WASILLA — Images of Alaska and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough have crept
into the households of thousands of people through magazines, calendars
and glossy coffee-table books because of Fred Hirschmann’s photography,
but to many residents of the Mat-Su, he’s a relative unknown.
Hirschmann doesn’t mind. He’s so busy sending
photos to national and international companies that he doesn’t have
time for shows at home. At 51, he runs a freelance photo business with
his wife, Randi Hirschmann, also a photographer. They live south of
Wasilla on Cottonwood Creek.
A former National Park Service employee,
Hirschmann spent 11 years on jobs in Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon,
Petrified Forest, Voyageurs, Yosemite, Everglades, Lake Clark and Death
Valley national parks. He left Park Service employment in 1988 to work
on two books: “Bush Pilots of Alaska” and “Alaska’s National Parks.”
Nearly two decades later, Hirschmann’s
photos are moving from coffee tables and walls to mailboxes. A
photograph of a northern lights display above the Talkeetna Mountains
that Hirschmann took in 2005 was just released by the U.S. Postal
Service on a souvenir stamp sheet. It’s one of two stamps celebrating
the International Polar Year, a yearlong scientific effort to study
climate and change in the Earth’s polar regions.
Hirschmann’s aurora borealis photo will be
re-released Oct. 1 as a first-class postage stamp. We reached
Hirschmann at his studio last week to find out what he loves — and
hates —about life as a photographer in the Valley.
Q. Your work is on a stamp! How did that happen, and how long did it take?
A. When a really popular series came out on
clouds, I looked at that series and said 'Oh, probably auroras would be
just as pretty.’
I’m guessing (that was) three years ago,
something like that. We’ve been slowly going back and forth on the
idea. (The U.S. Postal Service) said they wanted some more pictures.
They were very secretive about it initially. Then, about a year ago, we
knew it was getting contracted for two pieces.
Q. How long have you been a professional photographer and how did you choose that profession?
A. The first photograph I licensed for use
would have been back in 1978. The story of how I got started was, in
Yellowstone, a couple of my coworkers were into photography. They
quietly submitted (photos for a Sierra Club calendar) and didn’t tell
me about it. They both got a photograph in. Of course I heard about it.
The next year, I submitted and got two photographs in. They didn’t.
That was kind of what started the ball
rolling. And back in the ’70s, it was the height of the environmental
era and it was fairly easy to break into the photography arena. Now
it’s much, much harder.
I tried on my days off and on nonworking
hours … to document how beautiful the areas I was living in were. When
I started, those jobs were like $4-an-hour jobs. They pay a lot more
reasonably these days, but I quickly figured out that if I was going to
be able to maintain this (interest in photography), I had to do
something on the side.
I did a book on Yellowstone, on Bryce Canyon, two on Death Valley and one on Lake Clark.
For four springs, summers and falls, I was a
backcountry ranger for Lake Clark National Park. Then, after doing all
the cool things in Alaska, they put me in a box collecting $5 fees and
telling people not to steal petrified wood, when I knew they were
stealing the whole park. I realized that I was actually earning more
from freelancing than from the wages I was earning as a fee collector.
I still consider myself a freelancer. I have 400, 500, 600 different clients that I do business with.
Q. Why do you specialize in landscape photography?
A. I enjoy being out. It’s a way to be out in the great outdoors and still earn a living.
A lot of times when you go out on these
trips, people will say to me, “I hope you enjoy your vacation.” I don’t
think most folks would see it as a vacation. With large-format
equipment, I’m carrying 45 pounds of gear (not including the weight of
a backpack). You’re working 12-14 hours a day. In Alaska when it’s
daylight, you’re often working all night. It’s very long hours getting
the pictures and very long hours in the office here getting stuff out
to people.
Q. Are the shots you take easily accessible,
the kind people drive by on their way to work, or do you go to extra
lengths to get them?
A. Both, I would say. Because we’re in such a
beautiful area here in the Mat-Su, there’s a lot of shots people
commute past, you know, 40,000 people every day.
But there’s so much unbridled development.
I’ve found many of my favorite spots I can’t use any more. The Valley
is being developed with absolutely no thought to the aesthetics we
have. One of my favorite spots to photograph, Pioneer Peak and Goat
Mountain, is getting scooped away for the Mat-Su Borough landfill. That
whole Crevasse Moraine system is getting scooped away by the borough.
Even Pebble mine is a good example. Here we
have this incredible place. Pebble mine is going to affect that, for
not seven generations but thousands of generations. Do we want this?
Q. I’ve seen your work a lot of places, but many people I know aren’t familiar with it. Why is that?
A. That’s probably because what both Randi
and I have done is, we’ve geared our business to more behind the
scenes, business to publisher and business to business. We’re not
always on the radar screen.
When you get a picture in Alaska Magazine and
National Geographic or wherever pictures show up, they’re being seen by
hundred of thousands, if not millions, of people. We don’t spend an
inordinate amount of hours trying to sell prints at a local market. Our
time’s too valuable, both out in the field and in the office. That’s
where we’re putting our effort — into a broader, not just national but
international market.
Also, I’m not the kind of guy who gets out
there. I tend to take a low-key approach. I tend to like to let the
work, the beauty of the photos, speak for themselves.
Q. Has the digital camera revolution changed the way you work?
A. We’re still shooting 100 percent on film at this point. That really surprises people.
Yesterday I just installed … big 5-by-7
murals for Lake Clark National Park office. One of the first people who
came in asked about them being digital. There’s no way you could get
that blow-up and that amount of beauty from a digital camera. The
camera industry has done an incredible job of getting everybody to run
out and buy digital. It begins to fall apart when you’re doing 5-by-7
murals and two-page spreads in magazines. There, film reigns supreme.
What we do do is, we do very high-resolution scans of our film. Publishers love that. It’s the best of both worlds.
Q. What are your best tips for amateur photographers who want to shoot the aurora?
A. It’s a lot easier in the days of computers
and satellites to do a good aurora shot. It used to be in Alaska that
you got to see the aurora when you’re driving at night or when you go
out to the outhouse or out to get wood for the wood stove. Now, you can
use … the Anchorage forecast office site to look at satellite data on
where the clouds are.
You need to have a camera that you can put on
a tripod and that has a cable release and the ability to do time
exposures. You need to do longer settings. You can either do them on
digital or on film.
If you’re shooting on film, you want to use
400 to 800 ISO film, and if you’re shooting on digital, you want to set
your ISO to either 400 or 800. Then you want to take your lens, put it
on manual (focus), put it to its widest-open spot or lowest number,
anywhere from f2.8 to f1.2, and then focus out into infinity.
Then point the camera on the tripod where the
display seems to be most colorful — you just want to point it toward
where things are looking good. Not where they’re really moving, because
you’ll get blur.
Then you want to do what’s called bracketing
— varying your exposure time. I would start at four seconds, eight
seconds, 16 seconds, 32 seconds, one minute. The longest I’d do is two
minutes. Out of all of those blocks of exposure, you’re going to find
one that’s really working.
If it’s bright enough to read newsprint, try
a 10-25 second exposure. If it’s not bright enough, probably go out to
25-45 seconds. That’s still an “oh, wow” display, but you can’t read
newsprint. Then bracket on the other side to develop your own system
with your own camera. If it’s kind of really not an “oh, wow,” you
might be in for a one- or two-minute display.
Daily News reporter Rindi White can be reached at rwhite@adn.com or 352-6709.
