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...