“People are stunned at the improbability,” says photographer Robert Haas of this image, captured in Yucatan, Mexico. “What are the odds that hundreds of flamingos form a shape like that? I get a thrill at looking at it again.”
“People are stunned at the improbability,” says photographer Robert Haas of this image, captured in Yucatan, Mexico. “What are the odds that hundreds of flamingos form a shape like that? I get a thrill at looking at it again.”
Bobby Haas still remembers the thrill of looking over his shoulder and seeing hundreds of flamingos — bunched together in the shape of a giant flamingo.
“That was the Holy Grail,” Haas told the Star Friday from an island in the Turks and Caicos. “The Holy Grail is the ability to capture an image that no one else has ever captured before and is very unlikely to be captured again.”
That spectacular National Geographic photograph from the Yucatan peninsula has jumped back into the public eye in a new children’s book Haas has published, I Dreamed of Flying Like a Bird.
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“There’s no question that the flamingos image has caused more reaction than any other,” he said. “People are stunned at the improbability. What are the odds that hundreds of flamingos form a shape like that? I get a thrill at looking at it again.”
This from a photographer who has exclusively worked from the air since 2002.
“Aerial photography brings back images that people are not used to seeing,” Haas said. “Even with the great proliferation of photography today there are very few lunatics who hang out of helicopters the way I do.”
That proliferation also spawned a vocal world of skeptics that nothing is real. They don’t bother Haas.
“I know it is the actual photography and it is unretouched. It’s published through National Geographic, which will not tolerate photographs that are Photoshopped or altered. When people say that, they’re just thinking that it’s impossible. It’s a validation of the Holy Grail.”
Along with the children’s book, his other new book, Through the Eyes of Vikings, captures Canada and other Arctic countries from above.
“I wanted polar bears so bad. We were right at the edge of Hudson’s Bay one October ago. It was a very melancholy scene.”
Normally, the bay is frozen by that time of year, providing polar bears with a “platform for hunting seals.” In October 2009, however, there was no ice.
“In Churchill, bears were just kind of loitering around. They had lost a lot of weight. They had no way to fish.”
A Yale University and Harvard Law School-trained investment banker, Haas, 63, is still chairman of the board of Haas Wheat & Partners in Dallas. He taught himself photography in his 40s and has become one of National Geographic’s bestselling authors.
“I did not start off in order to point out the environmental damage I’ve seen. I try not to make my books a polemic against global damage. But whether it is man-made or not is irrelevant. There is damage there.”
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Bringing back pictures “of what a beautiful home we have” sends Haas back into the skies book after book.
“It’s not like pitching a perfect game in the World Series. Every time you go up in the helicopter with your camera, you have the opportunity to capture something no one has captured before.
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