Cameron Davidson – Photographer

http://www.photoshelter.com/c/cameron/gallery/Aerial-Port-au-Prince-Haiti/G0000Q4Cp5ZMAfu4/

This evening I uploaded two new galleries to my portfolio site – Port au Prince Aerials and Rural Medical. The aerial images of destruction in Port Au Prince will be available through Corbis within the next few days.

National Cemetery

Cité Soleil

Tent City in the middle of Port au Prince

The Presidential Palace

Destroyed Homes in Port au Prince

Monday I dove into a environmental clash story and and spent the day in Central Virginia photographing one side of a complex issue. It was windy, cold and I was fighting to not show the snow in the photographs. Low angles worked along with overpowering the available light with strobe. It is a good story and I enjoyed the challenge of shooting a piece for a summer issue while winter is still on the horizon.

Less then thirty-six hours earlier, I was savoring the last remnants of Haitian heat and humidity as I waited for the flight home. American upgraded me to Business Class which was unexpected and a nice way to close out the week of photographing the poorest of the poor in southeastern mountains of Haiti. Last week I spent three days photographing a team of medical professionals from the Community Coalition for Haiti as they traveled to remote villages in the Sequin Plateau. The second day we set up a clinic in a small church with no windows and three small doors. The light was amazing and I shot what I feel is my strongest work to date in Haiti.

Here are a few of my favorites. Two new galleries will go up on my portfolio site tomorrow. These are the teasers.

Tomorrow I’ll show more aerials of Port Au Prince and the destruction of the city. A set of these images will go to Corbis and to aerialstock.com.

Susquehanna South of Harrisburg.

Frozen Vineyard in West Virginia

Paddocks in Virginia

Last Friday morning I caught a break in the weather and flew up the Potomac River from Northern Virginia to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

Brunswick, Maryland (updated)

Dickerson, Maryland power plant along the Potomac river.

In the early afternoon, I drove to York, Pennsylvania and flew with a former U.S. Army pilot who now flies a Hughes 500 for power line patrols. We flew the Susquehanna river from west of Harrisburg to the downstream dams near the Maryland border.

Ice moving on the river.

Snowmobile tracks.

Along the river.

Garden and Gun – the wonderful southern magazine with photo editing by Maggie Kennedy is showing a preview of my Chesapeake aerial book.

Garden and Gun – A Gulls Eye View

I have been prepping all week in between shoots for my 11th trip to Haiti. I leave tomorrow morning with the Executive Director of the Community Coalition for Haiti – a faith based Medical mission that I am also a member of their board. This is our fourth team of medical professionals since last week. I am going to shoot in a small Childrens hospital in Port Au Prince and hope to make it over to Jacmel mid week.

I won’t have the opportunity to post to the blog but hope to add a few tweets. My twitter address is: http://www.twitter.com/camdavidson

I finished uploading three new galleries to my Aerialstock.com site this morning.

Aerial Haiti

Aerial Hog Island (A Virginia Barrier Island)

Aerial Norfolk, Virginia (Aerials shot at dusk)

Aerial Hog Island, Virginia – Images by Cameron Davidson

Fresh images.  Focus on aerials and safety.  Occasionally, on other shoots or the industry.  But mostly shooting from above.

First post will be on Loss of Tail Rotor Effectiveness.

Happy New Year to Everyone.  Please Fly safe!

In June of 04 I wrote a piece for Sportsshooter.com on aerial safety for photographers who were shooting their first aerial assignment.

Thought I would share it with the non-sportsshooter.com readers a few years after the initial publication.

There is one editing error regarding the designation of a CFII instructor otherwise everything stands as it is:

http://www.sportsshooter.com/news/1214

You’re excited! You have your first aerial assignment. You’ve always wanted to get up in the air. You’re thinking: Cool! This will be fun, I’ll take my girlfriend/boyfriend, my wife/husband or my best bud. We can go cruising over the city and shoot a few pics for myself or maybe a few as stock.

Slow down for a second. Let’s talk. Let me offer some insights from twenty-five years of aerial photography experience around the world. Done correctly, aerial photography can be fun, exciting, and rewarding. Done incorrectly, it can be deadly. I’ve lost two photographer friends in aerial photography accidents.

I’ve known and flown with some amazing pilots. Pilots that not only astonished me with their precision flying in stiff winds, but continued to place me in the perfect spot, time and time again. Then there are the ones who scared the hell out of me in the first ten minutes of flight. Yes, I’ve had my fair share of scary flights and hope that I have learned to trust my instincts enough to never allow myself to fly with someone who does not “feel right.” Hopefully, my experiences will allow you to choose the right pilot for your assignment and make it an enjoyable and memorable flight. To read the rest of this piece….

My aerial work was featured in the new issue of the Alien Skin Software newsletter.

I use the Exposure module to create the film looks I want. (Mostly the Kodachrome 25 or Portra on a level that I adjust. Occasionally I use the GAF 500 and dial it back quite a bit. Nice for warming up landscapes and smoothing the vibrancy.)

Good people and easy to use software.