Photographer Cameron Davidson has spent decades capturing the beauty and fragility of landscapes from the air and on the ground. His latest personal project takes him to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where rising seas and saltwater intrusion are transforming lush woodlands into eerie “ghost forests.” Using vintage Pentax lenses adapted to a Fuji GFX camera, Cameron embraces the imperfections of older glass to craft images that echo the look of film while documenting a vanishing world. With plans to expand his work across Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware, Cameron seeks to preserve a visual record of these threatened environments—an evocative reminder of the profound changes unfolding along the Chesapeake Bay.

By: Cameron Davidson, Photographer, Cameron Davidson Photography

This image of a forest on Maryland’s Eastern Shore is part of a long-term project documenting the impact of rising seawater on coastal landscapes, specifically within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The impact of saltwater intrusion includes the creation of ghost forests along the waterways of the bay.

The image was shot with a medium-format, high-megapixel camera using vintage medium-format lenses designed for the pre-digital film era. I used my Pentax 645 lens, originally designed for their 645 film camera series, and a Kipon shift adapter that allowed me to mount the lens on the Fuji GFX camera. The older Pentax lenses offer lower contrast, softer color, and the ability to use them with a shift adapter so that I can employ rise or fall, similar to what is possible with a field or technical camera. The shift adapter prevented the trees from distorting while keeping the camera level.

The advantage of using an older lens is that it is typically sharp, but not clinically sharp. Such lenses help me create a less technically perfect image that feels as though it were shot on film.

To achieve the look in Capture One, I used my typical RAW converter. Adjustment settings for this image included raising the Kelvin temperature to 9000, adding a slight tint toward magenta, reducing the highlights, and opening up the shadows. There is a slight crop to the image along the bottom of the frame.

In contrast to my commercial photography, which is often art directed, for this project, I am creating images for my own pleasure. I have been researching the areas in Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware that are most at risk of losing forests, and I plan to shoot these regions this fall and winter. My long-term goal is to document the transformation of these landscapes and present the images in a book and exhibition so that others can see and understand the transitions occurring along the coastlines of the Mid-Atlantic region.

Born in Miami and raised in Michigan and the Washington, D.C., region, Cameron Davidson attended the Corcoran School of Art. His assignments have taken him as far north as Wrangel Island in Arctic Russia and as far south as Mt. Cook, New Zealand. He has flown seventy hours in helicopters photographing the Great Mississippi River flood; experienced the chill of minus 8 degrees at 8,600 feet over the Shenandoah River and minus 16 degrees at 9,200 feet above New York City; and endured searing heat 350 feet over an active volcano in Ethiopia. He has photographed Idaho wildfires in a Schweitzer 300 helicopter (an experience he vowed never to repeat), documented the aftermaths of Hurricanes Andrew, Fran, and Irma as well as the 2010 Haitian earthquake, circumnavigated the globe in fifteen days, flown 12,460 feet in an Enstrom helicopter above the Mississippi River, and retraced the flight path of US Airways Flight 1549, which famously landed in the Hudson River. His published books include Over Florida, A Moment of Silence, Chesapeake, and Above Washington. Beyond photography, Cameron is a German watch aficionado and occasional guitar player, with musical interests spanning bluegrass, classical, and blues rock.

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