Blog | Jakob Berr Photography

The community of Macon, Mo., has recently lost one of their own when Navy Seal Adam Smith died along with two other soldiers in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on Tuesday, September 21, 2010. This Friday, Adam Smith’s visitation was to be held at the First Baptist Church in Macon. The American Legion Riders provided an honor guard. The previous night, Wayne, a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks in Macon (the MPW hosts) who is also part of the American Legion Riders, came up to me and asked if we could send a photographer to document the occasion.

With things at the workshop going smoothly, I was able to free up some time and walk over to the church to photograph. Here are some of the shots I came back with.

Since last Monday, we’ve been in Macon, Mo., for the 62nd annual Missouri Photo Workshop. Calin and I are this year’s co-coordinators, and after we moved in to our headquarters late Saturday night because of yet another wedding that conflicted with our plans, everything is now up and running and we are having a great time with the locals, the workshop photographers who came in from all over the world and the faculty and crew that we are working with.

There’s little time left besides the workshop duties, and most of the participants, crew members and faculty members will probably rack up a total of no more than 20 hours of sleep during the entire week. But being the nerds that we are, we spend even the little spare time we have with our cameras in our hands. And so it doesn’t come as a surprise when you step outside the workshop headquarters to smoke a cigarette and find faculty member Peggy Peattie flat on her back in the grass waiting for the right allignment of clouds, flags and the antler-less elk to immortalize the scene on her memory card. Of course, as a responsible MPW family member, it is a must to make a picture of Peggie making her picture…

Yesterday I went to church with Valeria and her granddaughters. I had joined them before, but didn’t really like the pictures I came back with. With the way the church is set up, it’s hard to get a telling image. A low ceiling, a row of columns along the middle of the room, fluorescent light in the main room and tungsten in the altair room all make photographing in the building a virtual nightmare. This shoot went better than the first one, however, and I guess I’ll just have to come to terms with the fact that this is the most I can get out of this situation.

The congregation is quite small, with maybe 40 to 50 regular attendants.

Valeria makes it a point to highlight sections in her bible that the pastor talks about in his sermons.

Valeria talks to her pastor after service.

Yesterday Dreisha and Drejanay finally came home from their summer vacation at their uncle’s place in Oklahoma. Valeria got so excited to see them that she and Paul drove all the way out to her sister’s place in Glasgow, Mo., where her brother and the girls would stop on his way to Columbia.

Valeria’s brother is a slow driver, so she and Paul spent about an hour and a half waiting and chatting at her aunt’s place down the road until he finally arrived with the girls.

The first hug in several weeks.

Back home in Columbia, Dreisha and Drejanay couldn’t wait to see their new rooms…

…and were excited about the new decoration.