@davidbergman

Update: ** CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE PRINTS OF MY INAUGURATION PHOTO. **

Wow.

I covered my first inauguration and what an inauguration it was.

Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States in a ceremony on the west front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, DC.

Before Tuesday, I had photographed five presidents and covered big events including the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and concerts like Live 8 and Live Earth.

But this one was the biggest.

It deserved a big photo.

I made a panoramic image showing the nearly two million people who watched President Obama’s inaugural address. To do so, I clamped a Gigapan Imager to the railing on the north media platform about six feet from my photo position. The Gigapan is a robotic camera mount that allows me to take multiple images and stitch them together, creating a massive image file.

My final photo is made up of 220 Canon G10 images and the file is 59,783 X 24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels. It took more than six and a half hours for the Gigapan software to put together all of the images on my Macbook Pro and the completed TIF file is almost 2 gigabytes.

Use the controls to zoom and pan around the photo. You can also double click to zoom in and double click again to get even closer.

(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. Additionally, you can view the panorama full screen or on the Gigapan site.)

Since people move around slightly as the photos are taken, there are a few small glitches in the image. The software did a fantastic job, however, and there is amazing detail when you zoom all the way in.

I’ve only just started to explore the photo myself, but I found Yo-Yo Ma taking a picture with his iPhone.

If there’s enough interest, I might make the image available as a large print. I’ll write another post in the next few days showing some of the more traditional photos I shot, but they’re only a “measly” 12-megapixels each.

Update: ** CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE PRINTS OF MY INAUGURATION PHOTO. **

I recently produced a short video about Perry, a homeless young man who is choosing to stay at Covenant House in New York City instead of living with an abusive family. You might be surprised to hear that he’s a talented pianist — completely self-taught — and writes his own music. He has ambitions of going to college and working in the music business.

I volunteered to produce the piece for Do1Thing.org (blog). The nationwide movement strives to raise awareness for the more than 1.3 million homeless youth in America by asking everyone to simply Do 1 Thing on Valentines Day, 2009. It’s a chance to help someone less fortunate than yourself.

This isn’t a documentary. I prefer to call it a “video portrait.” It’s 2 1/2 minutes long and should give you a sense of who Perry is.

(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.)

Do1Thing was founded by Najlah Feanny and Pim Van Hemmen, who have recruited 26 Pulitzer Prize winners for the project. They also did an amazing job setting up the New Jersey Heart Gallery a few years ago. The portraits I shot for them in 2005 led directly to children getting adopted. It was an amazing experience.

If you’re not interested in the technical details of how I put the Perry video together, you can stop right here. Otherwise, keep reading.

Continue reading Will You Do 1 Thing on Valentine’s Day?

I shot the Barenaked Ladies ringing in the new year at the Fox Theater in Detroit for TourPhotographer.com. The guys dressed up for the occasion, so I’ve now photographed them in just about everything from a tuxedo to, well, nothing.

Right before the band went on stage, I made my favorite image of the night. Steven Page was fixing his bow tie in the mirror when Ed Robertson came over to give him a hand. It was a nice moment that most people never get to see.

(Nikon D3, 24-70, 1/125, F/2.8, 1600 ISO, SB-800 bounced off ceiling)

During the show, I had a remote camera mounted on a lighting rig at the back of the stage so I could get a shot of the sold-out venue. When the house lights came up during “If I Had A Million Dollars,” I knew I had my shot. On a large print, you can see almost every face in the crowd.

(Nikon D700, 14-24, 1/125, F/4, 1600 ISO, Pocket Wizard remote trigger)

I also arranged for a security guard to bring me a chair to stand on right before midnight so I could shoot over the crowd during the balloon drop. It worked out well, except for the fact that the same security guard decided to stand right in front of me at the last second. It’s kind of odd to see one guy facing the wrong direction right in front of the stage.

(Nikon D3, 24-70, 1/500, F/2.8, 1600 ISO)

These photos and about a dozen others are available as prints at TourPhotographer.com. Click on any of the images to go directly to the gallery.

Have a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year!

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.

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.