Reed Hoffmann’s Photography Blog
Desert Light Painting
I’m teaching a workshop for Best Buy this week in Tucson, and wanted to take advantage of being in the desert. So last night I took a stroll out among the cactus to do some light painting. Here are the steps I go through when doing that: 1 – First, I found a scene I liked (in the daytime, […]
Submit Photos for Critique
One thing I hear regularly from students is how much they learn from critiques of their photos. So I’ve decided to start doing that as a regular feature on this blog. Every week or two I’ll choose up to five photos that people submit and create a video where I discuss what worked and didn’t, plus demonstrate how […]
Antarctic Memories
In the summer of 2015 I was the photographer on a ship in the Arctic, and the staff there kept telling me if I liked the Arctic, I’d love the Antarctic. They were right. This January I led a photography workshop to the Antarctic Peninsula on a One Ocean Expeditions ship (the Vavilov) for Pack […]
Assignment: NCAA Basketball Game
I’ve always enjoyed photographing sports. Each one requires knowledge to anticipate where the key action, or moments, might happen. Some, like golf, are physically demanding (no golf carts for photographers!), Baseball is all about fast reaction and timing. And a big part of football photography, especially with the NFL, is not getting blocked by the […]
Working your Options
One of the biggest challenges facing photographers is finding new and different ways to make pictures. That’s especially true when shooting something you’ve shot before. Which means it’s time to think through your options. For the last eight years I’ve spent the beginning of December in Colorado doing photography for Disabled Sports USA. They run a […]
Myanmar Photography Workshop
“Of all the places you’ve been for photography, which is your favorite?” That’s a question I hear a lot, but there’s no one, easy answer. Are you asking about landscape photography? People? Wildlife? It depends on what you most like to do. While I enjoy all of those, as an old photojournalist I’ve always had a […]
Re-thinking ISO
In the days of film, we shot low ASA’s to minimize grain. With digital, we learned that raising ISO (the term that replaced ASA) resulted in more visible noise and loss of color saturation, so we stayed away from that too. But with today’s cameras, sensors and processing, it’s time to re-think that habit. A […]
LED Lighting for Stills
My education in lighting began back in 1980 with a pair of what we called “hot lights” (Lowell Tota-lights). Designed for TV location lighting, in addition to being bulky and putting out a lot of heat, they also regularly blew fuses in people’s homes. Fun times! Their strength was in being able to see where the […]
Fall Color
I love fall, with its cooler temperatures and changing color. And as a photographer, I try to take advantage of that color, since it only happens once a year and is so brief. I got a head start this year thanks to an assignment in Colorado. Going up near 10,000-feet, I was able to photograph […]
Family Photo Shoot
Here in Kansas City, we live less than an hour from a place that becomes an unusually eye-catching photo spot once a year: Ted Grinter’s Sunflower Field. When the flowers are at peak, the owners not only allow but encourage the public to come out and traipse around their farm and shoot photos among the rows […]