Blog | Jakob Berr Photography

I just discovered Grooveshark for myself, an amazing online music library that lets you put together playlists, save them and even embed them on your blog with a player. The variety of music on there is incredible. So far, I haven’t come across a song that I couldn’t find on Grooveshark. Even my friend Tobi’s rare early blues and jazz recordings were on there. Here is a playlist I put together that is probably going to be played a lot this summer…

Last Thursday, I finally got to meet my friend Bharat’s wife Chaitali who is in town for a few days before they leave to Chicago next Tuesday. Together with Melvin and Atreyee, we went out for dinner at the Huhot Mongolian Grill and grabbed a drink at the Ragtag afterward. We had a great time and it really didn’t feel like we had known each other only for a couple of hours.

Yesterday, I took Bharat and Chaitali to Devil’s Backbone, one of my favorite spots around here. Its gorgeous vistas over the Cedar Creek are impressive year-round, but spring and fall are by far the best times to go there. Once again, the beauty of the nature out there took my breath away. After we spent a couple of hours at Devil’s Backbone, we went to the Shooting Star Trailhead to watch the sun set over Rock Bridge State Park from one of the rock plateaus towering over the Gans Creek. This is also where the last image is from.

I’ve been wanting to photograph the Dirty Disco Dance Party at Eastside Tavern on Friday nights for a while now, and last night I finally took my camera with me. I was playing around a lot with my new pocket wizards and off-camera flash and finally decided to position the strobe on a shelf above the entrance door, right next to one of the speakers. It took me a while to figure out the proper lighting, especially since I had to light both the DJ area and the dance floor with one strobe (bouncing off a black ceiling), but eventually I managed to get decent results by adjusting shutter speed and f-stop depending on where I was and let the strobe run on the same setting all throughout.

The irony was that my shoot was cut short once I had figured out my lighting and before the party even really started. The bass vibrations of the speaker next to strobe made it slowly bounce toward the edge of the shelf – until it dropped 8 feet deep on concrete. Amazingly enough, it was still looking alright and was even firing fine; however, the reflector zoom is in pretty bad shape, so I’ll have to send it in for repair nevertheless. So behold, here are some of the most expensive party pictures I ever took. You better enjoy!

Here’s another set of pictures from my trip into the past times of analog photography, shot between February 11 and February 15. The pictures have all been taken while I was out and about in Columbia’s night life with my friends.

Melvin and Atreyee at Top Ten Wines, Thursday, February 11, 2010.

Another blurry picture, but I love the intensity of the look in Sibylle’s eyes.

For a while, dominos became really popular and we played it almost every night at Ragtag.

Anjali Pinto and Mito Habe-Evans are all dominos…

Beth Suda smoking outside the Ragtag.

Sibylle and I somehow have a thing for photographing each other photographing each other…

Nick King and Parker Eshelman at Flat Branch.

Closing the tab at Flat Branch.

Looking out on the parking lot behind Flat Branch.