Cameron Davidson

THE book of inspiration has arrived!

The newest edition of 200 BEST AD PHOTOGRAPHERS WORLDWIDE was recently published and delivered to creatives around the world.

Quite a few friends and colleagues are in the book. Several were honored for inclusion for the second or third time. Which is very impressive! The book is full of amazing work.

Friends/Colleagues that made the cut include:

Jim Fiscus, Randal Ford, Paul Ross Jones, Julian Calverley, Dean Alexander and Peter Yang.

I am also happy to announce that yours truly was invited to be a part of the 2010 Edition.

Two of my images were selected, both of them are low-level aerials.. One was shot for Vanity Fair and the other was a promotional image I shot in New York City.

APA National – Advertising Photographers of America chose my aerial of the Statue of Liberty to represent the DC APA chapter in their new email and print campaign for searchAPA.com.

searchAPA.com is the search portal for art buyers, photography editors and designers who are looking for (to quote the ad copy) “Search APA..where there is an abundance of success, and a scarcity of mediocrity”

I am honored to be included in this campaign and to have the DC chapter gain some recognition.

My friend David Burnett sent me this link to a collection of images posted by the Denver Post of early 20th Century Russian Color photography.

http://tinyurl.com/russia-color

Peasant girls, Russian Empire. Three young women offer berries to visitors to their izba, a traditional wooden house, in a rural area along the Sheksna River, near the town of Kirillov; 1909 Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection (Library of Congress).

Paul Freeman is a photographer friend from England. He is presenting a long-term personal project titled “Spacelands” to several publishers and decided to create a blurb version of the book.

He is a killer architectural shooter. Last month Paul and four photo industry friends (one Israeli, one Ozzie and two Englishmen with same first name – Jules and Julian) and myself got together for lunch at RULES in London. I believe RULES may be the oldest restaurant in the city. (1798 by Thomas Rules)

Paul shoots medium-format digital and the work is spectacular.

From the forward

“I became culturally obsessed by the space age when I was nine years old, in the final days of the British colony in Singapore. This was about the time my father introduced me to photography. My absorption by space fantasies and Americana was determined by pivotal moments that stand out like vertical beams of light.

That sense of mathematical predictability was not to continue as the years went by. Space, and my life in it, remained stubbornly distant as it became clear that the cold war had simultaneously powered and destroyed these fanciful ideas. Since 2001, space tourism has become a surrogate for those idealistic dreams of the first space age. In New Mexico and across the desert states of the American South West one can find the decayed remnants of that first age which twinned utopian ideals from science fiction with the diabolic machinery of potential mega-mass murder. One also finds the sites of a new tourist driven future for space travel. A few miles and a range of low hills separate the site of the planned Spaceport America (where Richard Branson plans to launch his spectacular Virgin Galactic spaceline sometime in 2010), from the site of the first atomic explosion. Between these two locations lie discarded rockets, atomic age ghost towns, alien landscapes, and a town that renamed itself after a radio show. “

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/673478

I bought one.

Chris Mueller Photo Illustration from three images - Chad Slattery - Interior, Ismael Jorda/Ait Team Images pilot and my aerial of the Hudson

Anatomy of a Miracle – US Airways 1549

In late March, Vanity Fair called and asked me to shoot aerials of the Hudson river for a piece on Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who landed an Airbus 320 in the Hudson river after ingesting geese into the engines and the behind the scenes look at how this miracle happened..

The story is much richer than a one-person profile; William Langewiesche wove in the reality of Canadian Geese flocks near airports , the turbo fans, the glide ratio of the 320, the engineers who designed the engines and aircraft and most of all, the incredible textbook landing of Flight 1549 on the Hudson.

The idea behind the shoot was to follow his exact flight path and shoot aerials from the same angle of descent and altitude. The helicopter pilot and I did a pre-brief by phone and I sent him the GPS and altitude coordinates for the flight. He worked out the details with Laquardia and two other air spaces we needed to cross for our flight. Since I was shooting two months after the event, I needed to match my light with the light the day of the landing. I matched the angle of the light as close as possible by using sun plotting software. The goal was to recreate the view from the cockpit as the aircraft descended toward the river.

My friend Chad Slattery flew to Arizona to photograph the flight deck of an Airbus 320 so Chris Mueller could put the images together as an photo illustration. Ismael Jorda/Ait Team Images created the photograph of the pilots that completed the image.

What I liked about this assignment was working with Ian Bacsetta, an Associate Photo Editor at Vanity Fair and my friend Chad. Ian had a very clear idea of what he wanted me to shoot and how it would all come together. Ian and I talked about weather, light, helicopter altitudes and my ideas on how to create the image. Chad and I spoke about my images and how he would approach the interior views to create a sense of being there for the reader.

The pilot I worked with flies primarily in New York and New Jersey and only for aerial photography. He knows the airspace and he enjoyed the challenge of making this shoot happen. I started shooting near Columbia University a little above 2000 feet and finished up at five feet off the deck near the piers where the aircraft landed. The river was full of water taxis and cargo vessels. Not only did Captain Sully and his crew have to land a unpowered aircraft in the middle of a tidal river he needed to set his glide path to make sure he did not swamp or hit the boats crossing from New Jersey or Manhattan.

Thanks to Ian for the trust to make this shoot happen, to Chad for his connections within the aviation industry and Chris Mueller for bringing it all together and making it believable.

My friend Susanne Sease along with Amanda Sosa Stone have written the must-have, must-read, must-pass-on definitive book on how to launch and sustain a career in photography.

I’ve known Suzanne for years.  Her guidance and suggestions to me have been helpful and on target.  The current redesign of my logo, promotional brochures and email blasts all came about from her suggestions to work with Nadine Brown of Brand Envy.

This is the book that I wish was written twenty-years ago.  Tightly edited filled with interesting and informative tidbits, it will stay on my desk.  I just ordered a second copy to give to my first assistant.

Click on the jpeg of the book to go to Amazon to purchase or click here.

Choosing the right pilot for aerials is much more than finding the service that fits your budget. I work with pilots who know how to fly the camera and who specialize in film and still photography.

Last week, when shooting in New York City I watched my pilot work with three separate controllers, fly through four air spaces plus keep us on our GPS track. Our flight started in New Jersey where we overflew Teterboro with permission of the Teterboro Air Traffic Controller. Next up as we crossed the Hudson we entered into the La Guardia Class B airspace. Within a minute or so, our flight took us back into VFR flight with no immediate need to speak with ATC. On the south end of Manhattan, we flew through VFR, Newark and La Guardia airspace in less then a minute. If we had chosen to fly out toward Coney Island, then we would have contacted Kennedy.

The demands of aerial shooting are tough on a pilot. Not only are you watching for other aircraft plus constant contact with ATC, you are also responding to the photographers needs for the shoot.

I choose to only work with pilots who understand photography and who know how to fly the camera. Safety comes first. It is the most important element of the mission.

When researching pilots for aerial assignments, my first priority is how much experience do they have in type and with aerial photographers who fly low and slow.

I tend to fly in turbine aircraft such as the Bell Jet Ranger, A-Star or Hughes 500. When I need to fly in a piston aircraft, I ask many questions about the ship and the pilots experience with aerial photography. I have a checklist and as a pilot, I feel it is my responsibility to myself and my client to insure a safe flight and a successful assignment. I brief my client before the flight on what to expect: safety precautions, emergency egress procedures and how helicopters work. My experience has been that clients are interested and excited to be in the air, often for the first time and it is reassuring to know that I know what to do if we have to make and emergency landing. The pilot also conducts a preflight briefing and even though I’ve heard it hundreds of times before, it is important to stay with the checklist and not skip over anything because it is familiar.

Friday I was shooting in Central Virginia for a Fortune 100 annual report. The shot, outside of a home was centered on an energy-saving concept. The temp was 18 degrees and everyone in the crew was prepped and ready. It was a tight shot with a home in the background with late afternoon sunlight at a 45 degree angle to the camera. It was windy and there were lots of Boa bags holding the scrims and heads in place. I needed a glow in the lamp post near the talent and the six foot scrim provided that softening of sunlight. A strip light gave just the right amount of believable light to the subject.

The model was dressed in a tee shirt with pullover. The shot could not be season specific. I love it when you have talent that are professional and work through any situation. This guy was a pro all the way. He ever complained once. Of course, we kept sending him inside to warm up and get something to drink.

Every year, clients say that the annual report photography will take place in the fall. Good intentions and all. The Chairman’s message for the book is usually not ready and it is just the reality of annual report shoots. I enjoy the challenge of making the image sing in adverse conditions.

I remember a project we shot a few years ago in Manhattan. Portraits on the street in February, batteries for the strobes needing recharging every few minutes, but it was fun and everyone came together and worked as a team. We kept everyone warm between takes and the images worked

It’s funny how that goes: early in my career, my assistant and I drove over ninety-miles in a Kentucky blizzard to get to a location for a portrait shoot for a financial annual report. We did not really think much about it, we had to be there and the client was expecting us.

It was a road trip to remember: stopping in Henderson along the Ohio River and finding one diner open. My assistant and I ordered the chili!. The total bill for two heaping bowls of chili with drinks and bread – six bucks!

Nature Best Exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History. Show closes on May 3rd, 2009.

Alison Zavos is a photographer and photo editor. Recently, she started a blog, Feature Shoot, focusing on emerging and known photographers. The work runs the gamut from Susanna Raab’s fine art and journalism images to unknown young shooters in New York and across the country.

Alison wrote me a couple of weeks ago about her blog and I like what she is showing. Her sense of discovery is similar to Rachel Hulin’s. Alsion asked if I would consider an interview and presenting work. I like where she is going with this blog an how she is positioning it to be a resource for picture editors and art directors.

I plan to keep my eye on this site and enjoy the work Alison presents.