Reed Hoffmann’s Photography Blog
Sins of the Flash
As I watched – and ground my teeth – I realized it was simply a matter of ignorance. They just didn’t know any better. Here we were at an incredible photo op, and people were using direct flash! Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of flash. Used properly, it lets you create pictures that […]
Yellowstone – Anatomy of a Photography Workshop
I had the great pleasure of leading my first Yellowstone winter photography workshop in January, and wanted to take a few minutes to go through some of the things we shot, with details on the how and why. We split our time in the park between Mammoth Hot Springs and Old Faithful. Each of those […]
New Favorite Flash
Late last year Nikon introduced the SB-500 Speedlight, a small flash powered by two AA batteries. I was curious, but figured it would be too low-powered to do much good. Boy was I wrong. There are times where being smaller is actually a good thing. Since it only uses two batteries, it’s considerably more compact than the flash […]
Good Enough
A friend recently sent me some photos he was unhappy with, and asked my opinion. Looking at them, I saw he’d done a lot of things right, and had the right idea. But shallow depth of field, and being very critical of image quality were creating his issues. Let’s look at what happened. First, he […]
Night Photography Opportunity
Now’s a great time to go out and practice your night photography skills. The craziness of the holidays is winding down, but the light displays are still in full glory, and will be for the next several weeks. So let’s go over the basics of what it takes to make nice pictures after the sun’s […]
Spectacular Ski Event Photography
Seven years ago, thanks to a generous grant from Microsoft, I began a project to help Disabled Sports USA build a photo and video library from their events. DSUSA is an organization that helps disabled people become active in sports and is run by a great team of people. In time that grant ran out, but I continued working with […]
Photographer Gift Ideas
Once again it’s that time of year when we’re looking for special for gifts for friends and family. If you’re lucky, they’ve asked you for a list of things you’d like. Or maybe you’re just tired of buying for others and want to treat yourself to something special. Whatever the reason, here are some of […]
Fall FoliagePhotography
I love shooting pictures. I also travel a lot, and don’t love that. So whenever possible, I try to take advantage of that travel to squeeze in some shoot time. Last weekend I had a quick trip to Washington, DC to teach Nikon School, and because of a change of plans, had Friday afternoon free. […]
Smaller camera, anyone?
If it seems like photography’s always changing, you’re right. It’s been doing that from the beginning, over 150 years ago. I was reminded of this recently when reading a story about improvements in mirrorless cameras. While interesting, it’s not as big a deal as some people make it out to be. That’s because it’s not […]
Changing Photography Workflow
I’m in the midst of a major workflow change, and in a way I’m coming full circle. I began using Photoshop in the early 90s when we started scanning film to digitize it for the newspaper. Which was a godsend, because before that we had to print our color photos, which was time-consuming and prone […]