Cameron Davidson

I am finally in the final stages of the Chesapeake Book. I have rewritten the captions for the images plus processed and edited new selects from, what seems like a never ending project.

One of my favorite sites to visit is Brainy Quote, a compilation of quotes from around the world. Today I looked up quotes on work and thought I would share a few along with the link to the site.

Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.
Margaret Fuller

Nothing is work unless you’d rather be doing something else.
George Halas

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas A. Edison

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
Peter Drucker

The harder I work, the luckier I get.
Samuel Goldwyn

When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.
Henry J. Kaiser

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.
Mark Twain

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Oscar Wilde

Ya gots to work with what you gots to work with.
Stevie Wonder

Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you’re just sitting still?
J. Paul Getty

Yesterday was one of those knock-you-to-your-knees kinda of day. Started off o’dark early at 3 A.M. for a pre-brief with my pilot at 4:30 a.m. At 4:45 a.m. we launched into the cool and tranquil darkness of Central Iowa. Out first target was a wind farm in Northwestern Iowa. About halfway to the site, the winds started kicking up from the northwest. They were much stronger than all the aviation weather forecasts had predicted. Almost to the point where we were going to scrub the flight. The pilot and I decided to work with the wind and keep safety first. Which we did.

After battling a raising headwind for an hour and half, it was time to head to a nearby field and refuel. These World War II era hangars were manufactured by the Butler Corporation. The gentleman who ran the FBO said he had only seen this type of hangar at one other field, a small airport in South Dakota. This was the first of three fuel stops we made and none of the fields accepted credit cards for fuel. They gladly billed us.

After refueling, we headed north into Minnesota to shoot a second wind farm. That was a quick twenty-minute flight. In the interim, the winds rose even higher and a cloud deck settled in. My pilot and I agreed it was time to wait the wind out for a few hours. We landed at the Springfield, Minnesota field. A small single-runway airport manned by Sonny, a gregarious and kind-hearted eighty-two year old native of Springfield who gave us a lift to the local diner for lunch.

Sonny also arranged “transport” back to the field for us with the local law enforcement officer. I often meet the greatest people when I fly into small towns. The back of the squad car is a bit cramped and sparse, but then it is not really designed for comfort.

Eventually, the winds died down and the cloud deck started to break apart. We lifted off around four in the afternoon and headed for Northeastern Iowa to shoot a huge wind farm that spanned several miles. The light was amazing: crisp and clean plus the clouds created wonderful shadow play on the freshly planted fields. We shot until sunset and then headed back to Des Moines.

When we landed, the Hobbs meter read 9.1 hours. That is a long day! 17 hours from eyes open to eyes shut.

Rob is the former photo editor for Mens Journal and Outside – he is best known for “A Photo Editor” blog which he originally wrote without attribution to himself because he was still employed by the good folks at Mens Journal.

Rob also has a little company called ” A Photo Folio” that hosts photographers websites. Like mine. And a couple of friends – Troy House and Jeremy Goldberg.

Rob has a little promotion rolling right now about iPad and how A Photo Folio has an iPad version of their web sites.

Which is actually a very good thing. Being that his sites are flash and all. Since Mr. Jobs has declared that flash is unworthy of the iPhone and iPad.

Anyway – check out the designs of A Photo Folio at: http://www.aphotofolio.com.

Two years ago, I spent quite a bit of time shooting aerials of the coastal marshes and islands of the Gulf Coast of Louisiana for Ducks Unlimited. This shoreline is amazing: there are vast unbroken stretches of pristine marsh intermixed with canals constructed for the oil industry tugs and barges. The BP blowout and loss of the Deepwater Horizon is going to significantly impact the Gulf Coast shoreline for years. The shoreline of Louisiana has receded in recent years due to siltation, development and mangrove destruction.

Aerial Louisiana Coastline Marshes – Images by Cameron Davidson

I’ve shot on quite a few deepwater rigs, primarily for a couple of clients who produce natural gas. The SPAR rigs are quite amazing – much like an iceberg, the majority of the vessel is underwater held to the seafloor by gigantic chains, such as this one I shot on another SPAR rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

For many years I have been drawn to the interaction of our imprint on the shorelines. I’ve shot marshes and rivers around the world and continue to shoot personal projects on watersheds. I am glad that I was able to shoot a few of the Louisiana marshes before they become impacted by this tragedy.

I hope you enjoy the views. These were shot from a Bell Jet Ranger and most of the flight was between one-hundred and three-hundred feet above the water.

Corbis created a gallery of my Arizona border fence construction images that I shot two years ago for an editorial project. The first gallery is a collection of images shot in late afternoon and the early evening near Naco, Arizona. The photographs range from the border fence under construction to paths through fields that cross the border and the three strands of barbed-wire that constitute the international boundary line.

A second set of images, all aerials of the Arizona border shot between Nogales and Naco will be uploaded by Monday.

This was a fun shoot for Preservation magazine. Jessie Despard the Art Director for Preservation asked me to shoot a story on The Wilderness Battlefield in Central Virginia and how it may be impacted by the construction of a new Wal-Mart less than a mile from the battlefield. Jessie came up with the idea of shooting the field with an SX-70 polaroid of a Wal-Mart in the frame.

The rainy day image of the Wal-Mart was shot by a Preservation staffer Beth Caudell Siegel and I created a Polaroid SX-70 frame for the image with a PhotoShop action. I defocused the image a bit and printed it on several paper stocks in order to find one that most closely resembled a real SX-70 polaroid. The goal was to find the perfect spot on the proposed building site that would look perfect as an out of focus background for a hand holding the polaroid. Art Director Jessie became the hand model for this late winter image. (There are quite a few PS actions for creating SX-70 frames – try this link to download a few of them)

The majority of the story were portraits of the folks interested in moving the Wal-Mart up Route 20 a mile or so, several stitched panoramic photographs of the battlefield and a the gravesite for Stonewall Jackson’s arm.

This one was kind of strange. Here it was, late February, just weeks after our double-blast of back-to-back twenty-plus inch blizzards and I am laying on the ground in the snow, my face buried into the mud, getting my Nikon as low and possible to the ground to look up at the headstone and to make sure no snow was showing in the background, plus an assistant was holding a Nikon SB to light the headstone so we could bring out the detail in the relief. It felt pretty absurd and was funny at the same time.

I shot all of the portraits with two new Nikon lenses I recently purchased. The wonderful and shockingly sharp 100mm f/2.8 VR and equally scary 45mm for tilt/shift work.
I rarely use the tilt function for these lenses but sure love being able to shift for stitches and for the occasional architectural shoot.

Aerial of Port au Prince that Wired ran in the current issue. From my aerial shoot over Port au Prince in late February. Wired looked at a set of my selects plus the images I placed with Corbis. They choose this image from the Corbis News Collection to run as the lead double truck in the Organizing Armageddon piece brilliantly shot by Q. Sakamaki. (Corbis #42-24605172)

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.

Jay Maisel and his trusty studio managers/producers John and Jamie asked me to come up to New York to present my aerial work to his workshops students. I was honored. Jay was a huge influence on me as a young photographer and I respect him a great deal.

The workshop was filled with an interesting mixture of photographers. Three from Canada, one from Singapore and the remainder from the states. Three of the attendees were sporting Leica M9s and one is a well-known television actor who is a pretty nice guy who I found out knows a friend of mine.

Going to Jay’s former bank building in the Bowrey is always a joy. It is an incredible building full of his work and found objects.

Jay took us all out to an amazing meal in Chinatown with way too much food.

Here are a few pictures I shot while walking in New York yesterday.