Reed Hoffmann’s Photography Blog
The Importance of Mentors
I’ve been blessed in many ways over the years, mainly with a great family and amazing wife. But I’ve also been blessed professionally, being lucky enough to know photographers who have freely shared their knowledge and passion for photography. When I took up photography as a hobby in 1971, I’m sure I would have dropped […]
Anatomy of a Photography Lighting Workshop
I love working with flash because it lets you change the light, which offers a new to make different pictures. And used properly, it expands what you can do creatively. Recently I taught a light workshop for Mentor Series in Nevada, and wanted to write about the process Tom Bol (the other instructor) and I used teaching flash. […]
2014 Ten Best
One of the toughest things I do every year is go back and pick my ten favorite photos from the previous year. It’s always interesting to see how my opinion of what I’ve shot has changed over time. Some photos, when shooting them I thought, “Wow, amazing.” But later they lost that power over me. Still […]
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 […]