Just in time for your pre black Friday shopping here is a guest post by Cameron Davidson about his new book Chesapeake . I have long admired Davidson's photographs. He is one of the world's greatest aerial photographers (go to his site and be staggered by his talent).
-Stephen Alvarez
Chesapeake, the book project has been a 20 plus year labor of love. Its foundation came about from a story I shot for National Geographic on the Great Blue Herons of Black Swamp Creek on Maryland's Patuxent River. After a introductory flight over the rookery in an ancient and quite reliable Piper Cub, I fell in love with aerials. I abandoned my dream of being a bird photographer for the Geographic and embraced the goal of a career centered on travel and shooting aerials.
Once overhunted, these magnificent national treasures are now carefully monitored to prevent their total annihilation. Captive breeding and migration training have saved the whooping crane, but power lines along migration routes, an industrial shipping canal in their wintering marsh, and reduced genetic diversity still trouble the species.
UPDATE 3/3/12 for those of you looking for 2012 Sewanee Tornado photos they are here and here.
We had a tornado last night. Even though it passed right in front of my office I missed it. My friend Ben Beavers, however, was standing on the front porch of his restaurant and made a series of photos as it passed.
Luckily no one was injured, though there is extensive property damage in Midway. Ben made the pictures with his s90, the same one that I reviewed a couple of month ago (here). I am glad that photographically Ben took my advice to heart. The camera in his pocket worked a lot better than my cameras locked inside my office.
The opening riff, 3 national Geographic
photographers, over 30 years experience each...thats around 100 years of
pointing cameras at some of the most extreme, beautiful and confounding places
on earth, only 3 other photographers have as much experience, 2 are semi
retired and the other spends his time underwater.
The book is just what it says, wonderful portraits of some of America's rarest animals. Below is what Joel has to say about the Whooping Crane.
in his pocket worked a lot better than my 
locked inside my office.