute. By sharing the knowledge that our world is still waiting to be explored, you naturally bring attention to the need to preserve it. If we are to be successful in our mission, we can't just rely on groundbreaking professional expeditions, we have to tell their stories.

4.  In terms of the EI 2015 Summit at the Keck Institute at Caltech April 14th and 15th - Can you describe what you’d like the outcome to be?

We have some incredible individuals coming to spend time together and to plan out something special. What an incredible honor to be at the same venue used by Einstein and Feynman to think about some grand expeditions! I know what some of the expedition concepts will be going into the event, but I have no idea what specifically will come out; I just have a high level of confidence that when you have amazing people like Joe Carnahan, Graham Hawkes, and Scott Parazynski working together with the right tools and resources, you can expect great things!

We are standing at the edge of an incredibly exciting time in our history with so many frontiers in front of us that haven’t been touched, that are now much more accessible and becoming increasingly so. Exploration Institute’s goal is to capture this exciting time and to take the first step into a new golden age of exploration.