Blog | Jakob Berr Photography

A couple of weeks ago, I photographed Derek Kewley, a member of the Columbia Rocket Club (CRC) preparing one of his rockets for the one-day story assignment in our Picture Story and Photographic Essay course. Ever since then, we’ve been waiting for a stretch of good weather that would allow the farmers to bring in their crop so that the rocketeers could access their launch field. Today, the big day had finally arrived.

At 10.45 am we headed out for the field near Sturgeon, where Mark Grant, the director of the club, was already preparing the launch pads. There were about ten to fifteen people out there, and a hell of a lot of rockets in all shapes and sizes. One guy even had rockets in coffee table and cubicle shapes. Anyway, long story short: It was amazing. Here’s what I got:

Derek Kewley closes the doors of his trailer full of rockets before heading out to the launch field.

Derek Kewley and Mark Grant carry another CRC member’s rocket and equipment to the launch pad. It’s a so-called hybrid rocket that is fuelled by propellants in two different states of matter. The stuff in the tank that Mark carries is nitrous oxide. The rocket went off with a gigantic roar, but unfortunately it broke apart in mid-flight and came down “ballistic” (the rocketeers’ way of saying that it crashed into the ground without a parachute…).

One of Derek’s rockets during launch. It reached an altitude of 2,194 ft.

Mark Grant, left, and Mark Brown, of Kansas City, watch Brown’s rocket climb after they launched it.

From left, Derek Kewley, his step-daughter’s friend Brooke and his step-daughter Brittany prepare a small rocket for launch. Like for me, this was Brooke’s first time at a rocket launch.

Final adjustments before the launch…

Derek’s wife Les, his step-daughter’s friend Brooke, and Derek watch a rocket fly.

Mark Grant helps Derek put a rocket on the guide rail of the launch pad.

And then it was time for the big one. Derek and another CRC member carry Derek’s Dragon Claw to the launch pad…

…slide it onto the guide rail…

…adjust it, and…

…BOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!!! I was laying about 30 feet away on the ground when this one went off, and frankly, it was impressive. I ruined my pants and shirts laying in the muddy field, but this shot was totally worth it.

For our Electronic Photojournalism course, we had to build a project in Flash, including a preloader, a menu and two chapters with audio and images. I decided to rebuild the hospice story and the barbershop story for that assignment. Take a look at it and let me know what you think!

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.