Kevin Hoffberg/pictures
People have asked about the photographs on this web site. I took them. None of this has anything to do with business, but then again, maybe it does.
My grandfather was an avid photographer in the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson. He (both of them) was fond of lurking about with a Leica quietly capturing moments of serendipity and juxtaposition. I caught the bug from him and he diligently fed my interest, buying me my first camera, and leaving me his gear when he passed on. I still have most of it today.
I stopped thinking about photography after college. I was too busy being busy. Some years later, I took my then young family on a trip to Amsterdam, London, and Cornwall. Wandering around a little fishing town called Loo, I found myself taking pictures of traps and ropes and things and found that I liked what I saw when I got home.
Convinced that I was some great photographer I began to take more pictures and hated nearly everything I got back. I did the only logical thing which was to give up. But the bug wouldn’t leave me alone so I resolved to take a much more disciplined approach to learning the craft and learning to see. I took classes. I read books. And I went through a fierce amount of film.
A few years ago I found myself sitting in a hotel room in New York talking on the phone, doing e-mail, and eating room service. It was 9:00 at night. Somehow through all that mindlessness a thought crept through: You spend half your time in some of the greatest places in the world and all you ever see is the airport, the inside of a cab, a hotel room, and the inside of an office. What are you doing?
What I was doing was throwing any sense of balance out the window in the name of productivity. I was working about a zillion hours, letting people make their drama my problem, and getting very little of importance done. I was ripping across time zones, crawling into bed in cities like New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Seattle, London, Miami, Boston—cities that tourists spend billions to go see—without ever seeing or doing anything other than working.
What I was doing was slowly dying from a lack of creativity.
What I was doing was starving my soul.
So beginning with the next day home, I picked up my camera (actually I have too many, but that’s another story) and have gone pretty much everywhere with one since.
I have shot thousands of frames over the past few years. Some of the better images I self-published a few years ago in a small book. I have a bunch of my stuff on the walls at home. Many of my clients have a Kevin picture or two on display as well. I think I can say that I’ve gotten better over the years, but am still regularly humbled when my pictures come out of the soup or back from the lab.
If you've been reading the web site rather than just these missives, you'll note that starting in 2003, I've re-entered the world of color photography. Having shot nothing but film, and nothing but black and white for the previous two years, I finally succumbed to the siren song of digital photography. Now I own three digital cameras and assorted lenses, accessories, and all those cords and things that go along with. It's playing all sorts of games with my photosnob purist instincts, and it will surely mess with the austere branding of my website, but I guess that's the way it goes.
So back to why I bothered to write this and hopefully the point you get from reading it. What started as an enthusiasm, later became the answer to an inner cry for some sense of balance, and finally became a discipline for honing an ability to see my world just a bit differently. I put my pictures on this site in large part because I can—it’s my site after all—but also to inspire and remind anyone that’s paying attention to feed the soul.
Everyone has a creative urge and need somewhere. If you’re not using it, it will shrivel up and take you with it. Get it out, dust it off, and make it part of your day.
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Copyright © 2002
Kevin Hoffberg
Last modified:
05/03/06