Michael partners with Leslie Alsheimer for Digital Workshops

Leslie Alsheimer and Michael Clark have combined their expertise and talents recently announcing a new series of Digital Vacation Workshops. We teamed up because we saw a niche that wasn’t being filled - workshops that will amplify digital skills and knowledge, and take care of it’s participants from start to finish. I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce Leslie, as she is a woman of many talents with whom I have worked with on a number of projects. Not only is she the first person I call when I need expert Photoshop advice, but over the years she has also assisted me on photo shoots, and as has even modeled on occasion (as below). On top of all that she is a talented photographer whose clients include Nikon among many others. She has taught workshops for the Maine and Santa Fe Photo Workshops, Anderson Ranch Arts Center and the Nikon/American Photo Mentor Series. In addition to our exclusive private instruction services, we currently have three workshops scheduled for this year and are developing several more exotic workshops in locations such as Russia, Italy and Southern France for this Fall and 2007. If you want to see what all the hubbub is about check out our website at http://www.santafedigitaldarkroom.com. For more information on our extensive workshops please email us at info@sfdigitaldarkroom.com.

On Assignment in the Valles Caldera

On a recent assignment for Government Executive magazine, I was shooting a Cover for an article on the Valles Calderas Preserve near Los Alamos, New Mexico. I got the call for the assignment that morning and the editor was keen on late afternoon images of the Caldera under a blanket of snow. As it turned out, that day was the only clear day of weather we had for the whole week. That and the fact that they needed the images in three days total had me scrambling.

I packed up my equipment and drove up to the preserve. When I arrived I met with a Private guide who leads tours in the park and asked permission to cross the fence (and the "no trespassing" signs) so that I could get down to the Jemez River. I got her OK and crossed over the fence a few miles back down the road.

The Preserve is highly criticized in northern New Mexico for its unorthodox limitations. The Preserve still allows cattle grazing, hunting and logging on its land but humans are not allowed to enter the park without a private guide. ( I still have not figured out what they are trying to preserve. It seems everything of economic value on the land is being exploited.) As it turns out the Caldera, which is an ancient extinct volcano that blew it's top millions of years ago, is home to the third largest elk herd in the lower 48 states. Over 4,000 elk roam the 89,000 acre section of Land.

The "wildlife preserve" sells hunting permits in a raffle every year. Last year, over 4,700 hunters paid $25 per ticket to enter the raffle for the 85 permits given each year to hunt the Elk that reside in the preserve. The park also sells a small number of permits on e-bay each year for the sum of $12,000 to $15,000 per permit.

One Weekend in Moab

Every once and a while when the planets align and God is smiling on me, a photo shoot goes much better than I could have ever dreamed or planned. I had such an experience in November 2001 while photographing five downhill mountain bikers in Moab, Utah. Kris Baughman, Ryon Reed, Lance Canfield, TJ Cowern and Nate McKay re-defined for me what is possible on a mountain bike that weekend. Whether they were dropping thirty-five foot jumps onto slickrock or riding near vertical 60-foot slickrock cliffs, the risk factor was very high. This has to be some of the craziest stuff I have ever seen. These guys were going for it. And when I say going for it I mean they had to take ten to twenty minutes to get their heads together before they went. There was no room for error. Luckily in our three days of shooting no one was injured and I came home with 30 rolls of amazing footage.

If you haven’t figured it out yet these riders are BOLD! I have photographed a lot of risky sports in my time but this easily takes thecake. If you mess up on a 30 + foot drop onto Slickrock you’ll be spending the next few months in the hospital if you are lucky. We also photographed a new 7000 foot descent from the La Sals into Moab that easily qualifies as the longest single track descent in the world. Not only is it long (37.5 miles) but it also has frequent big jumps built into it. And by big I mean 30 plus foot drops threading through tight aspens. In the photo at right TJ Cowern is getting some big air off a small jump at full speed (i.e. 30 + mph).

These guys are part of a new revolution in mountain biking called freeriding and downhilling. Freeriding blends BMX stunts with modern mountain biking while downhilling involves descending technical mountain and canyon slopes. These riders are experts at both styles. I was impressed by their ability to read a slope and know what is and isn't possible or safe. As Ryon Reed put it, "we are not just 'hucking' ourselves off any old cliff. We use the experience we have aquired from years of riding. This isn't a sport you just start doing one day. You have to build up to this level over a number of years."

These riders have suffered a number of injuries. Kris Baughman, nicknamed "Krispy", has broken his back and I personally witnessed Ryon crash hard the first time I photographed him. Thankfully he was uninjured but his bike was not so lucky. When he hit the ground his front wheel exploded. Spokes were flying eveywhere and the rim was taco'ed. Feeling responsible, since we were out there just for photos, I bought him a new rim.

These guys are not doing these stunts on your average mountain bike. These are seven to ten thousand dollar machines weighing fifty pounds or more. Riding uphill isn't an option. These bikes are full suspension and designed with a foot of travel or more in the front and close to that in the rear. They are also equipped with beefy frames to take the shock of hitting the ground at seventy miles an hour or more. Depending on the jump the riders can acellerate to near eighty miles an hour before hitting the ground. Gravity is pulling on them at 9.86 meters per second squared. Multiply that by ten meters or more and add in their initial velocity and it is one hell of a roller-coaster ride.

There were moments when I was seriously concerned for the safety of the riders on this shoot. One such moment was a jump they deemed "Where the sidewalk ends." We were looking around at new territory on the unexplored side of Bartlett Wash and they came upon this ramp that ended over a very steep slickrock bowl. When they first started discussing jumping off of it I was wondering if they were really considering it or if they were just dreaming about it being possible some day in the future. I asked and Kris and Lance said they were going to do it. When l looked over the edge I thought that now someone was definitely going to get seriously injured. Lance went first and nailed it beautifully. There is no 'practice run' in this sport and there are no second chances. Kris took a little more time and set up his line meticulously. After a short breather to calm the mind he went for it and got huge air. Even though these images might look spectacular they don't necessarily give you a feel for how steep the jumps really are. Needless to say, I was very relieved to move on to other less risky projects.

The images to the left and below are of a modern classic freeride descent. This formation is called the Mushroom beacause of it's distinct shape. When these images where shot there were only eleven people in the word who had done it. Three of them were with us that morning. And TJ and Nate expanded that number to thirteen.

All five of the riders jumped off the Mushroom at least three times for me that day at dawn. By the end they had it so dialed that it seemed casual, at least to an observer. Ryon (photo at right), on his first go a few weeks before leaned back a little too far and ended up riding a wheely down the steep transition. He said, "It looked like the space shuttle landing!" I wasn't there to see it but I am sure it looked amazing. That wasn't what he was intending to do and I am sure it raised his heart rate a little more than he would have liked.

On our shoot, he nailed it three or four times in pefect style. He seemed to get more air off it than anyone else and as a result the images of him are more exciting than of the others. As you can imagine I went through film like crazy. I was shooting at eight frames per second all the time on my Nikon F5. On an average jump I shot 17 frames which is roughly two seconds of hang time. The F5 did a spectacular job of keeping up with the riders even when they were coming staight at me at thirty to forty miles an hour.

All in all, I came back with some amazing images many of which will, I am sure be published soon.

Going to Extremes: A behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to get "the shot."

Michael was featured in Outdoor Photographer in September 2001 along with several other well known photographers for his work photographing adventure sports. Above is the opening spread with Michael hanging 600+ feet off the ground while shooting with climber Kurt Smith in Potrero Chico, Mexico. Below is the article and caption.

Going to Extremes: A behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to get "the shot."

Their photographs captivate us. They see a scene from a perspective that looks completely unique and original. We look at the images and wonder, "How did they do that?" "Where did they have the camera set up?" In the following pages, you’ll get a glimpse of the incredible extremes the world’s most renowned photographers go to in order to get "the shot."

What does it mean to be extreme? For Galen Rowell, Gorden Wiltsie and Michel Clark, it means dangling by a thin rope hundreds of feet above terra firma. For Steve McCurry, it’s braving monsoon swollen rivers in driving rain to illustrate the culture of the Indian subcontinent. Nick Nichols-famous for punishing his body in the jungles of central Africa and Asia-also endures the cold and claustrophobic innards of deep caves to get the right shot. Then there’s Frans Lanting, who never seems to tire of positioning himself in an impossible place to see wildlife from a different perspective. Carr Clifton’s idea of extreme is to outfit a small, inflatable boat and cruise the perpetually ice floe-riddled waters of Alaska, seeking a new and dramatic composition that may exist somewhere out there.

It has been said that the extreme always makes an impact. The next time you gasp when you see one of the photographs from this corps of image-makers, you’ll also have some insight into what went into getting "the shot."

Photo Caption:

On a climb in El Potrero Chico, Mexico, photographer Michael Clark sets up a shot of climber Kurt Smith. For Clark, the main drawback of this kind of work isn’t the climbing or the dizzying heights, it’s carrying the packs of photographic and climbing equipment that weigh upwards of 100 pounds up and down the rocks. There’s also the little problem of switching lenses while hanging from a rope. Clark once lost a $1,200 lens when it took a hundred-foot whipper (climber slang for fall) over the Obed River Gorge.

Clark approaches his photography with a healthy respect for the extra burden it puts on the climbers he’s photographing. Scaling larger rock walls requires many hours, severely limiting control over the times of day shots are taken or what light will be like at certain positions. Ultimately, fundamentals-having a good sense of what makes a shot dramatic and knowing how to create on the fly-are what make Clark’s work pay off.