Hi, I'm Tamara Lackey.
In this episode of reDefine show for
AdoramaTV, I speak with
landscape adventure and travel
photographer Michael Bonocore.
He travels more than half the year teaching
workshops for the Giving Lens in a
multitude of countries, as well as
working on special projects, and although
he's not a professional voice actor, kind
of sounds like one! Check it out.
Hello Michael, hello Tam, how are you?
How are you? I'm doing good!
Do you have a radio
voice, have you done radio before?
No I would love to do.. one of my
dreams when I was a kid actually was to
be a like a voice actor! Yeah, like a
voiceover kind of I can't think of any
job better than the guys that do like
all those Pixar / Disney movies they
literally go into a studio for three
hours for a week right and they get paid
millions of dollars, and then because I
could see you being like the voice of a bear.
Grr...I'm a bear! Maybe better than that!
That's how I used to talk to my dog!
That was my dog voice when I
had a boxer! Yeah he's no longer with us!
But that's how I talk to him, in that
voice, and he he loved it, make sure you
edit this part out,! But visually you are
a visual artist. Yeah! that's what some
people call me, but you shoot every where,
you shoot a lot of things! I do. Some really
cool projects. I do you take a lot of
photographs yeah. Do some pretty cool
projects yeah. I travel the world maybe
seven months a year, so yeah, I'm always
out of the country on a plane to India
next week. Wow. Where you going? Jaipur.
And what for? I'm leading a workshop with the giving
lens, who is founded by one of your
guests on this show.
Mr Colby Brown.. shout out the Colby, I know
he'll like it. What are you doing for them?
What exactly will this project be about?
Because we were talking about, you know,
I talked to him earlier, and a lot of the
work that you know, I'm drawn towards to,
it has to do with... how do you use art to
make change? Yeah.
And Giving Lens is right in there and
you've been doing a lot of work with
them. Yeah! So I lead the photography
workshops for The Giving Lens, been
doing it for probably four years. What we
do is, we take a group of six to twelve
people from usually the United States
some Canada, some Europe, maybe some from
random other places like Australia.
Throw in a couple of Aussies.. you know
'Come on', we bring them to a foreign country,
Jordan, Peru, Morocco, Tanzania, Uganda and
we work with a nonprofit on the ground
while we get into the country. So it's
usually children based, so what we do is
we bring donated cameras, and we teach
local underprivileged children
photography, and there's many reasons why
we do this, and we can talk about that,
but it's it's really a rewarding process,
where we really get to know these
kids, these kids, we're teaching these
kids how to be artistic, how to express
themselves through their art. Yeah, and
it's incredibly rewarding, and and most
trips ended in tears! Yeah, but it's not
we don't go, and just work with the kids
so we'll work with the kids for
three-four days, and then we do the
typical cool stuff that the country is
known for, so Tanzania we will go on Safari
after we work with the kids, and Uganda
we went gorilla trekking. Jordan will go
to Petra and Wadi Rum desert, those kind
of things. How many, how many instructors
are on a typical workshop? And how many
participants? We always have two
instructors, maybe sometimes three, so
sometimes I'll come on board just to do
video. Okay, and also help instruct so
sometimes two and a half.. you know with
me doing video, and kind of helping out
with the instruction, but usually it's
two, and we'll have anywhere from six to
twelve participants per trip. Okay and
when you're doing actual photography
instruction, just that part, what do you
find is the most difficult thing to
teach people, like what is the hardest
thing for people to get. I think the
hardest thing on these trips especially, is
for people to get out of their comfort
zone, so what I mean by that is... a lot of
times the best way to get portraits of
people, the best way to ingrain yourself
in a culture, and really be able to story
tell that culture through your
photography, is getting to know the
people. Right? You can't just shoot from
the hip walking down the street, you
really want to get those
the real stories, the stories that are
conveyed through your photographs. You
have to get to know the person, you have
to get the people comfortable, and the
only way to do that is by talking to
them, and a lot of times you won't speak
the same language etc etc...
but you have to try, you just
have to try in any way you can.
It's a lot of hand signals! I always download a
Translate app on my phone before I
travel. What a benefit that is, it's amazing
how, how, relatively recently we've had...
Actually yeah it's amazing and it helps
and even if I can't like if I'm in Morocco or
you know even if I can't pronounce what
I'm reading, or even read it because it's
a completely different character system,
completely different letters, I can we
show it to them, so I can say.. 'hey you
know? And I can write what I want to say
to them, and then show it to them but it takes
a lot of people, a lot of time to get
comfortable. Just being outgoing, and
going up to people, and talking to them
that's probably the hardest thing that
I've faced as a leader/instructor on
these trips. It's getting people out of
their comfort zone, to really approach
and get to know people. But you see it
progress throughout the week, ten days,
whatever the trip is, you see their
comfort level progress, and by the end
of the trip they're going up to everyone,
and talking to everyone, and, and, and I
know they carry that over to their
future travels, which means a lot to me.
Yeah tell me about your work in the
Arctic? How do you say that? Good, yeah I'm
into the Arctic... yeah a bunch of times a
couple times, I shouldn't say bunch
literally twice! Literally twice, I guess,
It feels like a bunch! Yeah, it feels
like a bunch, and I don't know if you
consider Island in the Arctic, Ark.tik
but yeah, if you consider Iceland the
Arctic, they have been there a couple
times too, so, so four times, four times.
Let's say four! Let's go for it! Okay, and
I've flown over a bunch, yeah, so a bunch
yeah, all right! I see where you got, maybe
twice, yeah! So yeah, the first time I went
was back in 2014, I was working for
SmugMug, I was a VIP manager for SmugMug and one
of my VIP photographers was Chris Burkard.
Yeah who's a incredible, you know surf
adventure photographer, three million
Instagram follower, he's massive, and he
he was one of my VIPs, I've you know,
worked on marketing plans for his
SmugMug side, and everything like that.
Right around that time we were launching
a film division called SmugMug films, and
I pitched Chris Burkard and I said, 'Hey I
think Chris Burkard would be an awesome
guy to film for this series', and Chris
McCaskill the founder of SmugMug was
he's you know Mr. extreme, he loves
everything cool you know, badass, so yeah
he was like 'Yeah! let's go!'.
He didn't come, but he was like, he
greenlight the project. So super dangerous yeah..
He wrote the check, that's all I needed!
So he writes the check, and we go,
so me, and Anton Lormer who's a filmmaker
for SmugMug, go to Lofoten Norway, with
Chris Burkard
and three surfers, and we document Chris
Burkard taking these surfers into the frigid
Arctic water. No! And yeah, it was, when we
first got in, it was kind of like, where's
you know, I mean in the Arctic, I would
expect there to be nothing but whiteout
you know, snow conditions, and we got
there and there was barely any snow!
We were like 'What's going on?
It was March, apparently
they had a really dry winter, climate
change.. 'fake news', and apparently they'd a
really dry winter, and really warm winter,
and all of a sudden, we got in, we are just
like, where's the snow? like it's not what
we envisioned in our head. Right yeah!
And then, the snow gods just have heard us,
because right then, the winds picked up,
clouds moved in, and we are just buried
under a avalanche, of a blizzard, just
insane conditions, and yeah lasted
through the night, we woke up, we take the
car out of like, two feet of snow, three
feet of snow, yeah it was, it was really cool.
The car was under 3 ft of snow. Yeah it was
pretty intense, everything was, you
couldn't see anything, it was just
complete whiteout, and
and then we get down to the water, and
it's still snowing. It's still blizzard like
conditions, not as bad as the day
before, and we started filming and it, I
just I can't imagine how it felt to be
in that water. Oh yeah, it was very cold,
and to get to the water you got to walk
through, you know, waist-deep snow! Yeah,
yeah, it was, it was just.. What is the
point of it!
Well, well first, it's an amazing break.
Yeah, the wave out there is really good,
and so it's for that, like you're going to
suffer through this part, for a great wave!
But not only that, but it's kind of one
of those things, it's like a bucket
list thing right? We all have these bucket
list things we want to do, you can go surf in
California. A California guy can go right
outside his door, go surf right, and he
can probably even maybe find better waves
than he would get in the Arctic, but
there's something about saying.. 'I surfed
in the Arctic right? And Chris loves to,
Chris Burkard loves telling those
stories, like those kind of buddy
camaraderie stories, where he you know
him and a couple buddies go, do something
that hasn't been done before. He's got a
new film out that's so cool, so
inspirational, where they try to go surf
in Iceland, and they happen to go as the
worst, the worst storm in 25 years was
hitting, and it's an amazing film. I
encourage everyone to go watch, it's called
'Under The Arctic Sky' and which is filmed in
Island, so I guess, I guess, Island is the
Arctic. Yeah! But it kind of follows
that buddy kind of, you know camaraderie,
doing something people don't do, and
anyway so that was the trip to Norway,
and not only that, but the pictures are
amazing. So you're surfing this
incredible wave, and you've got this
majestic mountain in the background
covered in snow, and it's such a cold
look, and the sun shining through and
you've got this warm light hitting the
surfer, but this frigid background I mean
it's absolutely beautiful, and, and it
turned out to be a really cool film, very
inspirational! We won a bunch of film
festival awards yeah. It's got over a
million views on Facebook now, we're on
YouTube, sorry the other site, that yeah!
That other video site! Yeah 'Arctic Swells' is
what it's called. Look it up on YouTube,
check it out, it was fun to make and I
fell in love with with Norway at that
moment. It's, it's an incredible place
with some of the most beautiful
landscapes you'll ever see and
extraordinary light when you get it!
Extraordinary light. The light is
absolutely incredible, because you get
these storm clouds, and you know how
light when it shines through a storm
cloud is.. it's so beautiful, but
there is times when you won't see the sky,
the Sun for five days at a time! Yeah!
Thanks so much Michael for that, we're
going to join in next time to hear a lot
more detail about different kinds of
work, but in the meantime go ahead and
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