Blog | Jakob Berr Photography

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.

Here’s a short video that I did on Paul Dickerson, the brewer of the newly opened Broadway Brewery, a brew pub here in Columbia. I’m still experimenting with the proper export settings in the editing software, so forgive me if the quality is not too good or the loading times are too long!

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…