I occasionally watch CBS' Sunday Morning, and this time I was rewarded with an interesting segment featuring Bobby Haas. Haas is an aerial photographer who's traveled to some of the most isolated and rugged places on Earth, places only easily accessible from the air. He estimates that he's taken more than 70,000 photographs from the air.
For the past six years, Haas traveled from Africa to South America and now the Arctic, and has the fear of heights. Furthermore, he is a successful financial investor who, back in the '80s, earned a fortune in the bare-knuckle world of leveraged buyouts with his former firm Hicks & Haas. His first book became one of the best-sellers in National Geographic's history, and his photographs are featured in a spread in this month's magazine.
I greatly enjoyed the segment, and was gratified to see that Haas uses Canon gear. For the sake of filming the feature, Haas showed us how he usually leans into the plane's open cockpit door...but his camera's straps were not around his neck! He must've excellent insurance and many back ups if he does that on his real shoots.
Of course, I should mention here that Yann Arthus-Bertrand is perhaps a better known aerial photographer who produced over 60 books of his landscape photographs taken from helicopters and balloons.
CBS' Sunday Morning video Bobby Haas
CBS' Sunday Morning article Bobby Haas
