Freeze Frame

Winter highlights from Todd Reed: 50 Years of Seeing Michigan Through a Lens

By Lynda Wheatley | Jan. 22, 2022

As this issue goes to press, the temperature outside our office window is creeping up toward 11 degrees, a shamelessly low bar made blatantly insulting when you take into account the 9 mph winds and resulting “real feel”: a paltry 3 degrees.

For some Northerners — snowy owls, ice anglers, voles, shrews, and unrepentant ski bums, mostly — these kind of winter days are, if not exhilarating, at least an acceptable part of an annual cycle we’re built to make the best of.

Not so for photographer Todd Reed.

Reed, who long ago aspired to be a writer then found his calling in photography — with a 23-year-career at the Ludington Daily News and then as a Ludington-based artist, studio-gallery owner, and 25-year adjunct professor of photography at West Shore Community College — also served in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve for 33 years.

This guy knows winter Up North. Whether he’s been called out into frightening, freezing, and downright dangerous conditions with his crew, or reads the waves and weather patterns so he can set the alarm and head out at ungodly hours to freeze a moment few of us would otherwise see, the personal stories and photos in his latest book, “50 Years of Seeing Michigan Through a Lens,” makes one photographic truth crystal clear: Reed isn’t built to make the best of winter Up North. He’s built for the worst of it.

To be fair, this 383-page coffee-table tome is a breathtaking four-season showcase of Reed’s life, career, and photographic prowess over the last five decades of his career, but it’s his capture of our region at times and temperatures too few of us are brave enough to see that left us most in awe. We hope that this small sampling of Reed’s winter work leaves you feeling much the same.