When he was a young boy, Tim Blake was mesmerized by watching his mortgage-broker father take pictures of real estate with his Polaroid camera. Part of it was an early appreciation for the architecture and setting of his subjects, but more enchanting was seeing the image emerge, watching it come to life right before his eyes, across the photo paper.
His father’s gift of Eastman Kodak’s Brownie box camera made young Blake a photographer, who pretty much captured everything that caught his eye. At 16, he got into waterskiing and honed his photography skills by documenting his days on the Delta, which was almost as much fun as cutting across the wake behind the boat.
“When I was a kid,” said Blake, “I had a dream, which I still remember. I was looking at a picture on the wall, a bucolic valley scene like one we actually had, growing up, of a path wandering into the valley, and a barn in the background, amid rolling hills beneath sunlit clouds. In my dream, I studied the picture, fascinated by it, as I watched it come alive.”
Blake remembers, even then, wondering if a picture really could come to life. If “Mary Poppins” could do it, why not he? But this would not be a cartoon. He wanted the real thing.
“Seven years ago,” he said, “clients of mine leased the Palace of Fine Arts event venue in San Francisco and created what they called the ‘Innovation Hangar,’ where people could gather to introduce technology. On one wall hung a picture whose image, if someone held up their iPhone, would come to life on the screen. It was the premier of image-recognition software.”
Fascinated that his childhood dream was coming to life right before his eyes, Blake realized he was witnessing the beginning of his new book, “Imagery to Life,” first published in 2018.
“I’ve taken a lot of photographs and videos of nature over the years. I thought, what if I start a video of the place where a photo was taken, marry them in an app (ROAR), and create the illusion of the photo coming to life? I had a lot of things to figure out. It took a while,” he said, “but I’ve always been tech-savvy, so eventually, I had it.”
Sharing his vision
In June 2019, Tim Blake delivered a presentation about his book and how he created it, to the photography group at the Carmel Foundation.
“There is some added magic behind the photographs in the book,” he said. “Behind each image is a living scene from the moment these images were taken. A smart device app is used to have these images come to life. Part of the effect is the audio of the living scenes. The 3D recordings are made possible by 3Dio microphones, and the recordings give the sensation of being right where the audio was recorded. The results are extraordinary.”
A year later, the Carmel Foundation invited Blake back, so he created a second talk on why he created “Imagery to Life.”
“I wanted to uplift people, particularly children,” he said, “especially kids with health challenges, life challenges — kids who, for whatever reason, never have an opportunity to experience nature. I wanted them to see it, almost as if they were actually there.”
Once Blake had figured out how to create the book, he had to figure out how to get it in front of his target audience.
“I wanted to get books into children’s hospitals and into the Ronald McDonald House. So, in addition to selling books via my website,” he said, “I mapped out my contributing sponsorship program, a multi-level program based on how many books people buy.”
Blake started among friends, asking if they’d like to partner with him and buy several books to donate. An anonymous donor bought enough books to place them in the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and the Stanford Ronald McDonald House. Next, Blake met with Maggie Walsh of Coldwell Banker Los Gatos, and the mother of Olympic volleyball champion Kerri Walsh Jennings, who chose the $5,000 Platinum level of contribution, buying 100 books at $50 apiece to donate.
“Images to Life” is now in the Pasadena and Long Beach Ronald McDonald houses. Blake says he’s just warming up.
Heading home
Born in Palo Alto and raised in the Portola Valley, Tim Blake has been coming to the Monterey Peninsula on holiday since he was a child. He always remembered the fragrance coming in on cool ocean breezes off Asilomar, and thought, “Someday I will come back to live here.” That someday is now.
Before he found his way to Carmel Valley, Blake attended UC Berkeley, where he majored in architecture and minored in business. Yet, instead of building design, he turned his attention to his father’s career as a mortgage broker. Having held the end of a tape measure for his dad, he felt ties to the business and went into real estate which, in addition to his photography, he pursues on the Peninsula.
Blake will return to speak at the Carmel Foundation on June 30. His book is available at www.ImageryToLifeBook.com.
