Cover layout
Thank you page with an image of Steve Bussman preflighting his Hughes 500 before an early morning winter shoot in Southern Maryland.
Rough layout of a few of the pilots I have flown with for this book.
A spread in the Upper Bay chapter showing the Susquehanna near its confluence with the western Branch.
Ace designer Alex Diaz.

Yesterday Alex Diaz, Greg Glaviano and I met to finalize the layout and image selection for the book. I nixed eight spreads and added six new ones from recent shoots. We have an incredible design with a elegant type treatment and a mix of double truck, full page and mixed sized images. The book covers the complete Chesapeake Bay Watershed starting at the headwaters of the Susquehanna and continuing to the mouth of the bay. I shot every major river system in the bay plus the islands, marshes and cities of the watershed. There are quite a few abstract aerials that will hopefully delight the viewer plus images with great impact. The earliest image was shot on Kodachrome and the most recent was shot two weeks ago on a D3x in Pennsylvania.

Goal is for shipment to the printer in early April with delivery of final copies in May. A pre-order site is being set-up and the first one-hundred copies of the book will include a signed and numbered print.

Read the story about how he did the shooting and post. Well worth it. Time lapse with a Nikon D3 and two lenses. Tilt/Shift effect added in post. Over 30K in frames shot.

The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.

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

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.

This morning I startled a Coopers Hawk clutching a European Starling underneath one of my bird feeders. The Starling was screaming for dear life and the Coopers spooked as I trundled through the snow to my front door. This Coopers has taken quite a few birds at my feeders along with a neighbors. Usually it is a slow moving Mourning Dove. Last fall I shot video of the unfortunate demise of a Grackle by this Coopers.

Out my office door looking toward the deck.

Looking down my street.

The holly trees that flank my front door are zealously guarded by a male Mockingbird who chases off flocks of American Robins who attempt to eat “his” holly berries. I watched him chase off close to twenty robins yesterday. As soon as they would alight, he would swoop in to defend his property.