Blog | Jakob Berr Photography

Here’s another set of pictures from my trip into the past times of analog photography, shot between February 6 and February 13. They’re just random snap shots of things that cought my eye in the streets of Columbia, but it’s all stuff that sort of makes this town what it is – at least for me.

Even though it’s blurry, there is something about this image that I like. It sort of has something mysterious about it, with the clouds, the lights in the windows and the smoke (or vapor) that’s rising up from the Mosque.

Where else than in the window of Arnie Fagan’s “Cool Stuff” on Broadway can you see Moses next to Big Foot and Jesus next to a Smoking Elephant?

I wish the flag in this picture would be somewhat clearer. This is what happens when you got spoiled by the insane ISO speeds of digital photography and then go back to shooting with 400 ISO film…

Snow falls in front on Lakota’s on 9th Street. Moments after I took this picture, the sun came out and shone through the snowflakes and a guy was standing outside in front of the window in the backlight smoking a cigarette. I missed it because I was talking to a friend and when I noticed it it was already too late. By the time I had my camera up, the sun was gone. I still regret missing that picture.

The view from our apartment at night.

Here are two more pictures from my trip into the past times of analog photography, shot on February 13. Bharat Choudhary, a close friend and colleague of mine, is doing his professional project with families all over the state and even in neighboring states and he will need a car to get around – which means that he’ll have to get a Missouri driver’s license. So he asked me if he could take a few practice hours in my car, and a couple of weeks ago we went out and drove around Columbia and down Highway 63 for a while.

The day after, we both found out how lucky we were to still be alive when the right front wheel suspension of my car broke out of the blue in the parking lot opposite the Reynold’s Journalism Institute. If that had happened at 70 mph on the highway, we would have both been nothing but a bloody stain on the road…

Carefully making his way down Broadway…

The unfamiliar view from the passenger seat of my car.

About time for some updates here… Over the last weeks, I have been shooting a lot of analog black-and-white, mainly because I just felt like doing it and because I was fed up with digital photography. After posting a few initial images several weeks back, I was waiting for fresh developer for about three weeks before I could finally start developing and scanning all those rolls of film that had accumulated in my backpack in the meantime. Over the next few days, I’ll post a few selects of that time.

Today’s photos are from a hip-hop battle a couple of weeks back at the Blue Fugue. Since I didn’t really pursue a journalistic mission with this field trip into analog photography, I don’t have any captions to go with this particular set of images. But that wasn’t the point of it, either. Let me know what you think of them!

Last Sunday, Volker, Martial, Miten, John, Chelsea, Beth and I went to Finger Lakes State Park to enjoy the spring weather and get some fresh air. I finally got to play around with my 90mm after I had it in service for some focussing issues. It was a pretty amazing day, even though it was a little bit cooler than we expected. But we managed to keep ourselves warm with Beth’s washers set.

For all those who (like me) don’t know what washers is: It’s a game where you have to toss washers into a box from a certain distance. There’s a tube in the box, and if you manage to land your washer in the tube, your team gets three points. If it lands in the box, it’s worth one point. It’s not easy, as the washers tend to bounce out of the box even if you land them perfectly. But it’s fun as hell.

Once it got too cold to stay out, we all headed over to Beth’s and started a spontaneous barbecue. Her neighbors joined in, too, and it turned out to be a pretty fun night…

The crowd arrives at the picnic spot at Finger Lakes State Park.

John tries to calm down Presley, one of Chelsea’s two cats, who were with us on the trip and quite excited.

A truly international crowd: Volker from Germany, Martial from Cameroon and Miten from England (left to right).

They have a fire pitch at Beth’s place, so we combed their back yard for some fallen branches and found some nice, big pieces of wood. Kept us warm for the night…

Tatsuro (center), an exchange student from Japan, came over along with a few other people and added another continent to our international mix.