[ MAUKA-MAKAI ]

Shots of Robert Kawika Sheer appear as transluscent
images in his "Ghost Shadow" series.

Fanged to
ferocious, he’s
faced them

A filmmaker comes
home with wild tales,
new dreams

GALLERY

---

Suzanne Tswei
Star-Bulletin

ON A SCALE from one to 10 for deadly critters, the centipedes Robert Kawika Sheer caught while growing up on Waialae Nui Ridge register as big fat zeros when compared to the venomous sea serpents that swam around his legs in Borneo. The poison from one little snake bite would have been enough to kill Sheer instantly and snuff out 400 other men at the same time.

Sheer held his breath and stood perfectly still. The snakes checked him out and didn't bite, but out there, survival is an everyday ordeal. The next day, he was cornered by a herd of angry, trumpeting elephants. He lived through that one, too.

THE ALUMNI ART SHOW Place: Gates Family Workshop in Science Center at Punahou School Time: Open to the public 6:30 p.m. Thursday for reception and 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Saturday Cost: Free Call: 945-1361

Sheer is full of stories like these about his life as a photographer traveling around the world in search of exotic -- and often deadly -- animals.

"And I thought I was going to grow up to be a business executive," Sheer said, "like my father, sitting behind a desk, working for a corporation. Little did I know ..."

Sheer is back in Honolulu this week for his Punahou School Class of 1981 reunion and the school's annual alumni art exhibit, which will not feature any of his wildlife encounters. He will be showing several photographs from his latest series, "Ghost Shadow," which represent a more artistic side of his work and a new direction in his career, he said.

The new photographs are self-portraits, although all you see are his transparent shadows reflected onto landscapes.

Photography, whether still pictures or moving images on film and video, interested Sheer while he was at Punahou. He went to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles intending to be a business and engineer major, but switched to the university's film school after one class on the art of the cinema.

His parents were disappointed by his career choice, but his graduation coincided with a burgeoning cable television market, and he had no trouble finding work.

Sheer worked as an electrician on a short-lived cable-TV detective series a year before getting his big break when a college friend was chosen to be the cinematographer for a Michael Jackson music video.

Photographer Robert Kawika Sheer

"You know what they say about Hollywood: It's all connections. That's true," he said. "My friend got me the job, and I moved up to being a cinematographer. And it became a great little resume for me," Sheer said. (That video never aired in the United States because accusations of child molestation against Jackson became public at the time.)

The music video led to a free-lance documentary project filming Tiger Woods and cable productions, including a stint as an assistant producer for E! Entertainment. A small project recording a dog parade in Santa Barbara helped him land his first wildlife assignment.

"I went from shooting mutts that are all dressed up to a white, hulking male rhino in the middle of a dusty field," Sheer said. The beast was edgy because it didn't like having strangers around its mate.

"The whole time, I was having a 'Checkers and Pogo' flashback," Sheer said, recalling a famous episode on the local children's TV show in which a charging hippo at Honolulu Zoo resulted in a broken arm for a cameraman.

The rhino led to more fearsome wildlife, including the deadly sea serpent in Borneo, which was part of a three-month assignment for "The Jeff Corwin Experience," a popular nature program airing on Discovery channel's "Animal Kingdom." Corwin's fascination with reptiles also meant a trip to India to document the Cobra Festival, during which hundreds of men scamper around the countryside capturing the deadly snakes for a competition.

"Here I am coming from a place with no snakes at all to the middle of all these cobras. Boy, you never know what life will bring you next."

And Sheer is ready for his next challenge, whatever that may be, as long as it doesn't involve fearsome animals.

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