Geoff Mackley -- a cameraman who's made his living shooting danger
Geoff Mackley of New Zealand is an extremist who is lucky to be still alive.
Now in his 50s, the ‘danger cameraman’ has spent most of his adulthood inserting himself and his cameras into 200 mph cyclones, rappeling into the hellish mouths of active volcanoes around the world and shooting news footage of dangerous fires, floods and other natural and man-made disasters.
I met him in Kansas in 1998 while chasing tornadoes for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. A few years later he came through Pittsburgh on his way to cover an impending big hurricane in Miami, I think, and he stayed at my house for a few days.
To keep his adrenaline level up my wife Trudi and I took him to the ruins of the Carrie Blast Furnace on the Monongahela River. We jumped the fence and explored the rusting and broken beast for an hour or two, but that was the most dangerous thing I could think for him to do.
I haven’t seen Geoff in person since, but in 2004 he had his own show on the Discover Channel called ‘ Dangerman’ and his YouTube site proves that he is still doing his dangerous job whenever he can.
I wrote this article about him for the Pittsburgh Trib in 2001.
Cameraman catches nature at its nastiest
Pittsburgh Trib
May 24, 2001
Geoff Mackley doesn't look like one of the planet's most daring adventure cameramen.
He could show you photos of himself holding on to a rope for dear life in a 200 mph Pacific cyclone. Or standing in a heat suit at the lip of a lava-spitting Italian volcano. Or stalking a tornado with his trusty $25,000 digital Panasonic video camera.
But you'd still have trouble believing a shy, snake-fearing, yogurt-and-raisin-eating New Zealand Boy Scout like him makes his living roaming the planet capturing Discovery Channel-quality close-ups of Mother Nature at her wildest, nastiest and most dangerous.
But he does.
Given Mackley's unique resume and his danger-seeking nature, it's easy to see why The Learning Channel is featuring one of his most outrageous adventures in its two-hour special called 'Volcano Detectives,' which airs Friday.
Or why he has signed with Stoneworks Media Group, a Hollywood TV production company that hopes to build reality shows around his mad global adventuring.
In the upcoming Learning Channel special, North America will get its first good look at 'Rambo Cam' - the nickname Mackley earned - in action. 'Volcano Detectives' features the incredible adventures he and his Australian vulcanolgist pal John Seach had when they flew to northern Japan in January 2000 to witness a volcano being born in the middle of a town of 10,000.
When they arrived, police had the media corralled in a motel parking lot and wouldn't let them within 10 miles of the town, which had been evacuated.
After several days of being infuriated by their lack of access, Mackley and Seach each packed up 60 pounds of food and gear and sneaked off at night through the snowy woods.
Reaching the town, they camped on the top floor of the strongest building they could find.
'We had this amazing view out the windows down the deserted street,' says Mackley, 38. 'This volcano was blowing its top at the end of the street. Rocks were raining down on the town and mud slides were coming down the street.'
It wasn't just nature's awesome spectacle Mackley was enjoying so immensely, though.
'We knew that the whole world's media was trained on this town and they were getting crap for pictures, with tens of millions of dollars worth of gear. We had walked in there with two cameras and were getting the best pictures of the lot.'
They got to within 400 feet of the volcano's mouth to get video, but the constant earthquakes drove them off after three days.
Ironically, because of union rules, Japanese television networks wouldn't touch Mackley's priceless video. He sold a little of the footage to the BBC in Britain last year to pay his expenses, but it makes its North American debut Friday.
Mackley, who's obviously not married, makes a good living as a news camera man and a free-lancer. His entrepreneurial bent has enabled him to cover the costs of his adventures over the years, but he's not doing what he does for the money.
'That footage in Japan will be being shown forever,' he says, thinking rare thoughts of mortality.
'The last time a volcano came up in the middle of a town was in Iceland in 1970-something. I still regularly see that footage on television, even though the vulcanolgists who filmed it are dead.'
Mackley doesn't plan to be dead himself any time soon. And, except for a 1999 near-miss lightning strike during a Kansas tornado, he says he really hasn't had a single close call.
'Many times I've stood on the edge of a volcano and I've walked away and 10 minutes later a rock the size of a car will land where I'd been. But don't think, 'Gee, that was a close call.' Because it wasn't a close call: Either you get hit, or you don't.'