Over 37 years in the news business, you're bound to see some things.
And if you're Craig Hodge, a dedicated Tri-City News photographer who once famously shot an assignment while rushing his pregnant wife to hospital, you're going to capture those moments no matter what.
And so, after more than 18,000 photos published, 380,000 kilometres travelled, 14 national and 22 provincial photo awards and two brushes with flying bullets, we're taking a quick look back through the lens of one of the most distinguished news careers in the Tri-Cities. Hodge is retiring, but not, he says, leaving his community involvement.
What began humbly while working on the yearbook in eleventh grade at Coquitlam's Centennial secondary, where a teenage Hodge first had a camera thrown into his lap - because his typing skills were so lacking, he says, and we in the newsroom agree - soon became a budding career when he was hired on as a summertime shutterbug at the now-defunct Columbian newspaper.
At 16, he was by far the youngest shooter at the province's oldest newspaper. And when that paper went under a decade later in 1983, the still-young Hodge was snapped up to head the photo department at the new paper that would rise in the Columbian's wake.
"We almost called it The PoCoMo News," he remembers of an early meeting of the founders of the as-yet unnamed paper in the as-yet unincorporated Tri-City region of Port Moody, Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam. "And I don't take credit for picking the name The Tri-City News, I just take credit for making sure it wasn't The PoCoMo News."
Many of those early issues of The News were actually laid out on Hodge's kitchen table with his bathroom serving as the paper's first photo darkroom.
In the time since, Mr. Hodge always kept a camera in his trunk and was often first on scene. So often, in fact, that he was once accused by a Coquitlam fire chief of starting a string of house fires he'd been beating the department to. We should note that he was, of course, cleared of any blame by the RCMP.
But the point being that for every historic happening in the region over the past four decades, from wildfires to Willie Pickton, Rick Hansen's world tour to the Olympic torch relay, Mr. Hodge, when permitted, had a front-row seat. When not permitted, usually just a long lens and some leafy cover would do.
Yet in his 37 years in the business, shooting celebrities and royalty, riots and rock concerts, Mr. Hodge maintains that his fondest memories are of taking pictures of ordinary people doing ordinary things.
Ask him about his most memorable shots and he's less likely to prattle on about the notches in his war-story belt - there are many - and more likely to tell about pulling over to the shoulder of Coast Meridian Road last year, to take a picture of a young girl picking dandelions with her mom along the side of the road. "And after when I stopped to get her name, the mom said, 'You took my picture when I was her age.' And I thought, how cool is that, that she remembered that I took her picture when she was a little girl?"
Anyone who would like to contact Craig Hodge is asked to email him at [email protected].
