The Best Damn Photo

Earlier this month I shot a handful of concerts for Avril Lavigne. She's currently on tour to support her album, "The Best Damn Thing" and is putting out a live DVD from the Toronto show.

I've worked with Avril before but had not seen this tour. She really knows how to work an audience and her fans love it. The last time I photographed her she was just a kid, but now at the ripe old age of 23 she really seems to be having fun on stage.

Screaming by the Rapids

On Sunday I flew to Grand Rapids, MI for the afternoon to photograph Mayday Parade.

The band picked me up at the airport in their rental RV. It's a major step up from the beat up van that most bands travel in when they're on tour.

I immediately hit it off with Brooks the guitarist because he was reading a book about how to properly play and bet blackjack. I learned the game by playing a video game when I was a kid. I still enjoy playing whenever I find myself in Vegas or Atlantic City. Not big money - just for fun.

Good luck Brooks and let me know how you fare.

I took the guys downtown near the river and we spent a couple of hours shooting. I always like to make people scream for photos and it was easy to get the guys into it. I usually scream first and then they follow along.

I'm surprised that no one called the police as we were right in front of the Gerald Ford Museum.

Day in the Life of a Draft Pick

For the last 4 or 5 years, Sports Illustrated has assigned me to cover the NFL draft. On the days leading up to the event, they take some of the top prospects around New York City and I'm granted exclusive access to ride around town with the guys.

It's a bit like Groundhog Day considering that they pretty much do the same 6 or 7 events every year -- the network morning shows, football drills with local kids, visiting sick children at Mt. Sinai Hospital, etc.

I've posted a few images of #1 pick Jake Long -- having makeup put on with his mother for the Today Show, getting destroyed at Wii boxing by a 10 year old at Mt. Sinai, and looking at cheap handbags on the streets on NYC with fellow draftee Chris Long (no relation).

It's pretty funny to see them checking out the wares on the street because Jake signed a deal with the Dolphins for almost $60 million. I'm sure Chris, son of hall of fame player Howie Long, won't do so badly either since he was the #2 pick on Saturday.

Overall, this group of guys was great to deal with and didn't seem to mind me being in their face for two straight days. I spent some time chatting with Boston College QB Matt Ryan and was really impressed with him. He seems to have a good head on his shoulders.

He'll need it because he was the third overall pick and will be taking the reins for the Falcons someday soon. Their last star quarterback (2001 #1 draft pick Michael Vick) didn't fare too well.

At the draft itself, I put a lot of pressure on myself to make unique photos each year at Radio City Music Hall. This time I set up a couple of remote cameras including one with a fisheye lens behind the stage.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I'll let you decide.

Polish Me Up

Entertainment industry website Starpolish recently interviewed me for a feature piece. Here's their intro:

Professional photographer David Bergman has figured out a way not to have a "job" -- he loves what he does so much, it rarely ever feels like work. StarPolish Associate editor Kristina Mondo recently caught up with Bergman to talk about shooting sports and music, how he got his start, and what he thinks of the paparazzi.

Read the whole thing here.

Buried in Brooklyn

I traveled all the way down to Williamsburg in Brooklyn today with my assistant J. Karsten Moran. When you live in Manhattan, going to Brooklyn is like going to another country. The truth is that it was only about a 45-minute cab ride, but I digress.

We spent some time shooting three guys in the band A Place to Bury Strangers. Somehow I forgot to ask them about the name, but maybe it's better that I didn't.

The guys were great, so we spent some time shooting a few different set-ups with a lot of lighting.

I was just about ready to pack it in when I saw this wall with three cutouts in it. Karsten said, "Why don't you put them with their faces in the holes?"

I shot it using only available light in open shade, and it turned out to be the best image from the day. Thanks, Karsten!

Praying with Ziggy

Yesterday I covered the 79th Annual Blue-Gold Game, otherwise known as the Notre Dame spring football scrimmage. Since I attended the University of Miami I have an innate dislike of the Fighting Irish. Also, Notre Dame's football stadium is traditionally one of the worst places for photographers to work because the sidelines are always packed with people who don't mind stepping in front of a camera lens whenever they feel like it. On top of that, it was forecast to rain all day.

I went into the Sports Illustrated assignment hoping for the best but expecting the worst. There must have been some divine intervention because the sidelines weren't overly crowded and there wasn't a drop of rain during the entire scrimmage.

I played around with a little device I call "Ziggy." It's actually the ZigView - a video monitor that I hook up to my camera so I can fire the shutter remotely while still looking through the viewfinder.

I placed a fisheye lens on a monopod and held it up as high as I could get it. Most people who try this just wind up doing a "hail mary" (appropriate at Notre Dame), but since I had the video monitor I could actually compose the image while shooting.

Here are a couple of frames I made with Ziggy.

TRAVEL FUN: Sometimes you just have one of those days. Flying to Chicago on Friday was one of those. I had the car service pick me up, but it took much longer to get to LaGuardia than normal due to "Pope traffic." The Pontiff was in town and it was wreaking havoc all over the city.

I arrived about 30 minutes before my flight. I didn't expect it to be a problem because the Delta shuttle flies out of the less-crowded Marine Air Terminal. The agent at the counter must have been new because he somehow accidentally canceled my reservation. It took him about 20 minutes to get it back, although I lost my medallion upgrade. After being help up at security (very typical for me with all of my gear), there was some question as to whether I'd get on the flight at all but I managed to snag the last seat on the plane.

The landing at Midway in Chicago was one of the harriest I've ever experienced. We had a lot of turbulence and right before we landed the pilot did this crazy 180 degree turn at an angle I've never quite experienced on a commercial flight. I thought maybe he was training to be a Blue Angel.

Then, at the last minute, he revved up the engines and pulled back up. That's not good. After we leveled out, he made an announcement that traffic was a little tight at the airport so we had to abort the landing and come around again. I think that's pilot code for "there was another plane on the runway and I didn't want to crash into it."

On the second approach, he did that same crazy 180 turn and bounced down a bit on the runway. On the way off the plane, I asked the pilot if that was the normal approach for Midway. He said because of the strong winds, the tower was having planes land that way. I also asked how low we were the first time when he had to pull up. 400 feet. Fun!

Oh, the places I've been

The last couple of weeks have been quite an adventure. I was on planes, trains, and automobiles - sometimes all in one day. I travelled back and forth across the U.S. twice, and even visited Canada for a few days. It's amazing that I get paid to do this.

It started in Bridgeport, CT where I covered the first round of the women's NCAA tournament for Sports Illustrated. Four basketball games in one day. I had a few remote cameras set up which pushed my total number of photos to more than 6,000 for the day.

After a short bout with strep throat, I was off to San Francisco to speak for Apple on the Aperture World Tour. Since it's so close to Cupertino, there were a few Apple managers sprinkled in the crowd of about 300. No pressure, right? The day went smoothly and feedback was great, so I can't complain.

The only hitch was that after flying for almost 7 hours I had to take a shower in the hotel health club because my room wasn't ready. I also panicked fora bit because I thought the front desk staff lost my drivers license. That would have made it difficult to get on my flight home the next day. But then I remembered I had turned it in for a locker key at the health club and they simply forgot to give it back. Whew.

I was in California for one day before flying back to NYC.

TRAVEL FUN: There was a guy on my flight who refused to move his clothes from the last open overhead bin so that I could put my roller bag up (containing $15,000 worth of camera gear).He had a tweed coat and what looked like a fedora and the items were taking up a ridiculous amount of space. I asked him nicely and he simply refused to move his stuff. I was about to push harder when the flight attendant came over and forced him to take down his stuff So I could put my bag up.

The next day I drove to Atlantic City to work for Avril Lavigne. I was hired to shoot the stills for her live DVD filming in Toronto so I decided to go to the Atlantic City show in advance to see the show and the lighting.

I drove back home after the concert and got in around 2am. Twelve hours later I was on a plane back to California.

I'm proud to say that I won the plane-wide trivia contest on the seat-back video monitor. My late father would have been proud because his brain was filled with all kinds of useless trivia. I usually don't retain data like that in my brain, but I had just enough to beat out about 25 other passengers.

I spent a few days at the Palm Springs Photo Festival and met a lot of cool people including awesome portrait photographer Frank Ockenfells III. He's surprisingly down to earth considering his list of big time clients.

I was home for another 12 hours before heading to Toronto. I spent one day documenting a video shoot for three bands on Wind-Up Records and the next day shooting the Avril show. Those two days accounted for another 4,000+ images.

One advantage of having that much time in the air is that I was able to re-watch the entire third season DVD of the new Battlestar Galactica - the best show on television.