Anchorage Daily News

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.

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Hirschmann

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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.