Lance Hidy
These trout fly images are the work of graphic artist and environmentalist Lance Hidy (b. 1946) and his famous fly-fisherman father, Vernon S. “Pete” Hidy (1914–83). Author of several books on fly fishing, including a book of photography, the elder Hidy developed an international following because of the craftsmanship and style of his fly tying, and his reverance for nature. Most books on the history of 20th-century fly tying include a section about V. S. Hidy. Twenty-eight years after inheriting 750 of his father’s trout flies, Lance began photographing them in 2011. Because of their small size—being tied on hooks less than a half-inch long—the flies were extremely difficult to photograph well. Finally, in 2022, Lance acquired a new generation of camera gear for a technique of macro (close-up) photography, called focus stacking, that makes it possible, for the first time, to capture every part of the fly in perfect detail. Software in Hidy’s 45 MP camera can automatically shoot a sequence of exposures with tiny shifts in focal distance. For these trout fly photographs, a sequence, or “stack,” usually totals between 80 to 150 shots (4.3GB to 8.1GB). The number of photographs depends on on the length of the fibers in the feather collar, or hackle, that is wrapped around the hook behind the eye. The longer the hackle fibers, the more images are needed in the stack. A special software program from Ukraine, Helicon Focus, masks out the blurry sections of each exposure, then “flattens” the remaining sharp elements of the stack into a single image file. Finishing with a lengthy editing procedure, the 17 x 22-inch images are printed by Greg Nikas with archival inks and paper, then signed and numbered. A second photograph of the fly is printed at actual size in each image for scale. Lance Hidy, formerly of Lancaster, New Hampshire, and Portland, Oregon, currently lives in Merrimack, Massachusetts, nestled between the Merrimack River and the New Hampshire border, eight miles upriver from the ocean, with his artist wife, Cindia Sanford.
These trout fly images are the work of graphic artist and environmentalist Lance Hidy (b. 1946) and his famous fly-fisherman father, Vernon S. “Pete” Hidy (1914–83). Author of several books on fly fishing, including a book of photography, the elder Hidy developed an international following because of the craftsmanship and style of his fly tying, and his reverance for nature. Most books on the history of 20th-century fly tying include a section about V. S. Hidy. Twenty-eight years after inheriting 750 of his father’s trout flies, Lance began photographing them in 2011. Because of their small size—being tied on hooks less than a half-inch long—the flies were extremely difficult to photograph well. Finally, in 2022, Lance acquired a new generation of camera gear for a technique of macro (close-up) photography, called focus stacking, that makes it possible, for the first time, to capture every part of the fly in perfect detail. Software in Hidy’s 45 MP camera can automatically shoot a sequence of exposures with tiny shifts in focal distance. For these trout fly photographs, a sequence, or “stack,” usually totals between 80 to 150 shots (4.3GB to 8.1GB). The number of photographs depends on on the length of the fibers in the feather collar, or hackle, that is wrapped around the hook behind the eye. The longer the hackle fibers, the more images are needed in the stack. A special software program from Ukraine, Helicon Focus, masks out the blurry sections of each exposure, then “flattens” the remaining sharp elements of the stack into a single image file. Finishing with a lengthy editing procedure, the 17 x 22-inch images are printed by Greg Nikas with archival inks and paper, then signed and numbered. A second photograph of the fly is printed at actual size in each image for scale. Lance Hidy, formerly of Lancaster, New Hampshire, and Portland, Oregon, currently lives in Merrimack, Massachusetts, nestled between the Merrimack River and the New Hampshire border, eight miles upriver from the ocean, with his artist wife, Cindia Sanford.
