Chasing Light
Chasing Light
February 7, 2022Todd Reed came to Michigan State University with the intent of becoming the next Hemingway. The parallels were there: childhoods spent on the shorelines of Northern Michigan, a deep reverence for the state’s beauty and of course, a love for the written word. With prospects slim in the English field, Reed switched his major to journalism. After taking a required photography class, Reed soon discovered that his greatest talent lay in capturing a story with an image.
Reed took that talent to his hometown paper, the Ludington Daily, and spent 23 years as a journalist and eventually chief photojournalist.
Just like the shores of the Great Lakes, there have been overlapping waves in Reed’s career. Reed served in the Coast Guard Reserve for over 30 years—driving rescue boats and saving countless lake-goers. He taught photography at West Shore Community College—impacting hundreds of students—and started his photography business, sharing Ludington’s beauty with a myriad of tourists and Michiganders alike.
Reed attributes his ability to balance and pursue those paths to a work ethic instilled by his parents. They owned Ludington Beverage, a wholesale beer distribution business that’s still family-operated 85 years on.
“My parents were of the school of work hard—work really, really hard— and play hard,” Reed says. “There were no days or nights off, and I think all of us in our family have picked that work ethic up. For me working 60 to 80 hours a week was cake, and that’s the way the newspaper business was, too.”
In Reed’s own family business, he and his son Brad have developed a style of photography they call “Grand Scenic,” which Reed describes as such: “basically, it’s a landscape or seascape photograph. But the key components of that picture are a layered cake of foreground, middle ground and background.” That layered cake is key to “really pulling you into the scene and making you feel like you’re standing there.”
There’s nothing basic about what goes into capturing the stunning movement of waves, storms and other weather phenomena that Reed has come to be known for. Todd and Brad immerse themselves into storms, braving gale-force winds and every type of precipitation imaginable in a bid to capture powerful, surreal moments.
Reed’s latest book, “50 Years Seeing Michigan Through a Lens,” is filled with those powerful moments and balanced with more serene imagery.
With such an expansive body of work, anyone would struggle to put photos on the chopping block, but Reed relied on a deceivingly simple methodology: whiskey and wine.
“Your best work leaps out, but we say there are two kinds of shots; a whiskey shot hammers you, and a wine shot kind of works and grows on you over time,” he explains.
Reed’s legacy has seen him move from the analog world of the darkroom into the digital world of SD cards and computers. That seismic change retired many a photographer, but at the end of the day, Reed’s work is all about “the big images, the big scenes,” and Reed says it all boils down to “waiting on nature for those moments, chasing light and capturing them.”
Suffice to say, Reed’s chasing of light has produced pictures worth a thousand words. And then some.
