Brad Berger: Taking Time to Notice

You’ve seen Brad Berger’s photographs featured on HPR’s editorial page for some time now. They’ve ranged from birds and wildlife to bugs, trees, and everything in between.

Just recently, his art was presented as a gift to the Republic of Korea by the North Dakota trade delegation to Seoul, South Korea.

The emerging Fargo artist’s work has appeared in two North Dakota Outdoors calendars and on the back cover of that prestigious magazine. Calendars featuring his images as well as photo card sets have landed with some of the most prominent business leaders in the world.

He’s taken literally thousands of photos since embarking on this artistic journey in 2001 and still hardly anyone has heard a word from him about it.

Until now.

Because, quite honestly, he’s the very last person to promote himself as an artist. When HPR assigned an intern to do a feature on Brad Berger a year ago, he successfully scared her away by asking, “What in the hell would I do that for?”

He was less able to turn our editor down, someone who’s watched his photographic talents develop since day one. But that’s not to say he has much to say, mind you, especially when it comes to interviews. He prefers to let his pictures do the talking. Which they do. They speak volumes.

Brad Berger’s nature and wildlife photos are extraordinary. When you see his images of a golden eagle camouflaged in a tree, you are left in awe. When you see his horses padded with winter snow in a pasture, you are transported through time.

“I’ve just been kind of pushed for so many years to take pictures that when I finally decided to do it I figured I may as well get good at it, or at least try to,” he said. “It’s just gotten to be so much just a part of my day, if I see something interesting, to try and get photos of it.”

Brad Berger spends as much time as he possibly can outside, out of doors, off the beaten path. The bulk of his photos are taken while working at Tallgrass Trail not far south of Fargo.

“Some days I’ll take hundreds of photos, and other days it depends on what I see, what I’m out doing, or if I’m looking for something in particular,” he explained. “Like butterflies. Or like dragonflies on dewy mornings with heavy fog. You can see them looking at you and struggling to get away. They’re stuck there, it’s just hilarious watching them.”

One commercial studio making an enlargement of a dragonfly image assumed it was computer-generated. Berger laughed.

Hundreds of photos of deer, beaver and fox. Hundreds more of eagles, owls, pheasants and ducks. “We had a crew of pelicans last summer. We had three of them out there one day and I saw up to five. Big white pelicans out there swimming around,” said Berger, adding to the list.

“American Avocet, a really odd looking bird. Yellow-legged sand pipers, and the golden eagles, bald eagles, owls. There’s an awful lot of wildlife really close to town if people take the time to notice.”

A wildlife enthusiast his entire life, he appreciates those rare moments in nature. A blue heron with a bug on its beak. Tom turkeys fighting with one seemingly gobbling the other’s face. A red-tailed hawk eating a deer carcass – an immensely provocative and raw image, for sure. “He heard the shutter, and snap, that quick, ‘click.’ He looked at me and his wings went up and I went ‘click’ and he was gone.”

Moments like one with a spectacular golden eagle are unforgettable for Berger. “That was last fall. Just the fact that I got as close to it as I did without it lighting out of the tree…” Then there was the short-eared owl. “I shot 300 frames of that dang thing. I was just giddy all day long,” he explained, somewhat drawing a picture of how he intertwines his work with his photography.

“I’d go out and I’d look at it from the shop window. I’d jump in the truck and drive out, drive down the ditch a little closer to it, take a few more frames, hope I wouldn’t scare it off, drive back out of the ditch and back to the shop, and sit there and look out the window for about half an hour, and look out the window and go, ‘I gotta go do that again.’ Until I ate up all my memory cards.”

That owl photo was later featured in the North Dakota Outdoors calendar.

A pheasant hissing at Berger’s camera, how’d that happen?

“I wouldn’t let the pheasant cross the road in front of my truck,” he explained, chuckling. “I kept gunning ahead. Every time he tried to cross the road, I’d scoot the truck ahead until that pheasant got so mad he was screaming at me from the ditch. He was really angry.”

That angry pheasant picture, by the way, is on coffee mugs currently being evaluated by a major chain of sporting goods stores, as part of a potential product line bearing Berger’s photographs. That company also introduced him to a national firm representing some of the most respected and visible wildlife artists in the business.

You see, that’s Brad Berger. He did not ask for the introductions. They called him. He let his photos do the talking.

Trademark bandana, beard and bib overalls. Not many words at all, if Berger can have his say. “I am what I am. I’m going to show up being me and if you don’t like that, well the hell with you. If you are looking for a dignitary, you came to the wrong person.”

What you see is what you get, and what Brad Berger sees and shares, if you only take the time to notice, will get through to you loud and clear.