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

They tell you to never look directly into the sun, right? Sometimes it’s fun to break the rules.

Last week I was on assignment shooting Shinedown at the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, NJ. I had very little time to make a portrait, so I did a quick CYA shot and then moved the guys over to a couch in the corner.

At camera left, I put a big softbox with two SB-900 strobes on a dual-flash speed ring. Nothing too crazy there.

But then I took an SB-800 and placed it under the couch, pointing straight out at me. I set the light on manual at full power and used Pocket Wizards to trigger everything.

So, what happened? The softbox did exactly what it was supposed to do. It gave me nice, soft, light falling evenly across the frame. There’s a reflection off the texture on the wall at far right, but I kind of like it.

What about that little “sun” on the floor? It completely blew out (there is absolutely no detail in there) and even flared out over Brent’s leg.

This is a no-no in some photography circles, but I like the way it looks. It adds a bit of grunginess to the image.

I did my RAW conversion, basic toning, and vignetting in Aperture. Then I brought it into Photoshop to play with the color tone for the final result.

For the concert a few hours later, I did something similar. I put a blue-gelled SB-900 in the far corner near the back of the stage. I asked for permission from the tour manager and he said it was OK, but if it affected the band during the show I’d have to turn it off. No problem.

I got about 20 frames before the sound guy sitting near my light pushed it over. I asked him what happened and he said that the flash was bothering him.

Too bad. The images were looking pretty good despite the fact that, once again, I was shooting right into the strobe. All of the red light from the front is the club’s lighting while the blue in the back and on the ceiling is all coming from my strobe.

I would have liked to shoot the whole show like that, but I still made a few other nice frames after putting the flash away. I especially like this one in black and white.

Ideally, I’d like to have at least two strobes firing — one in the back and another one in the front. I’d put them off camera and out to the side so I don’t blind the band with every shot.

It’s OK to break the rules, but I still wouldn’t want the band looking directly into the sun. Or my strobe.

Recently, I had an assignment from Kerrang Magazine to shoot Lamb of God singer Randy Blythe recording in the studio. Sounds simple enough, right? The catch is that the studio was 280 miles away.

I packed two Nikon D3 bodies, three lenses, four SB-800 strobes, Pocket Wizard and Radiopopper wireless systems, two shoot-through umbrellas, and all of the necessary hardware into my Thinktank Airport Security roller bag.

I also brought my Domke F-400 sling bag with three lightweight stands, one low-profile stand and a large Chimera softbox. I usually have an idea of how I want to light each job in advance, but I bring extra gear in case the situation changes.

After returning the rental car from my shoot with Madina Lake the day before, I flew to Boston and then drove to the studio in Rochester, NH. Thank goodness for GPS, because the studio is pretty far away from civilization. Here’s a quick photo I shot with my iPhone.

When I arrived, I knocked on the door and called the studio number but got no response. After an hour of sitting in the car and emailing back and forth with the publicist in London, it turned out that someone was in the studio and just couldn’t hear the phone or door. He let me in, but Randy wasn’t there yet. I was told he was “on the way.”

Two hours later, Randy finally arrived. Apparently there was some miscommunication along the chain of photographer-magazine-publicist-management-studio-artist. I had hoped to spend at least a couple of hours shooting a portrait and the recording session, but since the last flight out of Boston was rapidly approaching, I had to switch to hurry-up mode.

Randy wasn’t feeling well but agreed to shoot a quick portrait outside. He wore the clothes that he arrived in and looked like rocker/hunter Ted Nugent. It was cold out, so I took him right outside the studio and shot 14 frames in 93 seconds using one wireless strobe with an umbrella. Normally, I’d want to work the session for a bit and shoot at least 100 frames, but it just wasn’t going to happen under the circumstances.

Back in the studio, I was amazed how quickly he was able to get into “screaming” mode as he worked with producer Josh Wilbur. I set up two wireless strobes - one with an umbrella in the front and the other with a blue gel in the back. Halfway through, I took the umbrella off and bounced the front light off the ceiling so it wouldn’t be so directional.

My original plan of casually shooting a few hundred frames during the session went out the window because I had very little time left at this point. I shot 59 frames in 11 minutes and 48 seconds.

After that, I packed up as quickly as I could, drove back to Boston, and flew home. I worked on the photos as soon as I got in and sent seven images to Kerrang before going to bed.

During the 15+ hour day, I took three Hertz shuttles and two Delta flights. I also spent four and a half hours driving and four hours sitting around waiting.

I only shot 73 frames in 13 minutes and 21 seconds, but I think I got what I needed. Kerrang published the outdoor portrait with the caption “Forest Grump.”

On Tuesday, I shot Madina Lake while they were working on their new album “Attics to Eden” in a recording studio in New Jersey.

It’s always a challenge to make a natural looking “in studio” shot because bands rarely record multiple instruments at the same time. Each of the parts are recorded at different times so we have to set up a shot of the guys surrounded by recording equipment to show they’re in the studio.

After getting that out of the way, I moved them into the large studio, where there’s a foosball table. I thought it would be a fun prop for a photo, but I had no idea that these guys are very competitive foosballers. I just let them go at it while I shot away.

At the end, I posed them for a more formal portrait. I would have liked to get my camera lower into the table so the wooden foosball men were more prominent, but I couldn’t fit the D3 and 14-24 in between the posts without taking apart the table. I didn’t think the studio manager would be too happy about that, so I made the best of it.

The goal of a shoot like this is to get a few different “looks” in a short amount of time. The guys were a pleasure to work with and everything went smoothly — as long as I didn’t try to take them away from the foosball table.

This past week I made portraits of the band Houston Calls. Since the guys are based in New Jersey, they agreed to come in to New York City for the shoot.

I originally wanted to photograph them in the park where I shot Armor For Sleep. But when I met them, we decided it would be more fun to stand in the middle of a major city street.

I set up my lights on the median in the middle of Broadway and just hoped that we wouldn’t get busted for not having a permit.

I put warming gels on two SB800’s and dialed my camera’s white balance to compensate. As I’ve discussed before, this “normalizes” the light on the guys while turning the background a cold blue.

I processed my RAW files in Aperture and did some tweaking in Photoshop to get the final image.

Despite a few comments from passersby and a couple of honking horns, the shoot went off without incident.

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.

I spent all day Saturday in the hot sticky mess that is known as the 2008 Warped Tour, where crowd surfing is the most popular attraction.

There were 103 bands playing on 12 stages in the Nassau Coliseum parking lot. I bought quite a few $6 Gatorades throughout the day.

I had a few minutes to do portraits with All That Remains. With limited location options, I put them in between some tour buses and shot from a low angle. The sun was directly overhead, so I put a couple of Nikon SB800 strobes inside of a large Chimera softbox using a two-flash speed ring. Some toning in Photoshop completed the look.

After the portrait session, I shot the band in concert. It was a hair-raising experience.

I also shot a bit from the stage, which usually makes for a decent photo.