Reed Hoffmann’s Photography Blog
Shooting and Editing
We recently attended our daughter’s college graduation, and, of course, I was there shooting pictures. Which reminded me of two great ways to make your photography better: shoot lots and edit tightly. We’re all familiar with the saying, “don’t put your eggs in one basket.” That applies to photography as much as it does to […]
Light Painting 101
The first time I saw light painting demonstrated, I had the same reaction as when I first saw a print come up in developer in the darkroom – it was magical. That was back in 2000, at an early digital workshop. Dave Black, who may well be known as the Godfather of light painting, was showing […]
Same Place? Find Something Different
How do you make a different picture at a place you’ve been before, especially if you’ve been there many times? That’s a problem many of us face, and is more difficult if you’ve made a REALLY good picture there. It’s natural to want to do the same thing again, so the challenge is not to. I faced that […]
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 […]