Blog | Jakob Berr Photography

Currently, I’m working on a story about model rocketry for an assignment in my Picture Story and Photographic Essay class. Once a month on a Saturday, the Columbia Rocket Club (CRC) arranges a rocket launch on a field near Sturgeon, Mo. Spectators and wannabe rocket scientists watch as the model builders shoot rockets of all shapes and sizes into the sky – up to an altitude of 6,000 ft. From the small rocket kits available in any toy store to full-blown, 6-ft.-and-over rockets – the CRC flies it all. The owners of the big rockets often spend months on building their aircrafts, and the equipment involved in launching and retrieving them reminisces of old science-fiction movies from the Fifties.

Model rocketry as a hobby dates back to the space-race era of the 1960s. It was developed as an alternative to the wide-spread amateur rocket activity that involved dangerous explosives and construction materials and was responsible for countless injuries and even deaths. The new model rockets were constructed from much safer materials such as cardboard, plastic and balsa wood, and they were propelled by professionally manufactured, replaceable single-use rocket motors. Ambitious rocket builders, however, still construct so-called high power rockets with motors exceeding 160 Newton-seconds of total energy contained. As these high power rockets reach extremely high altitudes and are propelled by highly reactive explosives, their use is strictly regulated by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

On Thursday, I spent the afternoon at CRC member Derek Kewley’s house to photograph him preparing one of his rockets. It was pretty interesting, although harder to photograph than I expected. He told me some pretty amazing stuff about rockets that he or his friends had launched. Some of them reached altitudes of almost 100,000 feet. Others reached only 4,000 feet – but did so in a single second.

I’m hoping that I will soon get to see an actual launch. Currently, the CRC members are waiting for the farmers to bring in their crop so that they can access the launch field. With all the recent rain however, this is currently a distant hope. The September launch had to be cancelled and if there is not a serious stretch of dry weather soon, the October launch might have to be cancelled as well (which for me would mean that I can’t make the deadline for the assignment). So let’s keep our fingers crossed that today’s weather was only the herald of a long, sunny late fall…

Derek prepares one of his rockets for launch in the garage of his home…

…which is stuffed with rockets of all shapes and sizes.

Folding the parachute that brings the rocket back to the ground safely.

An electronic altimeter measures and records altitude, speed and duration of the flight and sets off the parachute at the peak.

Putting all the elements of the rocket together requires some patience – and a flash light.

Once assembled, the rocket is an impressive 7 feet plus tall – I can’t wait to see that thing flying.

I’m not sure whether I prefer this shot or the previous one. I like the moment more in the one above, but this one shows a little more of the garage and all the rockets that fill it. I’d appreciate some feedback on this one!

Jeff Stack is the coordinator of the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation and legislative coordinator of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, both organizations that lobby against the death penalty in Missouri and the United States. Stack is a principled dissenter of capital punishment. “I recognize the preciousness of every human being in our world – of every life, really,” he says. “I feel some fire and righteous indignation that people are being murdered in our name.”

I did this project for my Picture Story and Photographic Essay class as a first step toward my professional project that I plan to do on capital punishment. Jeff is one of the corner stones of the anti-death penalty and the peace movements in Columbia, and he knows everything there is to know about the issue. I figured that he would be a great person to start my research, and he has been incredibly helpful so far.

However, I’m not yet entirely happy with the outcome of the project that I did on Jeff. I wish I would have had more time to spend with him, but because of MPW two weeks ago and having to catch up with class work afterward, it was really difficult to dedicate the time that this character profile would have needed before the deadline for the class yesterday. Jeff’s schedule in the week that we worked together didn’t include much actual anti-death penalty activities, so that the audio and the images in the slideshow don’t complement each other too well. I hope that I can work with Jeff a little more in the coming weeks to add another dimension to that.

Cosmin Motei, a friend of Calin’s from Romania, came to Columbia a few weeks ago to shoot this year’s Missouri Photo Workshop. We had a terrific time with him and I can’t wait to go and see him in Bucharest. On his last day, he and Calin invited a couple of people over for a traditional Romanian dish called Tocăniţă (pronounced Toh-ka-NI-tsa), an incredibly tasty and filling stew sort of food. I was a little sick that night, so I couldn’t stay as long as I would have wanted, but it was great seeing Cosmin before he left and sharing a delicious meal with all of them.

Note: There are no pictures of the food as we were all too busy eating it…

Note the enamored look with which the Bavarian expat spots his beloved Weißbier…
Photograph by Patrick Fallon

And enter Vivian and Michelle!

The usual playing around with the camera, photographing in mirrors and stuff. Photographers are terrible nerds…

I just love this picture. Calin fires Cosmin up for an interview about his experience in the States that he was going to give to a Journalism student from New Zealand.

And then of course we had to watch Benny Lava, the best Indian Dance Video ever…

Originally, I was planning to shoot a small documentary on this year’s Missouri Photo Workshop in Festus and Crystal City, Mo., but that turned out to be a very ambitious goal. As the webmaster of the MPW website, I spent most of my time at MPW behind my computer in an air-conditioned conference room of the Holiday Inn Express, sustaining myself with soda, M&Ms and Swedish Fish (thanks, Carol Fisher!), preparing dozens of html-templates for the launch of the website after the end of the workshop. However, I did manage to get a few shots at the beginning of the workshop.

Driving past the workshop photographers’ hotel. According to the barber in Festus (or, for that matter, one of the barbers’ in Festus – namely the one who made me look like Mr. Spock), obviously the scene of a grisly mass murder some years ago. Well, at least this year, we did not hear of any irregularities there.

Calin, together with Michelle Peltier this year’s Master of the Universe (a.k.a. Student Workshop Coordinator), pretends to be working on his laptop after setting up the workshop venue Saturday night.

When I got closer, he quickly switched to another application so that I would not notice that he was actually playing some funny browser game.

Believe it or not, but even a David Kennedy has physical limits…

David Rees, center right, discusses his upcoming yodel performance with the multimedia team.

In a detailed presentation of what to expect, the workshop participants are being prepared for the upcoming week.

Faculty presentations…

Kim Komenich, a veteran of countless MPWs (faculty as well as shooter) listens to the faculty presentations.

The almighty workshop masters at their control center.

Tweeting, blogging, taking notes for the Rangefinder, classwork. Pick any of the above and you probably know what Erin Schwartz is doing here.

Calin on the edge…

David Kennedy (a.k.a. DK) left the printers alone for a while to listen in on the faculty presentations.

Jessie King, one of last year’s student workshop coordinators, probably thinking about how happy she is that she actually gets to sleep during this year’s workshop.

Larry Dailey gave a terrific presentation about compassion fatigue, play and innovation.

Liz Lance, left, during her research on healthy food at MPW…

Finally, after a long day, the hungry pack stormed a nearby Mexican restaurant to kill their entire beer and food supplies.

Calin was particularly happy when he found out that he could smoke inside the restaurant rather than having to stand outside.

And then Seth Putnam lit up his classy pipe…