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November 21, 2009 |
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Created and Maintained by: The Photoimaging Information Council |
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by Mark Lapin |
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TGP: After all your work with professional photographer Kent Whitehead in high school, you decided to major in Sociology in college. Why was that? Reed Hoffmann: Working with Kent, I realized that I loved being out shooting pictures but I didn’t love doing studio work or weddings. In college, I got my degree in Communications and Sociology. I thought I’d go into TV production because it was visual and involved technology, and I’ve always been gadget guy.  © Reed Hoffmann
I was also shooing stills for the college newspaper and yearbook. One day, I got a call from one of the newspapers in town asking if I was interested in a part-time job on staff. That got me rolling into photojournalism. I had never considered it before that but I loved it. TGP: You got your first photojournalism job in college. What was the newspaper and what was the job? Reed Hoffmann: The paper was the Evansville Sunday Courier and Press, which is now out of business. They needed a part-time photographer to do on Friday night and work a 12-14 hour shift on Saturday. It was a great and interesting situation. I’m kind of a short-attention-span person, and newspaper work was perfect for me. You come in for your shift, pick up your assignment, head out on street, look for pictures, run on news calls, get other assignments, spend all day shooting all different kinds of things,  © Reed Hoffmann
The morning and evening newspapers were owned by different companies and had separate staffs but had agreed to publish the Sunday paper jointly. That meant we worked like a weekly magazine. Their tradition was that they only hired full-time photographers who had been in the newspaper business eight to ten years and wanted a chance to slow down and work more on stories. Each photographer got to spend all week working on a couple of stories for that week’s newspaper. I knew I wanted to be a news photographer after college. They kept me on after I graduated but I wanted to move out of Evansville. I ended up working at Birmingham Post-Herald in Alabama. TGP: You played a real role in helping photojournalists go digital. How did that happen? Reed Hoffmann: In 1980, I got a job offer to work for the newspapers in Rochester, New York. Gannett owned both papers, and they shared the photography staff. The great thing about that was that when I was out shooting, I had two newspapers interested in my pictures. If I saw something interesting, the newspaper on deadline had first crack. If they weren’t interested, I had another chance with the next newspaper.  © Reed Hoffmann
We spent a ton of money going digital. At the time, we were the largest newspaper to go digital, and the first paper to give each photographer two cameras. Digital cameras cost around $13,000 apiece at that time, so the cameras alone were a big investment. It was probably a couple of years before another paper was willing to spend that much. Most photojournalists work with two cameras, one with a short lens, the other with a long lens. That way you don’t miss while anything while changing lenses and have a back-up if one body fails. After we made that conversion, I was asked to speak at conferences and seminars about how we made the transition and how we managed afterwards. Before that time, I hadn’t done any teaching or speaking in front of large groups TGP: You’re also involved in teaching amateur photographers through the American Photo Mentor Trek program. Tell us about that? Reed Hoffmann: Around 2000, I was asked by Richard Rabinowitz to participate in the American Photo Mentor Trek program. With Bruce Vail, a wonderful photographer, I led a trek to West Virginia, and started doing one or two per year. The Mentor Treks go everywhere from West Virginia to Croatia and last from two and a half to twelve days. You sign up, pay the fee, and then basically go on a pre-planned vacation that’s entirely built around photography. We’re never sitting down to dinner when there’s a beautiful sunset happening.  © Reed Hoffmann
The participants are mainly amateurs but we also get the occasional pro who’s interested in the location and wants to go on a no-fuss, no-muss, no planning trip. For the most part, the people who sign up just love photography and don’t have a chance to shoot enough or travel enough. On each trek, we have at least one and sometimes as many as three pros whose sole job is to help you grow as a photographer. Some people want help understanding technology, buttons, menus and cameras. Others want help with exposure and composition. They may want to learn about lighting or about looking for light. Some people don’t want any help. They just want a trip that’s safe and easy and planned. Some people just bring a point and shoot camera and a couple of one gig cards. Others show up with $15,000 worth of equip and do three or four tours per year. TGP: You often mention visual story-telling. Do you have any stories about how that approach led you to better pictures? Reed Hoffmann: A couple of yeas ago, I was leading a trip in Croatia, which is a wonderful country to photograph. We were going into little villages with narrow cobblestone streets worn smooth by centuries of people walking. Everybody hangs their laundry out above the street. So after a day of wandering around, I got together with the group, asked about laundry pictures, and suggested trying to get a person into the shot as well. A couple of days later, I was wandering around a little town and went into a little tiny square. Directly across from me was an old lady hanging two lines of wash out the window. The color of the wall was beautiful, faded pastel red and yellow. The lines of laundry made really nice diagonals coming in and out of the picture and she looked great. I thought this is it. I walked over, waved, pointed to my camera pantomimed taking pictures, and she laughed and nodded. I shot a few frames, thanked her and left.  © Reed Hoffmann
Now this may be about my short attention span or not paying enough attention, but it wasn’t till that night back in hotel that I had a chance to look at scene and laundry she was hanging and realized it was all underwear. The lucky thing for me was that if I had seen the underwear in the first place, I would have been embarrassed to wave and ask if I could take her picture. TGP: You’re one of Microsoft’s Icons of Imaging. What has that been like? Reed Hoffmann: It’s been a great experience. Microsoft was looking for a way to show the photography community that they were serious about supporting photographers. When they started a couple of years ago, I was fortunate enough to be invited. It’s an opportunity for them to show our work and help promote photographers in the program. And for us, it’s an opportunity to develop a relationship with one of the leaders in digital technology. It has certainly helped me in anything I’m doing with computers because I have people I can call and get the latest information. In my own work, I use both PCs and Macs, about equally. The platforms and operating systems are becoming more and more similar so it’s really not that difficult to use both.  © Reed Hoffmann
TGP: So how did you get involved in Eco Challenge? Reed Hoffmann: Life is a series of coincidences. When I moved to Rochester in 1980, I ran into Kevin Gilbert, whom I knew as photojournalism student from Syracuse. He had graduated and was working for the Washington Times. We met at a Buffalo Bills- Redskins football game.. We started chatting and he told me about this cool freelance job he had covering the Eco Challenge. They wanted him to put a team of photographers together and he asked if I was interested. I said yes, thinking I’d never hear anything else about it. But four months later, I came into work and there was from a note from him on my hook. ‘They said yes,’ he told me. ‘Do you still want to do it?’ So every year from then on Kevin put a team together. Three of us went every year, and at times we had seven photographers. Kevin kept saying, ‘We have a great collection of personalities and talents. We should be able to make a business.’ Again, I didn’t think anything would come of it. But eventually Kevin left the Washington Times to go freelance and together we formed a company called Blue Pixel.  © Reed Hoffmann
TGP: Tell us about the Eco Challenge. Have you had any adventures covering the race? Reed Hoffmann: The Eco Challenge is an adventure race where four-person, coed teams compete over three or four hundred miles on bikes, on ropes, running, rafting, sea kayaking or, if they’re lucky, riding horses. They navigate themselves, and the winners usually cover the course in five or six days. It was started by Discovery Channel and then USA bought the rights. On every race, we had our own adventures. We didn’t run the race but we had to get ourselves in the right position to photograph the athletes. I was always the ropes guy. I’m not a climber but I knew enough about ropes to understand what to do and more importantly what not to do. Ropes courses are one of the trademarks of the Eco Challenge. The athletes have to do 600-foot rappels or ascend ropes through waterfalls. In Argentina, we got helicoptered way up into the mountains to shoot the high ropes course and got caught in a late spring snow and ice storm. They had to shut down that part of the course and we had to hike six miles out of the mountains down to a little stone cabin where they picked us up. In Fiji, I was helicoptered back into a waterfall area and spent two days shooting people climbing up and down the rocks. We had bad weather and they couldn’t fly the helicopter in to get me out. Finally, we had a little break in the weather and I hiked about a mile and a half down the waterfall and streams to the base point where the chopper could land.  © Reed Hoffmann
We spent the day shooting teams going through and late in the afternoon, I heard the chopper. We went running, scrambling down rocks to where it was supposed to land. The pilot landed on a rock at the edge of the river in the forward position and waved for us to come in. I was edging around the front of the chopper when I slipped and dropped into a waterhole about 10 feet deep. I had rain gear on over my only dry clothes and my camera equipment was in a sealed, dry backpack. When I went under, the backpack acted like a life-preserver and popped me back up to the surface. When I came up, the first thing I saw was helicopter pilot double over in his seat and laughing so hard that tears were literally running down his face. I crawled out and then I heard the radio in the helicopter calling in an emergency at another point in the course. They waved us off and headed down the mountain. I thought, ‘What the hell! I’m soaked. Teams are getting hypothermic. I’ve got nothing dry to put on and nothing but hammock to spend night the in the jungle and only about an hour of flying time left. But 20 minutes later the chopper came back. They only had one seat left because they were evacuating two team members. But they waved me over. I hopped in and found out the pilot felt so bad for after I fell in that they decided to come back and get me with one seat left. After a 30 mile flight, we landed in bright sunlight. When I got off in full rain gear with fleece under that and water running off me, people stared at me like they couldn’t understand where I’d been. Every year, we have a bunch of stories like that. TGP: You’ve also done still photography for other reality TV shows, including The Apprentice. How did that happen? Reed Hoffmann: Mark Burnett is the producer behind Eco-Challenge and other shows, including Survivor, Apprentice, Contender and Rock Star. We contracted to do still photography for many of his shows. They’re fun and I’ve made some neat pictures but I’m glad I’m not doing it full-time. You go in for a 10 or 12 day stint, which is plenty. It’s like Groundhog Day. Never a day off. They shoot in a three-day cycle for each show, and as soon as one show is finished, a new cycle begins. As a still photographer, you document everything in front of and behind the camera. You have almost unlimited access but you can't get in anybody’s way or make any noise. It’s just one photographer and these teams go for 20 hours day.
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