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

A couple of weeks ago, I photographed the 2008 SEC championship football game on assignment for Sports Illustrated. The Florida Gators beat the Alabama Crimson Tide at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta to advance to the BCS title game in January.

I thought I’d steal a page from Chase Jarvis’ playbook (thanks, Chase!) and put together a video with most of my images from the shoot.

There are a total of 1,304 still photos used in this three-minute piece. I shot 1,859 frames at the game, but the video is edited down for time. A handful of the photos are repeated to work with the music.

It starts with pre-game shots of the coaches and goes all the way through the trophy presentation and Tim Tebow’s post-game lap around the field.

If you’re reading this via email or RSS, you may not see the embedded flash player above. Click here to view it on my blog. You can also download a higher resolution version on the vimeo site after creating a free account.

I shot the game with 3 Nikon cameras: a D3 with a 600 F/4, a D3 with a 200-400 F/4 (awesome lens!), and a D300 with a 24-70 F/2.8. At the end of the game, my assistant held my long lenses while I ran around the field using a D3 with the 24-70 and an SB-800 flash.

The SI cover was Bill Frakes’ great shot of Tebow celebrating. You’ll see that I chose to shoot that same sequence with the wide lens to show the packed stadium (2:22 and 2:34 in the video). It usually happens so fast that you just have to go with your gut (and whichever lens you can pick up first!).

Feel free to ask questions or let me know what you think in the comments.

In between football games, I spent a week in Miami Beach at Best Buy’s “convergence summit.” It’s a retreat for some of the company’s top employees and I was brought in by Blue Pixel, a group of digital photography experts. They organized some fun events including a video commercial production contest, green screen karaoke, and technology presentations by photographers like me.

I’ve worked Best Buy events in the past and they are a lot of fun. It’s a nice change of pace from my usual shooting schedule and is always in a great locale.

Most of the time I was either speaking with small groups or helping teams with their video projects.

We did have some time to relax, though. One night there were about 50 of us hanging out on the beach around midnight. It was dark. The beach was lit only by moonlight. I took some photos of home theater supervisor Stephanie Radtke near the water, but it needed a little punch. I asked Blue Pixel president Alex Stevens to hold my small flashlight.

It gave just enough pop to light up her portrait.

I shot the photo with the D3 and 14-24 at 6400 ASA, 1/15 sec, and F/2.8.

At the end of the week, we were treated to a private concert by Ludacris. There were a lot of cell phone cameras, but I had the only “real” camera in the room.

It’s a good thing that the light was so good in the Jackie Gleason Theater. Otherwise, I would have had to pull out my flashlight.

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.

Each year on or around my daughter’s birthday, I make an official “portrait” of her. This started at six months when I took a photo of Amanda trying to eat her own foot (she’s brilliant!). I have all of the photos hanging in chronological order on the wall in my office.

 

Amanda turned four in January and we had a party for her with most of her friends from the pre-k class. It was a busy day (ever try to wrangle a dozen four-year-olds?), so I didn’t really have a chance to set up my lights.

Later that week, the three of us flew to Florida to go on the Barenaked Ladies cruise. It’s awesome when my family can come with me on a job that includes a Caribbean cruise, although they generally don’t see a lot of me during the week.

When we were visiting Grandma’s house in Boynton Beach, I made a photo of Amanda running down the sidewalk after checking out the pool. I was shooting a Nikon D300 with the 17-55 lens and ran backwards as she sprinted down the street. Auto-focus is a wonderful thing in this situation as I wasn’t even looking through the lens.

 

After the trip, I showed Amanda a few different pics that I shot of her and asked which one she wanted to be her “official” four-year-old portrait. This is the one she picked. She’s actually a pretty good photo editor!

This month I photographed the women’s NCAA basketball tournament, shot boxing at Madison Square Garden, and made new portraits of the Pat McGee Band.

But my photo of the month is a little more close to home. My 3-year old daughter Amanda Grace was the lucky recipient of a blue lollipop after getting her hair cut and this was the result.

 

I used a toy lens called, appropriately, the “lensbaby” to give the photo a unique look. It’s a tilt/shift lens that keeps the center of the frame sharp while throwing the rest of the image out of focus.

The tongue, however, is no trick photography.

Pure Amanda.