Blog | Jakob Berr Photography

Last Sunday, Volker, Martial, Miten, John, Chelsea, Beth and I went to Finger Lakes State Park to enjoy the spring weather and get some fresh air. I finally got to play around with my 90mm after I had it in service for some focussing issues. It was a pretty amazing day, even though it was a little bit cooler than we expected. But we managed to keep ourselves warm with Beth’s washers set.

For all those who (like me) don’t know what washers is: It’s a game where you have to toss washers into a box from a certain distance. There’s a tube in the box, and if you manage to land your washer in the tube, your team gets three points. If it lands in the box, it’s worth one point. It’s not easy, as the washers tend to bounce out of the box even if you land them perfectly. But it’s fun as hell.

Once it got too cold to stay out, we all headed over to Beth’s and started a spontaneous barbecue. Her neighbors joined in, too, and it turned out to be a pretty fun night…

The crowd arrives at the picnic spot at Finger Lakes State Park.

John tries to calm down Presley, one of Chelsea’s two cats, who were with us on the trip and quite excited.

A truly international crowd: Volker from Germany, Martial from Cameroon and Miten from England (left to right).

They have a fire pitch at Beth’s place, so we combed their back yard for some fallen branches and found some nice, big pieces of wood. Kept us warm for the night…

Tatsuro (center), an exchange student from Japan, came over along with a few other people and added another continent to our international mix.

Jarrad Henderson, one of my classmates and a great friend, has been working for quite a while on his long term project Beyond This Place, a documentary on Black Greek Letter Organizations. In Jarrad’s own words, “Beyond This Place is a project that seeks to validate the important past and contemporary history of Black Greek Letter Organizations (BGLOs) in a never before seen collection of images.” On Sunday, Jarrad opened an exhibition with prints of some of his images at the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center here on campus.

Jarrad, a natural born speaker, during his opening speech. I wish I could speak half as eloquently and confident as him…

In the hallway where the pictures were exhibited.

David Kennedy watches the opening ceremony.

After the ceremony, Jarrad – with his typical heartwarming friendliness – walked up to every single guest and thanked them for coming. You just have to love this guy…

Being fed up and frustrated with the distanced and removed nature of my recent photography and inspired by a dear friend, I have decided to take a step back in time to when photography for me was not merely a tool to tell stories, but rather a little miracle, a slowly revolving series of secrets, without a delete button and a display for instant results. A time when a picture wasn’t born out of the feeling that what’s in front of me is an important part of the story that I am expected to capture, but simply out of a mere impulse, a feeling of space, time, light and moment all coming together that makes my finger push down the button.

Now don’t get me wrong – I don’t think that telling stories in pictures isn’t good. In fact, I believe that it’s one of the most wonderful forms of communication, otherwise I couldn’t be doing what I do. But I do believe that with going digital, I have lost part of my passion for this medium, and lately I was approaching photography very stiff and methodically. Going back to shooting analog black-and-white is my form of therapy to regain what I’ve lost somewhere along the way – and ideally what I find will carry over and enrich my “professional” photography.

These are just some random images from a day out at Devil’s Backbone with Sibylle and Marine last week and some shots of a hilarious night of Ping Pong and Karaoke last Thursday. It was the first roll of film that I shot in almost four years, and I loved it…

Finally, after all my deadlines are over, all the papers have been submitted and all the final projects finished, after buying Christmas presents and packing my bags, after saying good bye to all my friends in Columbia and after a 17-hour journey back home to Germany and a loooooong and refreshing nap, I get some time to update my blog, even though it’s 2.30 am (hello, jet-lag!). Here’s is the final product of my 30-day story in our Picture Story and Photographic Essay class. Feedback welcome!