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

After I got back from my shoot in Jacksonville, I went right to Butler, MD to shoot family photos for an old friend. Shelley was one of my photo editors at the Miami Herald in the mid nineties and now she’s married with two boys.

Butler is a small country town about 45 minutes outside of Baltimore. The area is beautiful, but this city boy can’t go too long without feeling the desire to walk down the steps of a dirty subway station.

This guy, whom I photographed in Shelley’s back yard, is probably one of the few things that would warrant a double-take if he was seen walking down the streets of New York City.

We spent most of the first day hanging out and talking about old times at the paper. I also wanted the kids to get used to me being around so that they would act naturally when I took photos.

I always wanted a trampoline when I was a kid. Now I had a chance to jump on one and could pretend that I was only doing it out of professional obligation.

At dinner, Shelley had a laugh at my expense because I’ve never shucked an ear of corn. She then casually mentioned that there was some great color in the sky. Photo time! I grabbed my gear and brought the kids out to a clearing in front of the house.

I used my Nikon D3 with a 70-200 mm lens. It was quite dark, so I set my ISO at 800, aperture at 8.0, and shutter speed at 1/5 second. For lighting, Shelley was my VAL (voice-activated light stand) and held an SB-800 off to the right hand side.

Focusing was difficult because I could just barely make out the boys’ silhouette against the sky.

The next day I made photos of everything they did - playing in the barn, showing off their bull whipping skills, and horseback riding.

Yes, I rode a horse and no, you can’t see the photos.

That evening, I wanted to make a “Bergman” portrait. It took six of us, but we moved the trampoline from the back of the house to the front where I could get a clear view of the sky.

The boys had some friends over and they all play lacrosse, so it was just a matter of getting them to jump in the right place without getting hurt.

For this photo, I used the 14-24 on the D3, set my ISO at 200, aperture at 9.0, and shutter speed at 1/250 of a second.

In the front and to my left, I placed 2 Nikon SB-800 strobes inside of a large Chimera softbox using my two-flash speed ring. It was overcast, and the sky was grey, so I put a full CTO gel over the strobes. That way I could set my camera’s white balance to tungsten and “blue” the sky while still keeping a relatively neutral color on the boys.

I also put two separate SB-800’s in the back - one on each side. They were level with the trampoline just below the camera frame and pointed up about 45 degrees. I used the Nikon diffuser with no gels to create the blue rim light.

I triggered one of the two softbox strobes with a pocket wizard and set the other three lights to slave wirelessly in SU-4 mode. All strobes were at full power.

I was solely in charge of child wrangling because the other adults were enjoying cocktails off to the side.

Of course, I joined them after the shoot. After all, it was my professional obligation.

Yesterday I was in Jacksonville for a few hours to photograph Christian metalcore band Oh, Sleeper for Kerrang. The band is on tour and Jacksonville just happens to be where they were playing on the day that I was available.

The toughest part about this type of job is that I have to fly in and find a place to do a shoot very quickly. I’ve been to Jacksonville a few times, but have never scouted for locations.

After I landed, I went to the venue to see if it might work. It was locked and there was no one there, so I just walked around the neighborhood.

What did I find about a half a block away? A church! Too cliché for a Christian band? Maybe. But it was all I had and time was ticking.

I walked into the church offices and explained my situation to the director (”See, I’m shooting a Christian rock band for a British music magazine and would love to photograph them in your beautiful church.”)

To my surprise, he agreed.

I called the band to tell them where I was and began setting up my lights.

I kept my lighting very simple. I turned off most of the ambient light except for the altar and used a Nikon SB-800 with a Honl snoot in the front. It was placed as high as my stand would go and centered right over my head. I put a warming gel with some bubble wrap (yes, bubble wrap) in front of the snoot to soften the light a tad.

I also put a bare SB-800 in the back. It’s zoomed all the way so it doesn’t spread out too much.

I used the snoot in the front because it focuses the light onto their faces and upper body. I wanted the light to fall off at their legs and, more importantly, stay off of the carpet in front of them. If I had any stray light on the floor, it would wash out those nice beams of shadow being created by the back light.

Specs:
Nikon D3 body
Nikon 24-70 mm lens
Shutter speed: 1/13 sec (to bring up the ambient light in the background)
Aperture: 4.0
ISO: 800
Front light w/snoot: Nikon SB-800 on 1/8 manual power
Back light: Nikon SB-800 on 1/4 manual power
Both strobes triggered with pocket wizards

Right before I shot my first frame, a sweet older woman came in to practice on the pipe organ. Talk about cliché. It was pretty cool to hear that blasting away during the shoot as it really enhanced the mood.

The shoot went great, I packed up my bags, made sure everything was exactly as we found it, and left to catch my flight home.

As the TSA guy was screening my bag for explosives at the airport, he said he was impressed with how nicely my camera gear was packed. From a man who looks in people’s suitcases all day, I’ll take that as a compliment. Luckily he didn’t think my snoot presented any kind of threat.

It’s always cool when you can do a favor for friends and help raise awareness for a great cause at the same time. When Maureen and Tom Cavanagh asked me to shoot a charity basketball game in Harlem, there was no way I could turn them down.

Tom Cavanagh is most recognized from his TV show “Ed” and also plays Zach Braff’s older brother Dan on “Scrubs.” I’ve known his wife Mo for many years through her role as deputy photo editor at Sports Illustrated. They are two of the nicest, most down to earth people you will ever meet.

An SI column by Rick Reilly led to the creation of Nothing But Nets - a grassroots campaign to purchase anti-malaria bed nets to save the lives of children in Africa. Read the original article here and a follow-up here.

One person dies every 30 seconds from malaria, a disease that’s transmitted by mosquitoes. Malaria is particularly devastating in Africa, where it is the leading killer of children.

Tom actually had malaria as a kid when he lived in West Africa. He successfully beat it, but the experience motivated him to get involved with charitable initiatives to combat the disease.

For just $10, Nothing But Nets purchases and delivers an insecticide-treated bed net to a family in Africa. So far they’ve raised enough money for over 2 million nets and are constantly delivering them to families that need them.

For more information and to donate, go to NothingButNets.net (it’s “dot net,” get it?).

The first annual Cavanagh Classic took place yesterday at Harlem’s Rucker Park, a famous street basketball court where many top NBA players come to show their stuff during the summer.

I knew this wasn’t the NBA though when the “mascot,” a six-foot tall mosquito, showed up. If killing mosquitoes is the group’s goal, I think they’re on the right track because it must have been 150 degrees inside that poor guy’s suit.

I may have been donating my time, but I wanted to shoot this as if I was working for Sports Illustrated. I set up a few remote cameras and made this shot of Tom driving the lane.

They even had a slam dunk tournament at halftime.

Hey Tom — somehow I missed the shot of you making that monster dunk but it must have been because you jumped too high out of my camera frame. Maybe I’ll get it next year, unless they make you wear the mosquito suit.

A few years back, Digital Camera Magazine published an article about me entitled “The Frenetic World of David Bergman.” Sometimes I laugh about it when I’m home in my slippers taking out the trash.

But during this time of year the description is warranted. If I’m not on tour with a band, I’m usually shooting football for Sports Illustrated. I thought it might be interesting to go through last week’s schedule and give you an idea what’s it’s like to shoot for SI.

WARNING - this post is long but filled with tips for travelers and sports photographers like what not to say when trying to get a 45-lb. bag into an overhead compartment.

Read more »

For all of my fellow photo geeks out there, I recently wrote for sportsshooter.com about my experience with the Radiopoppers. If you use TTL, the wireless triggers are the most useful new strobe accessory to come out in years.

I based the piece around a shoot I did with the band innerpartysystem in Times Square (documented on my blog).

You can read the whole article here.