David Bergman — ALL ACCESS — sports, concert, and music photographer

When I went freelance in 2001, I decided that I was going to focus on two specialties - sports and music. I sometimes live in two different worlds and one has little to do with the other.

Last week was one of those weeks.

It started with a trip to Washington, DC to make portraits of USA women’s soccer goalkeeper Hope Solo. I had planned to photograph her outdoors in the goal under beautiful blue skies. Mother Nature didn’t cooperate so we were forced to shoot in a hotel ballroom. We had some fun playing around with the curtains that were already there.

The next day I photographed USA vs. Canada at RFK Stadium. Hope didn’t have much to do because the USA won 6-0 and Canada didn’t have any shots on goal.

During the week, it was mostly music. I shot both Filter and Serj Tankian in concert, did a portrait of Torche in Philadelphia, and covered the New Kids on the Block’s first performance together in 15 years.

Somewhere in there I also did a cover shoot for Folio Magazine with three executives from The Atlantic Monthly.

The week ended with me shooting Lorena Ochoa during three days of LPGA women’s golf in New Jersey.

Looking back, it was definitely an odd week. There have been some periods of time when either one of my specialties dominated, but last week it was about 50/50. I’m fortunate that I have some variety but still get to shoot the types of jobs that I really enjoy.

Wednesday was a really cool day. In the morning, I was the featured speaker at the “Apple Campus Lecture Series Photography Tour” in Philadelphia. I spoke for about an hour and a half - plenty of time to show some of my images and go through my Aperture workflow.

After the talk, I met innerpartysystem manager Stephen Penta for a two and a half hour drive to the band’s house in Mohnton, PA. Their music is hard to describe - sort of electronica with rock and metal influences. Depeche Mode meets Nine Inch Nails.

Mohnton is in the middle of nowhere. The four guys live together in this house and are pretty much surrounded by computers and keyboards all the time. It reminds me of my time as a student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

In addition to managing the band, Stephen is also a video director so we spent the entire week before the shoot coming up with funky photo ideas. The guys didn’t want to do any traditional band photos, so we decided to play around with some old TVs and video cameras.

In one of my emails with Stephen, I mentioned that it might be cool if we had a smoke machine but I wasn’t sure where I’d get one out there. He responded with, “Of course we have a smoke machine!”

We put the guys in the house and I set up the TVs and my lighting in the backyard. I shot a few different arrangements, but this is my favorite image.

Last week, I photographed Ministry in concert during the band’s farewell tour.

I knew it was going to be an interesting night when I walked in and saw them erecting a 10-foot high chain link fence in front of the stage.

The show wasn’t easy to photograph because I had to shoot through the fence most of the time. Also, this band must be allergic to light because they didn’t have any.

Luckily, Al Jourgensen would poke his head out over the top of the low fence section every once in a while.

What’s with the “no flash” rule at a show like this? The default rule for concert photography is “three songs, no flash.” Since I was on assignment for Kerrang Magazine, I was able to shoot the whole show, but why no flash? During the set, the band had a lot of strobe lights. I can’t imagine that they would even notice a photographer’s flash going off.

I’ve asked performers about it and they never have a problem with flash. Maybe it wouldn’t be appropriate at a quiet James Taylor show, but no one cares at a heavy metal gig.

So I kept the strobe on my camera “just in case.” Of course, as soon as Al popped his head out from behind that fence, the flash somehow accidentally went off. Oops. Not sure how that happened.