keep the wild inside - Collaborators Who Travel Wild

Eddie Becker, Out of Far Rockaway

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 18:41:01 CDT

A legend in everybody's mind but his own, EDDIE BECKER has relentlessly attacked most major American authorities, from the National Zoo to the National Security Agency, and won every time. He's been shot at, pilloried, insulted, and ridiculed, but he's still got his attitude and he's still on his feet. I've traveled to the Ganges and the Himalayas with Eddie, and to the wilds of Iceland to the edge of the Arctic Circle, and every trip has been consequential and hilarious. When can I break out some of the video? In another lifetime, probably.

Mikey Cormier, video savant

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 22:06:12 CDT

Met MIKE CORMIER in a bookstore when he came in looking for a copy of American Cinematographer. He has the unique gift of anticipating physical action, so he always seems to be on the curl of the wave rather than the bottom of the ocean. I learned from him the art of shooting video without bothering with an eyepiece or a screen; watch the action and the margins outside your visual references to see what is about to happen instead of seeing only what is happening. He will always be my first choice to shoot video anywhere in the world, not just for the eye but because he's willing to blend into any scene to understand the local thinking. Racing to Durban drinking Amarula just to surf at dawn made perfect sense to me, and when I had to take a vicodin to deal with stomach pain he took one as well so we'd both be seeing the same things. We've traveled the Kalahari, the sand dunes of Namibia, the crocodile reserves of Siankan, the Zapatista strongholds, and the delightful mess that is Key Cracker off the coast of Belize.

Aisha Casas, gossamer american

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 19:46:52 CDT

AISHA CASAS is my niece and she spent half a year traveling in a parabola from Ecuador to the Amazon, via Macchu Picchu, love in the Lake District, to the jungles near Manaus and Santarem. Her mother is my sister. My sister and I spent several years living in tents in Asia minor and Europe major when we were aged 9-12, and I suppose the experience will always haunt us, uprooting our best-designed plans. So when my sister decides to take her 16-year-old to the Amazon for an unknown time, my reaction is to send a camera and say 'Get going.' Seems normal to me. Of course the girl comes back as a woman, a monster, and her attempt to matriculate into high school as a junior this September will be hilarious. But as well as a soul, Aisha's got an eye, as you can see in the Amazonia portion of this site.

Stephen F. Correl

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 06:25:34 CDT

STEVE CORREL is a brilliant observer. Patient, calculating, he lets the image come to him. He's willing to sit for days in one place to experience a local point of view, and with him I have found myself in the world's most distant barrios. On a three-wheeled jeep in the Terai with chickens running over my feet, or on a dhow superundulating the swells beneath a purple sunset in the atolls of the Maldives, or being chased by elephants or hyenas or baboons or cockroaches or insane widows . . . Impossible to list all the experiences, but here's a partial destination sheet: the Serengeti, the Andes, the Himalayas, the Indian Ocean, elephant seals, Joshua Tree, the tin mines of Bolivia, the Atacama Desert, the Seychelles, the vanilla markets of Madagascar, the banks of the Ganges . . . He's a married man now, has a baby with my sister, and who knows when we'll hit the road again. But there are more pictures in his sight, and there always will be. His gift for sneaking a portrait is far and away the best I have ever seen, and I try to copy him as immodestly as I can, though rarely with his sense of camouflage: smile, eye contact, submission, smile, works every time.

J. Danielle Hubbard, Uganda & Asia

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 06:17:49 CDT

ME: Do you have a job? How tough are your various responsibilities? My friend T. -- wizard photog -- looks like he'll be bailing on a trip to Uganda in Nov/Dec when I have to deliver a guitar to the pygmies in the Bwindi National Forest. I need to have the trip documented in 5000 fotografs. Let me know if you are at loose ends timewise and ever wanted to go to deepest Africa, coz I might even be able to pay you a little if you were interested in going. MIGHT, coz T. is still on the fence and he's got a panoramic camera and a bunch of other goodies and is a hardcore pro, etc. DANIELLE: WOW what an offer man! are you talking about next month november? i can't get away that fast, but if you gave me a few months notice i would be very interested in a trip like that. i could pretty easily get a leave of abscense if it were for such an interesting journey. if this is still possible there are many details i would like to know: how long would the trip run? is it safe as a white woman in Uganda? or am i gonna be stoned and spit on? Ha Ha! you know what i mean though i would have to get a subleter and still be able to have about 400 a month coming in for bills to be covered, is something like that possible? what type of photos? documenting the trip? why 5000? do you need digital images? or panoramic?

Helmuth Humphrey

Sun, 9 Jul 2006 18:17:09 CDT

Here's Helmuth atop a 1,000-foot fall to death in the Arctic Ocean, with our prey beneath the ledges at the bottom of the picture: a shy puffin. The trip to photograph these birds would be one of four trips together to Iceland, usually hunting the northern lights. Mexico, Belize and Costa Rica were also destinations for wildlife photography and video.

Ananda Shields, Uganda

Sun, 9 Jul 2006 18:17:08 CDT

She would become the best story I ever lived, visiting broken hearts and betrayal and keen lust onto my head while we traveled to the gorilla in the Congo, the supervolcano in Yellowstone, and to the Arctic Circle in search of the aurora borealis. We were arguing, a cat and a dog, in a hotel room in downtown Copenhagen when I saw perhaps the most amazing wildlife spectacle of my life: a bushy fox carefully stepping ut of the hedges to survey the urban landscape for an escape route or even prey. Ananda didn't care: I had an answer to make. Even now, mention of that Danish fox causes a furrow in her brow.