About Me

My name is Eric Hopp, and this is my personal photography portfolio site. I’ve been taking pictures since my parents gave me a Canon AE1-Program 35mm SLR camera and 50mm f1.8 lens for my high school graduation present. I got hooked into photography when I took a black-and-white photography course in my junior year in high school. There is something magical about going through the entire process of seeing a moment in life, capturing the moment with a film camera, developing the film negative, printing the negative to photo paper through an enlarger, and finally watching that moment in life appear as an image on the photo paper in the developer. This was the black-and-white photo process I learned in a high school photo class. That love of photography has stayed with me ever since.

I never got into photography as a professional photographer. I guess I would call myself a serious amateur, or an advanced amateur photographer. I’ve taken photography classes at West Valley Community College to learn about composition, exposure, black-and-white film and print development.  My photographic style transitioned into more of a photojournalism approach, where I am running and shooting to capture that instant moment—or is it “spray and pray?” I especially loved shooting sports-action photography. Of course, this style uses up a lot of film and processing.  I have expanded my film camera equipment from one Canon AE-1 Program camera to three manual-focus film cameras and about a dozen lenses to complement my photojournalism / sports-action style shooting. However, photography is an expensive hobby. As I was building my Canon manual-focus equipment, the industry was switching away manual-focus 35mm SLR cameras to auto-focus 35mm SLR cameras, and then 35mm digital SLR cameras. There is this constant, photo upgrade game that is played by the camera equipment industry to sell more equipment, and partially by photographers themselves as they argue over Canon verses Nikon verses Fuji verses Pentax verses Sigma verses Tamron. I stayed with my manual-focus equipment for the longest time, as technology marched on. Digital SLR equipment got too expensive for me to continue to invest in.  Then film processing declined, as everyone was jumping onto the digital image bandwagon. Film processing started getting expensive. My photography hobby was placed on hold, as life got into the way.

On November 2013, I finally took the plunge into the digital photography realm, with the purchase of a Canon 40D DSLR and Canon EF 18-55mm lens. My hobby came back! There are a lot of different events, festivals, parades, protests, sports, air shows, wildlife, and more for a photojournalism-style shooter like myself, not constrained by the limits of 24 or 36-roll film canisters.  So I’m going out on weekends, shooting events for the fun of shooting events. I have built up my DSLR equipment of cameras and lenses, to reflect my shooting needs. And I’ve probably taken around 80,000 digital images, from when I first purchased my Canon 40D camera to January 2020. But I never really had a venue where I can showcase my work for the world to see. 

Welcome to Eric Hopp Photography! This is a personal website to showcase images and events that I have photographed, which I have enjoyed. I am not a paid, professional photographer. I just like taking pictures. Enjoy.