Blog | Jakob Berr Photography

My friend Tobi came to visit me in the U.S. for two weeks, and so we decided to take a road trip to New Orleans. Together with Beth we embarked on the 15-hour drive down to the Big Easy. To cut a long story short: We had a fantastic time. I always knew that New Orleans breathes music, but experiencing it live is a whole different thing. We only spent four days in the city, but I fell madly in love with it. Together with San Francisco, to me New Orleans is the most amazing city in this country.

On our way to New Orleans we got into a huge traffic jam just outside of Memphis. Everything was deadlocked for hours, and finally we found out that an anti-government activist and his son had shot and killed two police officers during a routine traffic control. Law enforcement had to close off the bridge across the Mississippi for the man hunt, causing a complete still-stand for several hours.

You haven’t been to New Orleans if you haven’t had a crawfish boil by the Mississippi river…

The cemeteries in New Orleans are all above ground because of the swampy soil the city is built on.

Outside the Bulldog bar where we watched the tragic Champions League finals of Bayern Munich against Inter Milan.

In New Orleans, music – good music – is everywhere. Even the musicians in the street are great. But this one here topped everything I had ever seen before. We were in the bar and heard the band playing, until one of us noticed that there were more instruments than people on the stage. At first we thought they were playing stuff off a loop. But when we took a closer look, we realized the he was playing a rhythm guitar in one hand, a lead guitar in the other, and a bass guitar with his feet. Go figure…

On our last day, we took a field trip to one of the many Bayous around New Orleans. The nature out there is incredible.

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.

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.

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…