@davidbergman

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.

I recently had my first three-peat for Kerrang Magazine. It’s the third time I’ve been assigned to photograph innerpartysystem.

The first two shoots were portraits (see them here and here), but this time I went on the road with them to do a day-in-the-life type shoot.

We started in New York City where the guys had interviews at MTV and FUSE. Then it was five hours or so in the van to Boston. It was snug in there, but they were nice enough to make room for the writer and me.

The most interesting photos I made were taken as the guys loaded their gear into the club in Boston. There was a narrow alley that led to the back door and it was lit by a single flood light. It created a long shadow so I shot a bunch of frames as they came in and out of the doorway.

This isn’t one of the images I sent to the magazine because the guy in the back is the writer. But I like the mysterious feel of it and the flare coming over the lead singer’s shoulder.

I shot it using available light with the Nikon D3 and the 14-24 mm lens. I cranked my ISO to 3200, dropped my shutter to 1/30 and opened my aperture up to 2.8. There’s enough light bouncing around off the walls so I still get a little bit of fill on their faces.

The band travels with lights for the back of the stage, but none for the front. Club lighting is traditionally horrible, so this created another back lit situation. In this case, I decided to pop in a little bit of fill flash to compensate.

We were all pretty tired at the end of the day, but we managed to make it to our hotel in Boston. As I checked in, two of the guys were still passed out in the van.

I’m not sure if they left them there or not.

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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.

Continue reading Football and Sleep Deprivation

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.

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.