ALTPICK.COM

"The Surprise of Photography," Bill Bernstein says, "is that even when you think you've got it, a better shot could be just around the corner." 'The Corner' Bill Bernstein is talking about, is the year and a half he has just spent shooting Paul McCartney on his World Tour. "There was a moment backstage when I had finished photographing Paul and I was sitting around doing nothing and all of a sudden George Martin (the Beatles' producer) and his wife walked in the dressing room. There was a wonderful interchange between him and Paul. You just never know."

A native New Yorker, Bernstein picked up his first camera, a Brownie, when he was eight years old and took a picture of his cat. "My father was a weekend photographer and I'd work with him in the basement darkroom. He put me in charge of agitating chemicals." Bernstein continued to take pictures for fun while studying and eventually working in Graphic Design until he realized it wasn't for him. "I did not like working inside," he explains.

It would seem a wise choice considering Bernstein's first assignment as a professional photographer back in the early eighties was to shoot Tito Puente and Carlos Santana at Roseland. "I had put a portfolio together and was showing it to the art director at the Village Voice. All of a sudden a writer came in and said they needed a photographer that night. Something happened to the original photographer and the art director said 'why not let this guy do it.'" After freelancing as a photojournalist for the Village Voice Bernstein moved into shooting studio portraits before returning to documentary style.

Bernstein's work can be viewed in a book due out in the fall from Chronicle Books entitled "Each One Believing". It is a document of Paul McCartney's recent tour including overheard dialogue and over two hundred pages of Bernstein's photos. Bernstein spoke to Altpick.com about the book, his work, and what it's like to hang around with an icon.

You had been doing a lot of portrait photography prior to the tour. Was it a big learning curve to suddenly become a rock photographer?
I learned on the fly. I had never been thrown into that situation before. I was literally in a different town every other day, so I didn't even have time to drop the film off and pick it up. I called a couple of people I knew and asked them what a rock photographer does and what kind of equipment I would need. Basically it was very similar to shooting journalistically which is what I had done originally. But in 1989 it was a pre-digital world. Paul really likes to see prints the day after the shoot so I had to figure out ways to get the film processed and prints made in a hurry.

Do you remember your first day back in '89?
Yeah. It was a rehearsal at an LA sound stage. When I walked in the band started playing the whole melody from the second side of Abbey Road, the long instrumental with 'Carry That Weight' and all that. Very few people had ever heard this live before and I remember being overwhelmed. Lots of goose bumps

How did the recent tour come about?
I got a call from Paul's people; this must have been about February 2002. They said he was going out on tour through the United States and would I come for two weeks. Two weeks became the first leg of the tour. After the first leg Paul decided he was going to do second leg, then a third leg which was all through Europe and Russia. So, two weeks ended up being a year and a half. Thrown into the mix I photographed Paul and Heather's wedding in Ireland in June of 2002.

How so?
It was extremely well received by audiences and critics. There was a terrific vibe between him and the group. It just felt like it should be documented. Towards the end of the third leg they found a publisher. At that point I started filling in any gaps I had to tell the story.

Once the book evolved did that change the way you took your pictures?
When I found out a book was being made, I tried to get as much documentary fly on the wall stuff that I could. I wanted to tell what it is like to be on the road. With Paul McCartney you are really in the center of the storm.

Technically how was shooting digitally different for you?
As I had mentioned Paul really likes to see images right away so one of the great advantages was I did not have to find a lab in Oshkosh in the middle of the night to process film. I was able to show Paul work very quickly on the computer or an Epson print. I was also able to send images around the world to magazines, newspapers and agents from a hotel room via the internet. I had spent a little time shooting digitally before the tour but most of what I shot before this tour was film, and had the film scanned. I have worked with Photoshop for years and am very skilled at it. When I joined up on the tour I picked up a D1x and a D100 Nikon camera and found that there wasn't that steep of a learning curve between shooting film and digital. In many ways I found it much easier to shoot digitally than shooting film, especially when I was in different lighting situations every few minutes. One minute I was shooting Paul in a limo and then in a huge open sodium vapor lit backstage, then a confined little tungsten lit dressing room, then out in the arena doing a sound check. I was all over the place in totally different situations. I found that when using available light, or a strobe on camera, or daylight, the ability to be able to get a sneak peak at what was happening with the lighting balance on the digital camera and making the necessary adjustments was phenomenal. It really helped me to shoot better.

- Contributed by Mary-Beth Holland