Last year, Corbis accepted 277 of my images into the library.

This year I am going for 365!

The site is going to close today. I am no longer going to license images directly. My aerials will continue to be available through Corbis and Getty plus Gallery Stock.

I recently joined Gallery Stock and the first submission of 200 images should go live fairly soon. They are going to be a great place for my fine art aerial and landscape work.

Over at Corbis a new set of 35 nightime aerials is set to go live within the week plus a set of African landscapes.

A new version of AerialStock will happen sometime in the future but it will center around limited-edition fine art prints and the galleries where they can be purchased.

AerialStock.com

Aerialstock Front Page

In 1992 I moved to Texas for a grand total of twenty months. I needed a change and wanted to explore the country. Why Texas? A long story and not worth repeating. Texas culture is pretty far removed from Virginia and Washington DC culture. After twenty months, I was ready to head home to the Shenandoah Mountains and Chesapeake Bay. Although I did enjoy the BBQ at Goode and Company in Houston.

I was flying a fair amount when I lived in Houston. There was a flight school halfway to Galveston and I usually flew once a week in a Cessna 150 or 172 to stay current and get my flying fix. Most of the time I flew down to the Gulf Coast and wandered around the islands of South Texas.

In the spring of 1992, the Brazos River flooded and I decided to go shoot a few aerials of the damage. I am a strong believer in not flying and shooting at the same time, so I took one of the flight instructors along to take over the controls when I needed to get low and slow.

Brazos River Flood

I found this orchard on the east bank of the river and flew several passes. I was trying to find the perfect balance between telling the story, teasing the viewer and creating an image that I hoped was memorable.

Shot from a Cessna 152 with me on the right side, window open and my trusty KS-4 Ken-Lab gyroscope supporting a Nikon F3 and the classic 85mm f/1.8 Nikkor. Velvia was my film of choice in those days.

I spent a few days based in Spokane and flew with a young pilot who was a master of his STOL Cessna 172. We worked out a way for us to bank heavily so I could shoot straight down into the furrows and hillsides. It was unusual approach and it worked. Most of these images have never seen the light of day other than the initial edit and sleeving into slide pages.

I remember one morning we flew into a friends farm who had an uphill dog-leg of a runway. We would approach from low and slow going uphill, hit the runway and then halfway up the hill, toe the left break to shift direction and finally come to a stop in front of a bright red barn.

Earlier this summer, I shipped off a few hundred images to Scan Cafe in India for scanning and clean up of the pictures. I plan to upload the timeless (can not be dated) images (mostly aerials of landscapes) to my aerialstock.com site for licensing.

All of the images are early Fuji Velvia. Sharp for the time and very contrasty but still different enough from Kodachrome to make shooting it worthwhile for aerials.

I signed with Corbis last year and as of today I have 416 images available for licensing.

Last week a new collection of aerial images focusing on housing and energy were uploaded to the site.

Cameron Davidson Aerials at Corbis.

Aerial photographs of the aftermath of the Haitian Earthquake – AerialStock.com

I placed a collection of over 100 aerials of the destruction of Port au Prince on my AerialStock.com site today. All of the images are available for rights-managed licensing. They were shot low and slow from a Robinson R-44 helicopter a few weeks after the earthquake and include photographs of the destroyed National Palace and National Cathedral. Also included are tent cities, destroyed neighborhoods and Citi Soleil. Legitimate NGO’s who have a long history in Haiti may contact me for pro bono usage of select images.

AerialStock now resides as a sub domain via PhotoDeck on my camerondavidson.com server. PhotoDeck is a new option for photographers who wish to sell stock directly from their sites. Jef Maion, the founder, is a friend of mine and a technical SEO whiz. I thought I would give it a try and add new images plus reprocess many of my favorite aerials and give them a new look. Expect much more material soon. The design echoes my current A Photo Folio web site.

I have made my PhotoShelter site into a site for aerial prints. This is a test and I will see how it goes. I think competition is good for the industry and my hope is that Grover and Company (Ie, PhotoShelter) continue to innovate and grow. They are good guys and are doing a great deal for the industry. I also hope that Jef grows PhotoDeck into a mean clean stock machine.

Time will tell.