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.

I’ve been shooting football for Sports Illustrated every weekend since the season started and wanted to share some of my favorite images so far.

This was just a few days ago during warm-ups before the Dallas Cowboys - New York Giants game in New Jersey. Terrell Owens gave me a quick glance that kind of scared me a bit. SI gets the raw images un-toned, but I took the liberty of toning it up to post here.

I was in Pittsburgh last week to cover the Giants - Steelers game. Running back Derrick Ward had a nice hurdle over a Steelers defender. This was published in the magazine.

At the end of the Penn State - Ohio State game in Columbus, Nittany Lions running back Stephfon Green jumped into the small crowd of Penn State fans in the corner of the stadium.

I love the guys on the left dressed as PSU players. I’ve photographed them in Happy Valley, but didn’t know they travel to the road games as well. The “381″ is a reference to the number of victories Joe Paterno has in his career, the most ever by a division one football coach. He’s 81, after all, and in his 59th season with Penn State (43rd as head coach).

I think that’s my shadow just under Green’s left leg.

This Bills game was the first time in recent memory that I had good weather in Buffalo. It was cool and clear - a perfect day for football. But something always has to go wrong there. Three helium advertising balloons hit some power lines in the parking lot just before the game and knocked out all of the power to the stadium. There was no jumbotron, no announcements over the public address system, and coaches had to send players in with the play call just like in the old days.

During this field goal attempt, you can see the big screen is out but the lights were just starting to come back on.

Finally, I really like this cheerleader shot from the Ball State - Western Kentucky game. We have to shoot cheerleaders at every game (really!) because SI posts a gallery on the site each week.

It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.

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.

Last week I went back to the white house. No, not THE White House, but the one in State College, PA.

About a year ago, Penn State suggested that all of their fans wear white to the Notre Dame football game. Usually it’s just the students that participate, but on that day, more than 100,000 people joined in.

I photographed the event for Sports Illustrated and it was published in the “Leading Off” section across two pages (see it here).

A week ago, I was back again to cover the Illinois - Penn State game. It turns out that they were having their second ever white house.

I didn’t want to make the same photo again. Besides, this was an 8 pm game so I wouldn’t have a sunset like last time.

Instead, I decided to shoot the team running on to the field from a different angle. I’ve shot it from the front before (even had a cover from it), but had never tried it from the back at this stadium.

It took me a while to work my way through the crowd so that I could get in position before the game. When I got there, I convinced two students to let me stand between them so that I could center myself right over the tunnel where the team enters the field.

The photo ran in “Leading Off” again so I guess you could say that I’m now the official white house photographer.

Last week I covered three football games in four days for Sports Illustrated.

Thursday night was Redskins at Giants. The toughest part was finding a place to park.

I usually get my parking pass sent to me in advance, but I had to pick this one up on-site. I won’t bore you with the gory details, but let’s just say that it took three hours from the time I left my apartment until I got into the stadium. I live 20 miles away.

Read more »

I got a pleasant surprise today when I received a congratulatory email from my friend, photographer Tim Zielenbach. The news was confirmed when I opened my mailbox and saw my photo on the cover of the new Sports Illustrated.

It’s an action photo from the Clemson - Alabama game that I shot on Saturday night at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

Often the editors let the photographer know that they have the cover when the magazine closes on Monday night. But I didn’t hear from anyone this week and I actually felt like I had a lousy shoot. Shows what I know.

The cover story is about Alabama and college football’s Southeastern Conference. Coincidentally, two years ago I also had an action shot on the cover for another SEC story.

This is my seventh SI cover (not counting special issues), but it’s still pretty exciting news. My first one was five years ago this week. Four of the seven were college football photos.

I shot the Alabama game with the Nikon D3 and a 600 mm lens. My exposure settings were 1/800 of a second at F/4.0 (wide open on the 600) and a jaw-dropping ISO of 3200. The Georgia Dome is pretty dark and, since the game was at night, there was no extra light coming in through the translucent roof.

Unless I’m specifically shooting for a cover (which I wasn’t on Saturday), I generally leave my camera in the horizontal position. This photo was cropped into a vertical to fit the cover and held up incredibly well. The low-light ability of the D3 makes this photo possible. Images shot with cameras that were available even just a year ago would not have looked this good at 3200.

It’ll be interesting to see if the “SI jinx” affects Alabama. I don’t keep track, but I think it came into play with some of my other covers. If anyone wants to do the research, I’d love to know which of these “cursed” the team or player.

8/11/03 - Craig Krenzel / Ohio State
1/31/05 - Jeremiah Trotter / Philadelphia Eagles / NFC Championship
5/9/05 - Ben Wallace / Detroit Pistons / NBA Playoffs
11/28/05 - Joe Paterno / Penn State
10/16/06 - Tennessee football / SEC
1/22/07 - Drew Brees / New Orleans Saints
9/8/08 - Alabama football / SEC

If your favorite team was jinxed by my photo, remember that I don’t pick ‘em, I just shoot ‘em.