Jack Furst | Hicks & Haas | Muse | Tate & Furst | sizable stakes

No kidding. Think about it: Haas is living out the dream of just about every amateur nature photographer between here and Botswana. Plenty of people have taken a great picture on vacation and thought: Hey, maybe­ I should be a professional photographer. But Haas has actually done it. In just more than a decade, he has parlayed a few good photos taken on one vacation into a second career and managed to reach what many would consider the pinnacle of success in nature photography. All of which comes as a surprise to absolutely no one who knows Haas's business career.

"Bobby is a very organized, very focused, very intense professional," says Jack Furst, who worked with the LBO firm Hicks & Haas when it put Dr Pepper and Seven-Up together. Today, Furst is a partner at Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, which was formed after Haas split with Hicks in 1989. "From what I've seen, Bobby has taken the same kind of focus and intensity he has professionally and poured it into his photography and his love for African wildlife."

Which is not to suggest that Haas has lost anything on the business side. Haas Wheat & Partners won't say exactly how much money it has under management, but it's likely in the billions of dollars. The company owns sizable stakes of Playtex Products, and over the course of the last few years sold its stake in the textbook wholesaler Nebraska Book Company and AMN Healthcare Services, among others, for sizable gains. Still, Haas Wheat & Partners is small compared with many other LBO firms, including Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst. That's just the way Haas wants it.

"It would be rare for our firm to have more than four or five deals at one time, whereas some bigger LBO firms may have 40 or 50 deals or more," Haas says. "Expanding your business can change the fundamentals of what made you successful in the first place. It's like the fellow who has one great restaurant and then expands, and a few years later he has five mediocre restaurants."