After his death, friends and coworkers of Blackburn came forward to compliment his pleasant character and his talent. Friends described Blackburn as having "an impishness his friends came to expect." Coworker Mike Prager called Reid "one of the funniest and most talented journalists in the Pacific Northwest" who "made his job look easy, he was that good." Tom Koenninger, editor of "The Columbian", described Blackburn's humor as "wry" and sometimes "acerbic", but elaborated that Blackburn was "gentle, displaying aggression when it was necessary for him to get close to a subject he was photographing." Commenting on her husband's dedication to photography, Fay Blackburn remarked, "if Reid were alive today, he'd probably be back on the front line seeking to capture the latest chapter in the mountain's evolution, in spite of the risk." "Reid loved that mountain. He climbed it, hiked it, skied it." She added that he died doing what he loved.